Category Archives: Performance review – RBA

Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder

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Today’s free lunchtime concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre was given by Canadian bass, Robert Pomakov and the Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon – violin, Roman Borys – cello, Jamie Parker – piano).

First up we got Parker and Pomakov performing Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.  Pomakov has a big voice as I knew from having heard his Monterone twice this month at the Four Seasons Centre.  I was impressed by how well he could scale back his volume and even more impressed by the wide and appropriate range of tone colours he deployed.  He doesn’t sound entirely secure at ppp but for a voice of his type he was pretty good!  Next the Gryphons gave us the Elegia from Arensky’s piano trio.  I don’t know this work at all but they sounded very accomplished and musical.  The finale was Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death in Gary Kulesha’s arrangement for voice and piano trio.  This time Pomakov could let rip with all his considerable power accompanied with equal fervour by the Gryphons.  The whole thing was very impressive and very loud!

The scary thing is that Pomakov has only just turned thirty and already has this huge sound.  Apparently he’s had it for a while because he’s sung in twenty COC productions going back ten seasons. I did check out Youtube to see if I could find Pomakov and there is one clip of him singing the Russian National Anthem at the World Cup of Hockey in 2004. Here it is.

Svadba-Wedding revisited

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Back in June I attended and wrote up the world premiere of Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba-Wedding. Today it was given again in a concert performance by the original cast in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. I’m not going to repeat what I said in the earlier review but focus on my reactions to seeing it again. First off, it works very well as a concert piece losing less than a more obviously narrative work might. Second, I was struck by the interesting way the piece weaves two very different musical strands together; the high tempo, almost percussive, onomatopoeic elements as referred to before but also a more lyrical element where a long, slow, folk derived line is introduced and then a second and maybe a third or even a fourth melody are woven in to create a rather dense harmonic texture. This second element is particularly apparent in the final number “Farewell”. The contrast is very effective. Finally, Jacqueline Woodley sounded even more like a young Dawn Upshaw. Her ability to sing powerfully with next to no vibrato is very compelling in this sort of music. [Image by John Lauener is from the staged production at Berkeley Street and was lifted from today’s performance flyer]

Artists of the University of Toronto Opera Division

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Today’s lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre was given by singers from the University of Toronto’s Opera Division. This is described as the university’s programme for professional singers but what that means in a city that has a professional opera company with a young artists programme and a conservatory I don’t quite know. Certainly the standard today was generally below what I’ve experienced from singers at the RCM and not close to the same league as the COC Studio Ensemble. Many of the singers sounded as if they were forcing their voices beyond their comfort zone in an attempt to sound “operatic” but were only succeeding in producing the sort of sound that persuades people they don’t like opera. Enough negativity, let’s turn to the highlights. I thought the best of the singers was baritone Josh Whelan. He stood out in an otherwise undistinguished rendering of the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor and was very presentable in an excerpt from Menotti’s The Telephone. In the latter he was partnered by soprano Eliza Johnson who was pleasant to listen to in a rather undemanding piece. Mezzo Alexandra Beley and soprano Rosanna Murphy also sang quite nicely in a couple of excerpts from Cosi Fan Tutte though both tended toward scenery chewing which seems out of place in a piano accompanied recital (this seems to be a division characteristic). Once again I was struck by what a wonderful accompanist Sandra Horst is.

I hate to be negative about young singers but, all in all, this was rather disappointing.

Thurday members of the Ensemble Studio are performing French art songs. It looks good and I had planned to go but it now looks like I have a refereeing gig that afternoon. Maybe I can get the lemur to guest blog it.

And so it begins again

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Today was the opening concert of the season for the free concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. As has become standard practice it was a recital by the artists of the COC Studio Ensemble. All the members sang except for Ambur Braid who was ill and Ileana Montalbetti is singing in Elektra in Rome at the moment. I have to say it was great to be listening to live, unamplified singing again after a summer of mostly DVDs. I was most interested to hear newcomer Philippe Sly who I had not heard before. He sang one of the Count’s arias from Figaro. He has a very pleasant voice with plenty of power though I think he lacks a bit of variety and drama. He’ll learn that quickly enough in the Ensemble Studio program. The other newcomer was Mireille Asselin, who I had heard before. She sang a rather weird aria from Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias. No lack of drama or humour in her performance! The other standouts for me were Adrian Kramer and Simone Osborne. Adrian sang “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” from Die tote Stadt. His diction and acting are superb and he managed an absolutely gorgeous floated pianissimo on the final “Zurück”. Simone gave us one of Norina’s arias from Don Pasquale. She just gets better. She has quite a powerful, rich voice with really strong, sweet high notes. The progress from even a year ago is obvious. She can act too. There is no question that she is one to watch on the opera scene. Fortunately, that’s exactly what I will be doing in ten days time when I shall see her role debut as Gilda in the COC’s production of Rigoletto. The season is off to a good start.

