UoT Faculty of Music have just announced their 2016/17 season. It’s the usual broad range of performances so I’ll highlight the opera and vocal music contributions.
UoT Opera is offering four shows. The fall main production is Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld with new English dialogue and stage direction by Michael Patrick Albano. Choreography i by Anna Theodosakis and Russell Braun makes his podium debut. There are four performances November 24th to 27th. Spring sees a Handel rarity; Imeneo. Tim Albery directs and Daniel Taylor is in charge of the music. This one runs March 16th to 19th. Both shows are in the MacMillan Theatre.
Last year’s student composed opera; The Machine Stops
There are actually some up coming concerts and so on to talk about. The big event is, of course, the Toronto Summer Music Festival. This starts on July 14th and it seems incredible that it’s four months since 
It’s that quiet time of year but this week there’s a bit of an unexpected bonus. Canadian soprano Rachel Fenlon, usually based in Berlin, is giving a somewhat unusual recital at Gallery 345 at 8pm on Friday. It’s a recital of Schubert songs in which she accompanies herself at the piano. Rachel is an accomplished pianist and could have chosen a solo career on that instrument rather than singing. Since there isn’t a Schubert cycle written specifically for female voice she’s curated one for herself and called it Liebesbotschaft. I don’t know if the manner of performance would have been common in Schubert’s day but surely not unheard of. Anyway, it should be fun. It’s also a preview of sorts as Rachel plans to tour this program in Europe.
The Royal Conservatory announced the concert line up for the 2016/17 season last night. As usual it’s a very eclectic mix with over 100 concerts in a rather staggering variety of genres. The one loose them is the Canada Sesquicentennial with 70% or so of the line up having some CanCon. Here are the highlights for the classical vocal music fan.
Things are really starting to slow down so this will be the last “upcoming” post before the summer lull when this feature will go on hiatus. Next week there’s the final vocal concert of the season in the RBA. It’s on Tuesday at noon when Karine Boucher will perform Ravel’s Shéhérazade with Charles Sy joining in with Britten’s Les Illuminations. On Sunday 21st at 5pm in Mazzoleni Hall, Christina Campsall has a recital of 20th century works including the challenging Messiaen piece, Poèmes pour Mi. It’s free.
I met with Aria Umezawa yesterday to talk about Opera 5’s latest project, a rather unusual take on Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. The project grew out of a desire to break Opera 5’s association with reviving rather obscure pieces and to do something “from the canon”. But, of course, for this company there had to be an angle. In this case it’s that Act 2 will be an immersive, audience participation exercise. We are all invited to Orlofsky’s party. There will be aerialists, burlesque dancers and a grand waltz for all which will probably reduce choreographer Jenn Nichols to tears. There a few other change ups. Frosh is gone and Ivan is replaced by drag queen Pearl Harbor, who will emcee the party. It’s in English, as the set up would make surtitles pretty much impossible. And the cast is pretty good. Michael Barrett sings Eisenstein with Rachel Krehm as Rosalinde, Julie Ludwig as Adele and Erin Lawson as Orlofsky among others.
The crazy late April/early May rush seems to be pretty much over. This coming week there are only a few performances of note. On Tuesday in the RBA at noon Aviva Fortunata and Iain MacNeil perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel. Thursday sees the opening of Against the Grain’s A Little Too Cozy at the CBC’s Studio 42. Then on Friday 13th, the TSO are doing, appropriately enough, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony which sets Yevtushenko poems about the Babi Yar massacres.
This Saturday FAWN Chamber Creative are presenting the first part of 
operaramblings 