As I pivot from the Fringe to Toronto Summer Music I thought I’d lay out a few thoughts about this year’s Toronto Fringe. Obviously this is based on my sample of eight shows out of the huge number on offer but some of my thoughts seemed to be confirmed by conversations over the course of the week.
Me with cast and crew members of Regarding Antigone
So it’s April Fools Day in Walter Hall and Ambur Braid is scheduled to give a masterclass to UoT Opera students. Were they having us on? I was doubly suspicious having just finished the really annoying Guardian April Fool crossword. But, no, it was real; though frankly funnier than most April Fool pranks. You can check it out for yourself because it’s all up on Youtube.
Since you can check it out for yourselves I’lljust make a few observations:
What I’m going to do here is use a review of a new CD by Toronto based musician/actor Ahmed Moneka as a means to explore some ideas about listening to music. But first the CD itself. It’s called Kanzafula and it contains nine tracks rooted in an unusual musical tradition; that of the Afro/Iraqi Sufis of Basra. These are descendants of people originally from the East coast of Africa who wound up in Basra in the 8th century CE and have maintained a rich musical tradition combining Arabic and African influences. Continue reading
So the COC is set to release details of the 2024/25 season some time in late February so in the interests of tradition I’ll have a go at guessing what we will hear. I have to admit that i have very little confidence in my predictions as the combination of COVID and new management has disrupted old patterns and new ones are not yet very apparent. Even the sacrificial goat liver (see left) isn’t helping much. There have been two complete seasons since COVID. One featured five revivals and the other five “new to Toronto” productions sourced from other houses. COC commissions, new productions or co-pros were noticeably absent. It’s probably also fair to say that there was a distinctly conservative vibe to the productions. I’m not saying horned helmets and crinolines but it’s noticeable that the revivals haven’t included any of the COC’s edgier efforts.
It’s a bit of a thing with me. I tend to prefer staged versions of the Handel English language oratorios to the Italian operas. I know it’s a view I share with quite a few singers, including Ryan McDonald and Anna Sharpe with whom I was chatting about it on the weekend. But, it would seem, this opinion is not shared by opera house managements (not to be confused with audiences!). Continue reading
There have been a lot of discussions lately about diversity in opera and how, particularly, race and gender are represented in very limited and problematic ways, especially in the canonical operas of the long 19th century. The latest to come my way is a very good panel discussion hosted by the COC (on their Youtube channel) and moderated by Aria Umezawa. This one tackled gender issues but, inevitably broader questions came up and that’s what I want to explore here. You might want to watch it either before or after reading the rest of this piece.
The only revolution to ever start in an opera house….
There’s an interesting new project on Youtube from Natalya Gennadi and Catherine Carew. It’s called HBD! Project and the idea is to produce a short themed video each month featuring composers whose birthdays fall in that month. The February pilot is online and it’s a bit different from other “shows” in similar vein that I’ve come across. This one features a song by Alban Berg sung by Natalya with a fluffy puppy, music for cello and piano by Jean Coulthard played by Alice Kim and Hye Won Cecilia Lee and Rodney Sharman’s Tobacco Road sung by Catherine. So what’s new you ask (apart from the puppy)? It’s the graphics with Mozart in a party hat, animated Emily Carr paintings and a look for the Sharman that could double as the witches’ scene in Macbeth. Yes it’s a bit weird but oddly compelling.
Yesterday the COC hosted an update session on the Digital Stage initiative and one of its key components; the Performing Arts Digital Lab (PADL). This is a joint project of the COC and the National Ballet) and yesterday’s update curiously coincided with the Federal Heritage department announcing major funding for the next stage of PADL. I’m not going to report on the update in detail because all the materials and the session itself will be archived at coc.ca/digitalstage. (All the stuff prior to yesterday is already there but yesterday’s material wasn’t at time of writing)
I last saw a live show in a theatre on March 13th. Eight months later I’ve watched a lot of web content as well as continuing to review commercial opera recordings. A month ago I wrote in Opera Canada that “there’s no substitute for live” and I stand by that view. I do think though that there’s an opportunity and a need to rethink how opera and song is produced for webstreaming.
I’m quite disturbed by some of the things I’ve been reading in the wake of Alexander Neef’s departure from the COC. Much of it seems driven by a kind of cultural chauvinism that I find as unpalatable as other kinds of chauvinism. There’s an underlying (or not so underlying) assumption that a Canadian GD would have looked out for the COC while Neef was just looking out for himself. I have two problems with this. One is the rather obvious point that if you hire someone who is on a career trajectory they are going to devote some time and energy to their career. It doesn’t mean they won’t get the job done for you (and likely better than a mediocrity) because if they don’t that career trajectory will disappear rather rapidly. ny organization hiring a high flyer knows this..
operaramblings 