Les adieux

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Today’s lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre was the farewell recital for three departing COC Ensemble Studio members; Michael Uloth (bass), Wallis Giunta (mezzo) and Anne Larlee (piano).

Michael started the show with Brahms’ Vier Ernste Gesänge, accompanied by Liz Upchurch. The piece is a bit of a downer but it was nicely, expressively sung. A bit of an odd choice for this sort of recital though I thought. Wallis picked a fairly eclectic mix of songsranging from Gretchen am Spinnrade to Send in the Clowns via some rather odd Spanish pieces but all very stylishly sung.

Perhaps surprisingly, the two of them had managed to find a couple of duets for mezzo and bass; As-tu souffert? from Thomas’ Mignon and Iradier’s El Arreglito, which apparently, was what gave Bizet the idea and most of the music for the Habañera in Carmen. Both pieces were really good though it has to be said that Wallis acted Michael (admittedly suffering from a bad neck) off the stage.

Michael is off to the young artists programme at Seattle Opera and Wallis is joining the Lindemann Young Artists program at the Met in New York. I expect Wallis to do really well. She has a more than adequate voice, can act, is good looking and has tremendous stage presence; in short, the modern opera package.

News is that their replacements will be soprano Mireille Asselin and baritone Philippe Sly.

Ensemble Studio – end of season concert

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Yesterday lunchtime was the last opportunity to see all the members of the COC Ensemble Studio before the season ends and some of them move on. It’s always interesting to see the Ensemble members as they are growing as singers so fast and, invariably, one hears a new and interesting side of someone that one hadn’t heard before. The programme material ranged from the 16th to the 20th century but it was all Italian and predominantly art song rather than opera. For me, the highlights were Ambur Braid singing a madrigal by Giulio Caccini; I think she’s so much better when she’s being lyrical rather than bravura, and, real eye opener, Rihab Chaieb singing Rossini’s Anzoleta avanti la regata with beautiful control, real feeling and rich, dark mezzo tone. I’ll be seeing Rihab tonight as one of the ugly step sisters in La Cenerentola and Ambur as Amore in Orfeo ed Eurydice next week.

Margisons, père et fille, at the RBA

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We went to a lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre. It was an interesting mix. The local tenor Richard Margison performed with his 19 year old daughter, Lauren, and pianist Christopher Mokrzewski. Margison is an opera singer of international stature currently singing The Tenor/Bacchus in the COCs production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Lauren, at 19, is already a well established performer and recording artist in a more popular vein. They both do crossover. Richard sang in a rock band and in folk clubs for ten years. Lauren was the youngest child ever to sing in the Canadian Opera Children’s Chorus and is currently enrolled in the Classical Vocal Performance programme at University of Toronto.

In the first half of the programme Richard powered through art songs by Scarlatti, Duparc and Beethoven and Lauren did a pretty good job with a couple of Schubert songs. She’s musical and accurate but a little tentative and underpowered, but then at her age one wouldn’t expect anything else. Then they switched to more popular rep. Richard sang a Gordon Lightfoot song, Moon River and You’ll Never Walk Alone, the latter sounding rather odd to one who used to live across the road from Anfield! There was a definite element of a battleship navigating a kayak slalom course but he did sound a bit less operatic than many singers would have done. Lauren also did a couple of similar songs plus a duet with her dad. She sounds utterly comfortable and mature way beyond her years in this rep.

In the intro to the concert we had been told that Lauren had chosen to sing Nessun Dorma at her audition for the Children’s Chorus way back so it was no surprise that Richard picked that as an encore. Calaf is one of his signature roles. He practically blew the roof off the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium. All in all, another fun, free concert.

Musical plans for the immediate future include an Ensemble Studio concert in the RBA tomorrow lunchtime, La Cenerentola at the Four Seasons Centre on Friday night and the MetHD broadcast of Die Walküre on Saturday.

Multiple short operas at the RBA

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This was a fun concert. Six members of the COC Studio Ensemble presented, more or less fully staged, three very short operas to piano accompaniment. First up was Ana Sokolovic’s Dring, Dring which was performed by Ileana Montalbetti, Rihab Chaleb, Neil Craighead and Chris Emms. It consisted of the singers weaving intricate patterns while making telephone noises and short “wrong number” type conversations in multiple languages. I quite enjoyed it. It’s the first thing by Sokolovic I’ve heard and i was interested as I’m planning on attending the premiere of her new opera in June. Next, the same cast did Barber’s A Hand of Bridge. It’s a melodic little piece about repressed middle class fantasies. I was a bit distracted by the stage direction which appeared to have been done by someone who had never seen, let alone played bridge but then I’m fussy that way. The highlight was definitely Neil Craighead’s recitation of his character’s fairly bizarre sexual fantasies. Finally, Adrian Kramer and Jacqueline Woodley performed Menotti’s The Telephone; a piece about a man who can’t propose to his girlfriend because she is always on the telephone. Performed by the Ensemble’s two best comedians this was predictably funny and very well sung. Liz Upchurch, as ever, was a first class accompanist on the piano.

