My review of Voicebox:Opera in Concert’s production of Puccini’s La Rondine at the weekend is now up at Opera Canada.
La Rondine from Voicebox:Opera in Concert
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Category Archives: Performance review – miscellaneous
with you and without you
Every year Soundstreams has a competition to find a young artist to curate a main stage concert. This year’s lucky winner is Brad Cherwin, who will need little introduction to readers of this blog, and the concert took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday night.
It was, in many ways, a typical Cherwin programme. Some works were played in their entirety while others had their individual movements spread through the programme. The overall theme was “Love and Death” and the programme was divided into four cycles with somewhat enigmatic titles. Twelve instrumentalists, plus soprano Danika Lorèn and conductor Gregory Oh were used in various combinations.
Curiously low key Brahms and Shostakovich from the VSO
My review of Sunday’s Roy Thomson concert by the Vancouver Symphony is now up at Bachtrack.
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UoT Opera’s Così
The spring production from UoT Opera is Mozart’s Così fan tutte and it’s playing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre. Anna Theodosakios directs with some conceptual input from Michael Patrick Albano. The production is interesting and I think there are three layers to unpack. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward 18th century setting with uniforms, wigs, elaborate dresses and so on but with a rather striking colour scheme; pinks and lilacs.
Brews, Beauties and Brawlers
So on Saturday night at St.Olave’s CE I finally managed to catch a concert in the Apocryphonia series. It was titled Brews, Beauties and Brawlers and was billed as “classical” meets “punk”. It was a collection of pieces for piano, solo voice and/or choir and organiser Alexander Capellazzo had recruited four voices of each type with soloists coming from the group. Narmina Afaniyeva was at the piano. Everybody (and some of the audience) had dressed for the occasion!
The Gondoliers
Toronto Operetta Theatre opened the concluding show of their 2024/25 season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Friday evening. It’s Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers directed and choreographed by Guillermo Silva-Marin. It’s pretty decent and, besides, TOT is about the only chance to see G&S in Toronto; whatever one thinks of their approach. For those who have seen TOT’s G&S before it’s fair to say this is a very typical TOT G&S production.
Vancouver Chamber Choir at Christ Church Deer Park
Thursday evening’s concert by the Vancouver Chamber Choir at Christ Church Deer Park was the culmination of Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Emerging Composers program. It’s an annual week long workshop that brings six young composers together with an experienced mentor and a professional resident ensemble with the resulting works being performed at the end of the week. So the core of Thursday’s programme was the six works so created bookended by three works by the mentor; British composer Tarik O’Regan and three works chosen to give the concert a balanced opening.
Jacqueline redux
Most new Canadian operas get an initial run (if they are lucky) and then disappear. Luna Pearl Woolf and Royce Vavrek’s Jacqueline is unusual in that following it’s premiere at Tapestry Opera in Toronto in 2020 it also played in San Francisco in 2024 and is now back in Toronto for a revival at Tapestry; once again directed by Michael Mori. There’s even, we are told, a fourth run at a yet to be disclosed company in the works. In some ways it’s not such a surprise. In these cash strapped times the appeal of a very good full length opera that only requires two soloists; no orchestra, no chorus, ought to be obvious!
Sighs Too Deep For Words
Friday evening at Heliconian Hall saw the second of two performances of Confluence Concerts’ Sighs Too Deep For Words: A Canadian Valentine. It was an all Canadian concert featuring songs and spoken word including two world premieres and a performance of Omar Daniel’s 2005 piece Neruda Canzones.
The spoken word pieces, read beautifully by Alison Beckwith, ranged from Lucy Maud Montgomery to Margaret Atwood. Some pieces straightforwardly celebrated romantic love and others came at it a bit sideways! Songs by Canadian composers were well represented With Derek Holman, Jeffrey Ryan and John Beckwith all represented. Anaïs Kelsey-Verdecchia performed (with Christopher Bagan) her own setting of “The Lark in the Clear Air” and Patricia O’Callaghan gave us her setting of “Some by Fire” with Chris again at the pianio, Andrew Downing on bass and a backing group. So many styles! No-one could say that Canadian music is samey or boring. Continue reading
What We Carry
I made a rare excursion into the world of dance on Friday evening to catch Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo’s one woman show What We Carry presented by Native Earth Performing Arts and A’nó:wara Dance Theatre. Barbara is Kanien’keha;ka originally from Kahnawake and as well as being trained in classical and contemporary settler dance traditions she’s also a powwow performer in a range of dance disciplines. She also has a pretty complex personal history. All of this bears on what happens in the 45 minutes or so of this show.
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