Category Archives: Performance review – RBA

Telling Tales

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This year’s Wirth Vocal Prize winner, Kate Fogg, gave the now customary recital in the RBA on Thursday accompanied by Nate Ben-Horin.  The recital was titled Telling Tales and covered soprano rep across art song, musical theatre and opera (just); all in English.  Since the opera and art song pieces were by Ricky Ian Gordon, Ned Rorem and Stephen Sondhem as opposed to say brett Dean or George Benjamin it all had pretty much a musical theatre feel; so in many ways not really my music.

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Julie Boulianne and friends

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Last Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a showcase for the collaborative pianists of the McGill-UdeM Piano Vocal Arts programme.  Each of the five pianists on show got to accompany mezzo Julie Boulianne for a set of songs.  Or put another way, Julie got to perform for an hour with five pianists.

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Opera Revue (alcohol free edition)

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Regular readers will know that I’ve seen my fair share of shows by Opera Revue but pretty much always in a bar or pub and as the band always says “The more you drink, the better we sound”.  Thus it was with some trepidation that I went to see them in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on Wednesday.  It was the core gang; Danie Friesen, Alex Hajek, Claire Harris.  No ringers (except for the person who forgot to turn off their phone).

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Magic Flute preview

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Opera Atelier’s fall offering this year is a remount of the Magic Flute in essentially the version that first appeared in 1991.  It’s sung in English and we got a preview in the RBA on Thursday.  It was basically a working rehearsal of the opera’s opening plus a few other scenes with Chris Bagan at the piano.

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The First Viennese School

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Wednesday’s recital in the RBA was given by UoT Opera.  It consisted of a series of arias/scenes drawn from the operas of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven creatively staged by Mabel Wonnacott.  It was lively and a lot of fun and the vocal standard was very high, especially for so early in the academic year.

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Music for Reconciliation

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Tuesday was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the COC programmed Innu soprano Elisabeth St-Gelais, with pianist Louise Pelletier, for the lunchtime concert series.  They began very appropriately with Ian Cusson’s Le Récital des Anges; settings of two elegiac poems by Émile Nelligan about death and childhood.  They are very beautiful and deeply sad songs that seemed just right for the occasion.

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Rebanks Vocal Showcase

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Tuesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA featured soprano Teresa Tucci and baritone James Coole-Stevenson; both Rebanks fellows at the Conservatory, and pianist Vlad Soloviev.  It was a carefully curated concert with a thematic line and featured far more duets than one usually gets in such a show.

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Ensemble Studio kick off

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The free concert series in the RBA kicked off on Wednesday with, as usual, a performance by the artists of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.  Owing to illness only five singers performed and only one of those, Emily Rocha, was a returnee.  The other four singers and both pianists were newcomers.  It was short but enjoyable.

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Lauren Fagan in the RBA

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Last Wednesday’s lunchtime recital was given by soprano Lauren Fagan; currently appearing as Tatyana in the COC’s Eugene Onegin, and pianist Rachael Kerr.  Things kicked off with a selection of three songs from Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder.  What struck me here, apart from some really nice expressive singing, was Lauren’s ability too spin a line out coherently.

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