Category Archives: Performance review – miscellaneous

Cleveland or bust

Posted on by
2

In concept/development/workshop since 2001, Brian Current and Anton Piatigorsky’s chamber opera, Airline Icarus, got its first complete, staged performance last night in a production directed by Tim Albery in the Ada Slaight Hall at the Daniels Spectrum.  It’s an ambitious work taking us on a journey into the minds of the passengers and crew on a flight to Cleveland.  It explores fear and desire and our need, as a society, to reach for ever greater heights regardless of cost.  Hence the title.  It only runs 60 minutes or so but it covers a lot of ground.  More in fact than I could fully grasp without a copy of the libretto or surtitles.  It’s also, refreshingly, not afraid to be funny in places.

Airline Icarus Soundstream Continue reading →

East o’the Sun and West o’the Moon

Posted on by
2

Norbert Palej’s new piece East o’the Sun and West o’the Moon, commissioned by the Canadian Children’s Opera Company opened at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront last night.  It’s based on a Norwegian folk tale and tells the story of a girl, Rose, who does a deal with a magic white bear to feed her starving family.  The bear, of course, is really a prince who has been cursed by a witch.  Rose tricks the witch and marries the prince.  There are also trolls.  Lots of them.

East_West-0052 Continue reading →

Blah, blah, blah, blah

Posted on by
Reply

Alex Dobson_spring 2014The final show of the season for the Talisker Players, at Trinity St. Paul’s last night, was titled A Poet’s Love and featured baritone Alexander Dobson and actor Stewart Arnott in the usual Talisker format of alternating music and readings on a theme.  The first musical piece was John Beckwith’s Love Lines which took five pieces ranging from Handel’s Where’er you walk to Gershwin’s Blah, Blah, Blah and presented them with the vocal line cleaving straightforwardly to the melody with the accompaniment “deconstructed” into “fragments” for violin, viola, cello and double bass.  It’s a rather disturbing piece, especially when one knows the source material well.  I’d like to hear it again.  It was given an honest and engaging presentation by Dobson and the strings.

Continue reading →

The Seven Vices

Posted on by
1

amburThe last of this season’s Recitals at Rosedale was on the theme of the the Seven Deadly Sins.  It was an interesting and enjoyable afternoon, perhaps notable as much for what it had to say about the state of the industry as for the music making.  The format was four singers moving fairly rapidly between short (more the most part) songs linked by a one or two sentence chosen text.  The effect was to keep things moving along swiftly and even to generate a kind of narrative arc.  There was no time for applause between numbers for example.  It was a very different feel from the traditional art song recital where one or two singers sing sets of related songs.  It was also quite operatic.  All the singers chose to act physically and with the voice.  Again, a far cry from the art song tradition where a raised eyebrow is considered over acting.  Overall I thought it worked and in a city where the music commentariat has been lamenting the death of the art song recital for years somebody has to try something!

Continue reading →

Faster Still Anaïs Nin

Posted on by
4

rcm_21c_webpage-icon_final2-2This concert at Koerner Hall was the second in this summer’s Twenty-First Century Music Festival.  It advertised works by Christos Hatzis, Brian Current, R. Murray Schafer and Louis Andriessen.  In fact we kicked off with a short bonus selected from Youtube entries to make up 21 premieres for the C21.  Unfortunately I didn’t catch composer or title and it lasted less than two minutes.  Continue reading →

The Cousin from Nowhere

Posted on by
1

The Cousin from Nowhere is a German operetta by Eduard Künneke that premiered in Berlin in 1921.  Last night it received its Canadian premier, in English translation, at Toronto Operetta Theatre.  It’s a light, charming romcom with few pretensions but much to enjoy.  The plot is simple in outline though convoluted in almost Gilbertian way.  Julia is an heiress under the guardianship of her aunt and uncle and about to come of age and, thus, come into the fortune that hitherto the older couple have been able to enjoy.  She is in love (or thinks she is) with her third cousin twice removed Roderich, who left to make his fortune in the East Indies seven years ago.  Aunt and uncle scheme to marry her to their nephew August.  Various more or less improbable plot twists involve August impersonating Roderich and successfully winning the heart of Julia while Roderich returns and falls instantly in love with Hanna, Julia’s bestie.  It all ends happily.  The music is not unlike Viennese operetta with some nods to jazz and popular post war dance music but if you are expecting pre echoes of Berg or Weill you are going to be disappointed.  It’s quite conventional but essentially well crafted light entertainment.