Quilico Awards

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Last night we went to the Quilico Awards competition. The prize was set up in honour of Canadian baritone Louis Quilico to support various aspects of vocal competition and performance and it has been competed for and awarded in different ways over the years. This year it was a vocal competition featuring the ten young singers of the COC Ensemble Studio. It was held in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons centre and Alexander Neef (COC), David Spears (Opera Hamilton) and John Hess (Queen of Puddings Music Theatre) were the judges. It was a free gig but held at 5.30pm with minimal publicity on a week day so it perhaps wasn’t surprising that the audience was a bit thin. The format was that each singer prepared three arias. S/he sang one of his/her choice then the jury selected one of the other two. The third was held in reserve in case of a tie (which didn’t happen). Liz Upchurch was the accompanist throughout which was rather impressive in itself.

The standard was really very high. I’ve heard all these singers before, either in recital and/or on stage at the Four Seasons Centre. They are all good and getting better. Repertoire was quite varied. There was lots of Mozart (unsurprising since the Ensemble Studio’s last two productions have been Idomeneo and Die Zauberflöte) but we also got Barber, Purcell, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Handel, Verdi, Wagner, Floyd, Smetana, Korngold, Britten and Barber. Quite a variety really.

One of my top picks would have been Met bound Wallis Giunta (mezzo) who sang “Parto, parto” from La Clemenza di Tito which I’ve heard her do before and the very different “Nobles seigneurs, salut!” from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Wallis’ musicality (as well as technical ability) was very evident in the way she tackled the tricky rhythmic flexibility of the piece. (You can check out what I mean about tricky rhythms here).

The other would have been baritone Adrian Kramer who goes from strength to strength. He gave us “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and what has rather become his party piece, Sid’s aria “Tickling a trout” from Britten’s Albert Herring. Watch out for this guy. He has a very good voice and wicked comic timing but showed he also has a lyrical side in the Korngold.

Had I been a judge I would have found picking a third winner close to impossible. There was so much to like. So what did the judges decide?

In third place they had tenor Chris Enns (a fine Tamino earlier this season). Last night he gave us Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin and “Here I Stand” from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. I particularly liked the Tchaikovsky which showed off a nicely developing lyrical tenor voice very well.

Second was dramatic soprano Ilieana Montalbetti. Ileana is a bit of an anomaly. The other girls in the programme are your modern lyric, look the part, sort of modern soprano/mezzos (one of them moonlights as a fashion model). Ileana is the one truly dramatic voice and can we say she looks a bit more like the popular image of a dramatic soprano (actually she’s not really that big but…). She gave us “Come in quest’ora bruna” from Simon Boccanegra and “Einsam in trüben Tagen” from Lohengrin. The RBA is not a huge space and it was piano accompaniment so I don’t think she was close to maximum power (I’ve heard her sing much louder!) but the impression of lots of gas in the tank was definitely there along with a good deal of control and attractive tone colour.

The winner was Adrian Kramer. No surprise there.

Fortunately for us we will get to see most of these singers next month on stage in various roles. Ambur Braid is singing Amore in Orfeo ed Euridice, where Simone Osborne is understudying Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Euridice. Rihab Chaleb will sing Tisbe and Ileana will sing Clorinda in La Cenerentola. Ariadne auf Naxos has a slew of Ensemble Studio members in the cast. Simone Osborne sings Naiad, Adrian Kramer is the Wigmaker, Chris Enns is Scaramuchio and Michael Uloth is Truffaldino and it seems like everyone is understudying something!

There are good things in Toronto. How many places can you see ten first rate singers perform for two hours in a beautiful, acoustically excellent setting, for free?

Singing style

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Yesterday’s free “concert” at the Four Seasons Centre was a bit different. It was an illustrated talk entitled 110 Years of Singing on Record: An Introduction to the Evolution of Style. It was illustrated with a number of recordings played over the speaker system in the RBA and two records played on a 1914 Victor VI acoustic gramophone; an instrument that produced surprisingly good sound.

The title was overly ambitious. We didn’t get any sense of evolution and, since the most recent recording was from 1983, the “110 years” bit was something of a misnomer. The basic premise seemed to be that there was a distinct shift in singing style between the first and third quarters of the twentieth century; which I think is probably true. Demonstrating using a pretty wide variety of voices and repertoire was rather less than convincing though. Still more peculiar was the (implicit) idea that nothing has changed since the 1970s. To give one example, sure one can demonstrate that Renata Scotto used a great deal more vibrato than Nellie Melba but what singer today would use as much vibrato as Scotto? In a slightly different vein, to argue that Peter Pears phrasing a song more dramatically than Karl Erb is purely a matter of singing style when Ben Britten is at the piano is rather missing the point of that particular partnership.

The Victor gramophone was truly a thing of beauty though.

That horn is laminated mahogany and all the fittings are gold plated.