Here’s what’s coming up next month as best I know.
Tapestry Opera has announced its first full season since leaving the Distillery District and it looks like “back to the future”. Most of the usual (much missed) stuff is there. So here’s the line up:
Welcome back Tapestry!
Life slowly returns to some version of normal.. Here’s what I’m seeing so far for Sptember.
German food conglomerate Dr. Oetker are promoting their new up-market frozen pizza offering, Suprema, in a unique way. They have commissioned a 15 minute opera called, unsurprisingly, Suprema from the good people at Opera Revue. It’s a jolly romp about a sculptor (Danie Friesen) whose creation (Alex Hajek) comes to life and gets hooked on pizza. Accompaniment is by Claire Harris on piano and pre-recorded strings (Drew Jurecka). It’s short, well executed and fun.
It’s free, you don’t need a ticket and there is rather good free pizza after each show. It’s playing in the TD Music Hall (i.e upstairs at Massey Hall). There are three shows this afternoon and a bunch next weekend. Times and so forth here.
Photo credit: Darryl Edwards
July in Toronto is really all about two festivals; the Toronto Fringe Festival and Toronto Summer Music.
The Fringe runs July 2nd to July 13th and there are more than 100 shows on 20+ stages. There’s a huge range of performance styles; drama, comedy, clowning, musicals, stand up etc. Most shows run an hour or less and the standard ticket price is $18.75 though there are plenty of discounts plus multi show passes as well as free events at the Fringe Hub which this year is at Soulpepper with events also across the street at Old Flame brewery. Quality varies a lot. Some shows are excellent; Monks last year would be a case in point, but others a re a bit meh. But that’s the point really. You can see what looks interesting to you. All the details are here.
I’ve been following the development of MISSING; an opera with text by Marie Clements and music by Brian Current since early 2017. There’s an article principally about the project in the Summer 2017 edition of Opera Canada. But I’ve yet to see the opera on stage. It’s had multiple productions in Western Canada but this July will see it’s first performance east of the Lakehead when Toronto Summer Music present it in concert format. That’s at Koerner Hall on July 24th.
Marion Newman in MISSING at Pacific Opera Victoria – Photo: Dean Kalyan
Things slow down just a little bit in June but with both Luminato and Opera 5’s Opera festival it’s not that quiet. Here’s what’s coming down:
Last Tuesday lunchtime in the RBA we got a sneak preview of some of the music that will feature at this year’s 20th anniversary Toronto Summer Music.
There was soprano Caitlin Wood with Philip Chiu performing three French chansons; at least one of which will feature in Mary Bevan and Roger Vignoles’ Walter Hall recital. Cait herself will be performing as part of the cast of Brian Current’s opera Missing during the festival.
Here are my top picks for May.
There have been a lot of announcements in the last few days. Tapestry announced that they had two companies “in residence” for next season at their new home at 877 Yonge Street. They are Opera Q ;led by Ryan Macdonald and Camille Rogers, who produced the pandemic video Medusa’s Children and Cultureland which is led by Afarin Mansouri and was responsible for Echoes of Bi-Sotoon. Continue reading
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