Category Archives: Toronto opera news and views

The rest of April

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tapestrybcMarch was a curiously quiet month.  April starts to look busier, at least once we get past Easter.  Tonight, Against the Grain have their monthly pub night at The Amsterdam Bicycle Club.  Snow is forecast so you should all stay away and then maybe I’ll be able to get in.  On Saturday at 4pm there’s a free (or PWYC) recital in Ernest Baumer Studio featuring soprano Stephanie Nakagawa and pianist Peemanat Kittimontreechai.  They will be performing arias from contemporary Canadian operas.  On Thursday 13th Philippe Jaroussky and Les Violins du Roy will be appearing at Koerner Hall.  It’s at 8pm and features mainly fairly obscure Handel material.

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Looking forward to Riel

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rielrehearsal

(left to right) Russell Braun as Louis Riel, Jani Lauzon as the Prison Guard, Allyson McHardy as Julie Riel and director Peter Hinton rehearsing Act III, scene v – Photo by Tanner Davies for the COC

Harry Somers’ Louis Riel was written to “celebrate” Canada’s 100th birthday and was performed at the COC in 1967 and 1968 and was given a studio TV broadcast treatment on the CBC in 1969.  Eventually that broadcast made it onto DVD and I reviewed it about four years ago.  The COC is now reviving it for Canada’s 150th in a new production by Peter Hinton, a director noted for his stage work with native artists and native themes.  Yesterday I spent an hour at the COC watching a working rehearsal of one of the scenes and this morning I took another look at the DVD.

I had hoped to be able to offer some real insights into what one might expect to see when this production opens on April 20th but, to be perfectly honest, the deeper I dig the less certain I become about anything to do with it.  I know that Hinton and the COC are taking enormous pains to recreate the work in a way that’s sensitive to 2017 and the different way that, we hope or aspire to, treat Canada’s original peoples (some of us do anyway).  But what a challenge it seems to be.  Let me try and explore some themes though you will find few conclusions.

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Dark Star Requiem

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darkstarAn email just in from Tapestry informs me that:

Dark Star Requiem by Andrew Staniland and Jill Battson has been nominated for TWO JUNO Awards! Produced by Tapestry in the 2010 Luminato Festival, it is up for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral Performance (for Tapestry Opera, the Gryphon Trio, and the Elmer Iseler Singers), and for Classical Composition of the Year (for Andrew Staniland)! Congrats to all involved in this landmark recording!

I’d echo that.  Here’s the review that I wrote that appeared in a recent edition of Opera Canada. Continue reading →

News, news, news

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nataly gennadiThis just in.  Ukrainian Canadian soprano Natalya Gennadi will replace Ambur Braid in the title role in Tapestry’s Oksana G.  I should have seen that coming as I know that Ambur is singing in a Krenek’s The Secret Kingdom at Oper Frankfurt until May 21st and Oksana G. opens on the 24th!  I’ve only seen Ms. Gennadi sing once but she was impressive and she’s a protégée of Sondra Radvanovsky.

Sadder, Talisker Players are shutting up shop at the end of the season after eighteen years.  Likely another example of there only being so long any one person or team can keep up the funding grind.  Talisker’s concerts were an often interesting mix of music and related readings and no-one else really operates in that niche.

Later this week and beyond

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1617-Baroque-Diva-updatedThursday 23rd at 8pm, Karina Gauvin is performing with Tafelmusik at Koerner Hall in a concert called The Baroque Diva.  Details are here.  This will be repeated on Friday and Saturday evenings and on Sunday at 3.30pm.  Sunday at 3.30pm Voicebox are presenting Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.  I’m not sure where it will fall on the semi-staged to concert spectrum but it’s definitely piano accompaniment (Narmina Afandiyeva) and the cast is headed up by Andrey Andreychik.  This is a piece that played in full runs over three hours so it will be interesting to see what they choose to include, or not.

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Coming up

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Here’s a round up of upcoming performances of interest over the next week or so.  Sunday at 3.15pm TIFF are showing Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet’s films Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” and Moses and Aaron.  The films will be preceded by a live performance of a Schoenberg piece by Adanya Dunn and Topher Mokrzewski.  More details here.

Moses_et_Aaron_3_

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Toronto Summer Music Festival 2017

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The line up for this year’s Toronto Summer Music Festival, the first with Jonathan Crow as Artistic Director has been announced.  It’s the usual mix of orchestral, chamber, piano and small scale vocal music for the most part.  This being the sesquicentennial year it’s heavy on CanCon and, as in previous years, there are academy programs for both singers and instrumentalists.

Sesqui

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Sad news

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Effective the end of the, not yet announced, 2017/18 season Larry Beckwith will step down as Artistic Director of Toronto Masque Theatre and with his going the company will pack up its tents.  It’s unfortunate because TMT filled an interesting niche but fifteen years of organising, directing, administering and fund raising (especially the last) is a pretty long innings.  TMT has done a lot of innovative stuff over the years but I’ll remember them as a company that was not afraid to experiment with ideas and elements from outside the Western Classical tradition as exemplified by Alice Ping Yee Ho’s The Lesson of Da Ji and their upcoming show The Man Who Married Himself.  Toronto, of all cities, needs to find ways to incorporate the different cultural and musical traditions we come from into new art.  Larry and his collaborators did that.

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Signal boosting

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I’m passing on information here for anyone who may be interested in a summer program in Ukrainian Art Song organised by the Ukrainian Art Song Project.  It’s a week long course at UoT running from August 7th to 13th headed up by baritone Pavlo Hunka.  I’m familiar with Hunka’s work with the UASP but not as a teacher so I’m signal boosting here not endorsing!  Full details (MS Word) are here.

News from Tapestry

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So the rumours have been around for a while but today the big announcement about Tapestry’s major project for 2017/18 went public.  It’s a joint production with Canadian Stage and Vancouver Opera of an operatic version of Morris Panych’s adaptation of Gogol’s The Overcoat which, as a stage play, won critical acclaim in 1998.  The music is by James Rolfe and it will premiere at the Bluma Appel Thaetre in March 2018 before moving to the Vancouver Playhouse as part of the second Vancouver Opera Festival.  The idea originated in the 2014 LibLab which produced a very funny scene of a hapless customer being beaten senseless by his tailors.  (something that should have happened to Cheetoh Benito long ago).

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