Tapestry have announced casting for Naomi’s Road. The cast includes two members of the original cast; Sam Chung as Stephen, Naomi’s musical younger brother and baritone Sung Taek Chung as Daddy. They will be joined by soprano Hiather Darnel-Kadonaga as 9-year-old Naomi and mezzo-soprano Erica Iris Huang as Mother/Obasan. Tickets are now on sale here.
November 14th will see the fourth annual Elizabeth Krehm Memorial Concert. The concert raises money for the St Michael’s Hospital ICU, where Liz spent the last 30 days of her life. This year the program will start with the Bach Double Violin Concerto; a piece played by Liz. It will be performed by Yosuke Kawasaki and Jessica Linnebach, who are the concert master and associate concert master of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Rachel Krehm will be singing 2 arias and a song by Mozart, Dvorak and Strauss. Finally we will get Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Evan Mitchell will conduct a volunteer orchestra. As well as being in aid of a good cause these memorial concerts have featured exceptionally good performances and are definitely worth going to. It’s at Metropolitan United Church (56 Queen St E) on Monday November 14th at 7:30pm. Admission is by donation to St. Mike’s with a suggested minimum of $20.
The Canadian Opera Company issued its Annual Report and Financials for 2015/16 today. As far as ticket sales go it was fairly flat in terms of tickets sold and revenues. Subscription sales were down a bit but single ticket sales were up. That’s probably the Carmen effect. That all equates to around 91% capacity sold which isn’t bad. Tickets to people under 30 are still less than 10% of tickets sold (and probably way, way less than 10% of box office revenue). Clearly there’s no magic bullet for replacing an aging subscriber base. Individual donations and government grants were both down by about 5%. That’s being spun as largely a loss of one time grants and extraordinary gifts but down is still down and the reduction in Ontario Arts Council funding can’t be spun. Still, one way or another it was finagled into a break even year which is not too shabby for any arts organization. Endowment performance was steady.
Considering we begin with a holiday weekend it’s a busy week. Tuesday sees Dimitry Ivashchenko and Rachel Andrist in recital in the RBA at lunchtime with a program of Russian song that, inevitably, includes Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and works by Rachmaninov, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky. At 7.30pm that evening Christina Haldane is giving a DMA recital in Walter Hall. This isn’t your usual student gig. Christina has covered at Salzburg and the Royal Opera and made main stage appearances in several European countries. Both recitals are free.
VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert has announced details of their upcoming season. There are four shows:
Things are still a bit slow on the Toronto opera front. That said, today Soup Can Theatre are doing a concert version of The threepenny Opera at the Monarch Tavern. Three actors; Christine Jeffries, Sarah Thorpe and Scott Garland, will sing all the roles. There are three performances at 4pm, 6.30pm and 9pm. Tickets are $13. More details at 
By an odd coincidence two season announcement pressers hit my in box today; Toronto Operetta Theatre and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Toronto Operetta Theatre have four shows:
The lunchtime concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre kicks off on Tuesday with the traditional opener; a concert by the members of the COC Ensemble Studio. It’s always a good opportunity to level set for the season ahead. Noon in the RBA. Then on Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm the TSO are doing Mahler 3 with Jamie Barton as soloist. I was tremendously impressed with 
This looks like the week the season really starts. The big event is the season opener at the TSO on Wednesday where Renée Fleming is featured. There’s Ravel’s Shéhérazade plus Puccini, Walton and others finishing up with three numbers from The King and I. This one’s at Roy Thomson Hall at the slightly unusual time of 7pm. The next night at the Alliance Française there’s a show called Singing Stars of Tomorrow. It features ten young singers who will have been engaged in a day long workshop with Sondra Radvanovsky. It’s organised by the IRCPA. Tickets are $25 from 