Cousin from Nowhere-6321 Continue reading →

Sondra Radvanovsky at the Zoomerplex

Posted on by
1

sondraSo, Sondra made a live broadcast for 96.3 FM at lunchtime today.  It was one of those media things where the audience was aggressively stage managed by the floor staff but otherwise quite enjoyable.  Also there was lunch which was a definite plus.  What was a bit annoying was the overall vibe of “fitting opera into the programming for old folks”.  Way to build a new audience there!

The performance was varied and interesting with Sondra on good form and the ever reliable Rachel Andrist on piano.  There was no printed progrmme or lyric sheets so I’m going from my hastily scribbled notes but we got some Rachmaninov songs, which suited Sondra really well plus arias from Trovatore, Norma, Tosca and Andrea Chenier plus a Verdi song, Copland’s Simple Gifts and I could have danced all night.  Nothing if not varied!  It’s interesting how dropping from big opera rep to something like the Copland can be astonishingly effective.  Simplicity and lack of artifice has it’s charms.  And, yes, I want to hear her Norma and, if rumour is half way correct, probably will in the not too distant future.

Continue reading →

Opera Atelier does it again

Posted on by
2

I had planned on giving Opera Atelier’s production of Lully’s Persée a miss but early reviews were positive and, more importantly for me, suggested there was something new and a bit different about the piece this time around.  This production has been around since 2000 and was recorded for DVD four years later so I knew pretty much what to expect and to be honest that’s what we got last night.  If there were changes, they were very minor.  If anything it’s got even camper and I do wonder whether OA is in danger of becoming a sort of parody of itself.  And it’s still three hours of OA doing Lully and if that’s your thing you will not be disappointed.  If you are expecting anything else you won’t get it.

gorgons Continue reading →

Inspired by Love

Posted on by
Reply

Joana CarneiroOnce in a while it’s fun to go to something almost entirely undemanding (for the audience at least!).  So, yesterday afternoon I attended a concert of classical “lollipops” given by the TSO under the baton of young Portugese conductor Joana Carneiro.  The chief attraction for me was that recent Ensemble Studio graduates Simone Osborne and Wallis Giunta were also performing.  Things got going with the overture from Il Nozze di Figaro. It was a brisk and stylish performance with Ms. Carneiros displaying a very physical conducting style.

Continue reading →

A Parsifal in three acts

Posted on by
4

Yesterday, Easter Saturday, I got to see the Royal Opera House production of Wagner’s Parsifal.  It was broadcast live to many locations of December 18th last year but hasn’t been seen in Toronto until now.  It was very much a three act experience.  At the end of the first and longest act I thought we were perhaps seeing greatness in the making.  Stephen Langridge’s production concept supported by Alison Chitty’s fairly abstract modern designs were making all kinds of sense to me.  At centre stage is a white, semi transparent cube serving as both grail shrine and Amfortas’ hospital room.  Within it, various aspects of the back story are shown to us and it comes off as a place of knowledge; perhaps of a much deeper kind than has yet been revealed.  This impression is reinforced with the unveiling of the Grail late in the act.  It is a young, Christ like boy.  The grail ceremony involves Amfortas cutting him to release the blood for the ceremony.  There’s a lot of blood letting but it makes sense.  We are seeing a very wounded and dysfunctional polity.

sickbed Continue reading →