Bus Opera workshop

Rebecca Grey is a composer with a very individual view of the world and her art.  Who else would write operas about nightmares on an overnight bus trip or about a savvy racoon taking on a rapacious Toronto landlord?  Or, for that matter, cycle the Highway of Tears?  Her most substantial project to date is Bus Opera.  I first saw a workshop of an early version of it at the CMC a couple of years ago followed by a performance of extracts at one of New Music Concerts’ MAKEWAY concerts for early career creators at St. George by the Grange a few weeks later.  So I was very happy when I was offered the chance to attend a workshop performance of the (pretty much) complete work at Hugh’s Room on Tuesday night.

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Garden of Vanished Pleasures

Tim Albery’s show; Garden of Vanished Pleasures, about Derek Jarman and his Kent coast garden was supposed to figure in Soundstreams 2020/21 season and we know what happened to that!  So, it was reengineered as a film and streamed in September of 2021.  I reviewed  it at some length for Opera Canada.  Now director Tim Albery has recreated it as a live show at the Berkeley Street Theatre.

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Back to Castro’s… again

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a regular Opera Revue show and they were playing my favourite of their regular venues; Castro’s yesterday.  Also, besides the usual gang of Alex Hajek, Dani Friesen and Claire Harris there was Alex Hetherington, so I went.  I had a great time.  It was classic Operas Revue; some arias, some music theatre, Kurt Weill and a couple of parodies.  And Alex H.  Boy does she sound loud in a small space like Castro’s!  Plus this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear her sing the Countess from Marriage of Figaro (which will surely lead to expulsion from the Mezzos Guild).

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Quest

Saturday night at the new performance space at 877 Yonge Street saw a concert inaugurating Cultureland’s residency at Tapestry Opera.  The performance consisted mainly of excerpts from Cultureland’s recent and “in progress” operas accompanied on piano by Carolyn Maule and directed by Renée Salewski.

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Young artists do Dido and Aeneas

This week the Young Artists Studio at the Canadian Children’s Opera Company gave two performances of Purcell’s classic Dido and Aeneas.  The YAS is a new initiative designed to give young singers (16-19) additional opportunities to the CCOC’s usual fare and maybe provide a pathway to serious professional study.

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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.

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