September starts the slow ramp up to the new season. The first thing in my calendar is Mysterious Barricades on September 14th from 1pm to 2pm in Walter Hall. This is a series of coast to coast, dawn to dusk concerts in aid of Suicide Awareness. Russell Braun, Monica Whicher and Nathalie Paulin are all involved. It’s free but ticketed. Check the link for details.
The line up for Voicebox: Opera in Concert has been announced for the 2019/20 season. There are four shows:
All shows are at the Jane Mallett Theatre.
The 2019/20 line up for the noontime free concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre has been announced. Vocal highlights are as follows:
The Ukrainian Art Song Project’s summer intensive has a concert in Temerty Hall on Sunday at 3pm. It’s possible to sit in on the creation/rehearsal process so I went along yesterday to take a look. I last went to one of the UASP’s concerts a couple of years ago and it was presented as a standard voice/piano recital in Koerner Hall. This is going to be quite different. The songs have been ordered in a way that creates a kind of narrative described as “A poet, having lost their inspiration, retraces their life, striving to reawaken in themselves the passion that once allowed them to create great works of art”. Also, it’s all being staged “in the round”. I got to see the crew work on four or five numbers yesterday and I was impressed by the commitment and the high standard of the singing and acting as well of the sheer speed with which the singers picked up on the ideas thrown at them by “circus master” Pavlo Hunka. It’s dramatic. There’s even an orgy.
Out of town, up in bear country, Highlands Opera Studio has shows this month. Puccini’s Suor Angelica is paired with two short contemporary opera’s; Maria Atallah’s The Chair and Kendra Harder’s Book of Faces. That’s this coming Thursday. Then on the 22nd, 24th, 25th and 26th they are doing Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos with two different casts. Full casting and box office information is here.
I received the following message from Iain Scott today. I’m passing it on for anyone who may be interested.
The funeral for Father Owen Lee will take place on this Saturday, 10th August 2019 at 10 a.m. at St Basil’s Church, Bay Street at St Joseph. All lovers of music are encouraged to attend.
It’s been rumoured for weeks but now it’s confirmed. Alexander Neef will leave the COC at the end of the 2020/21 season to head up L’Opéra de Paris. I don’t think anybody should be surprised. He’s a relatively young guy with a lot of working years ahead of him. He’s been in Toronto eleven years. It’s probably for the best for everybody that he moves onwards and upwards. Toronto will miss him. He’s been, in my view, a force for good here but, realistically, could he have continued to be transformational? I doubt anybody could. Has he solved, or would he solved, all the challenges facing the COC? No he hasn’t. Would anybody have done better? I doubt it.
There are a couple of interesting concerts coming up in the last week of the Toronto Summer Music Festival. On the 24th at 7.30pm in Walter Hall you can see Collectìf in a “spooky” programme. Collectìf is a group started by Danika Lorèn and friends. They do shows that incorporate staging, art song and video and they are never boring. (They also do adult cabaret but that’s another story!). Wednesday’s show is called Beyond Perception: What Haunts Us Now and features three sections. The first is built around the theme of La Dame Blanche, the second features Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and the last deals with the myth of Daphne and Apollo. Recommended. And as an added incentive for operaramblings readers there’s a discount code OR10 which will get you $10 tickets. Tickets from the Royal Conservatory Box Office online, in person or by phone.
Against the Grain Theatre today announced their 2019/20 season which will be their tenth though I don’t think back then there really was a “season” as such. In many ways it’s their most ambitious yet.
The RCM 2019/20 season has been announced. It’s the usual mix of chamber, orchestral, piano, jazz, world music, the completely indefinable and, of course, vocal. There are 91 concerts in total. With such a wide range of material it’s hard to imagine anybody being interested in all of it or, conversely, anybody unable to find something to their taste. My tastes, of course, run largely to classical vocal music so what follows is what I find most interesting: Continue reading
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