And in the week ahead…
There are still tickets available for Erin Wall and Asitha Tennekoon at Mazzoleni on Sunday.
On Monday evening at 7.30pm in Walter Hall veteran Canadian mezzo Judith Forst is giving a free master class.
Thursday is the big day. At lunchtime in the RBA you can catch Simone Osborne and Gordon Bintner, currently headlining in L’elisir d’amore on the COC main stage, accompanied by Liz Upchurch (free of course). Later, at 8pm there’s A Tribute to Maureen Forrester at the Symphony. That program features, inter alia, Michael Schade and Susan Platts in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The program will be repeated on Friday at 7.30pm. Last I checked there were still $25 tickets available.
Photo courtesy of the lady herself.
News just in that Tapestry Opera have acquired a 9.5-foot Imperial Bösendorfer 290 Concert Grand Piano, courtesy of a gift from Clarence Byrd and Ida Chen. This beast is valued at $225,000 so it’s quite a gift. One could buy an apartment for that, though in the Distillery it might be smaller than the piano. To inaugurate the instrument and celebrate its public debut, Tapestry Opera will present two concerts on the evening of October 25th to benefit disaster relief efforts around the world, specifically those underway in Puerto Rico, Dominica, Mexico and India. All proceeds will be donated to Medecins san Frontieres (Operaramblings’ charity of choice) and Global Medic, who are working to rescue, support and rebuild the lives of millions affected by recent extreme weather events.
Here’s a preview of things to see/listen to next week. It’s Met in HD season again and the next two Saturdays have broadcasts. On the 7th it’s Bellini’s Norma with Sondra Radvanovsky and Joyce DiDonato. It’s a David McVicar production and no prizes for guessing what happens when you cross McVicar and druids. On the 14th it’s Die Zauberflöte with the Resident Groundhog conducting. It’s the Julie Taymor production but given in full in German rather than the abridged ‘for kids” version. The best thing about the cast is René Pape’s Sarastro.
After the usual summer hiatus the Toronto music scene starts to get back into gear in the coming week. Tonight there’s the final concert of the Fall Baroque Academy at Trinity College Chapel. It features excerpts from Handel’s Giulio Cesare. It’s at 7.30pm and it’s free.
The Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre has now been unveiled, as has the UoT’s concert programme for 2017/18. As usual the RBA programme is a treasure trove with a great deal of interest in the vocal series and beyond. The season brochure is 
Opera Canada magazine, to which I’m a contributor, has a new Editorial Director. Gianmarco Segato, formerly with the COC, is taking over from Wayne Gooding who has been doing the job for an amazing 20 years. I think it’s a great choice. Anyhow, one of the goals going forward for OC is to build it’s on-line presence. That’s a long term project but there are things on social media that one can check out already. They are:
operaramblings 