As we approach All Fools Day the calendar starts to get busier. On Tuesday 29th March there’s a concert at lunchtime in the RBA called The Four Tenors. In this case it’s Andrew Haji (lucky St. Louis folks can see him as Rodolfo next season), Jean-Philippe Fortier-Lazure, Charles Sy, and Aaron Sheppard. The program is a bit predictable and, yes, there are Neapolitan songs, though not, at least according to the on-line version O sole mio. Also no Nessun dorma so I think we have a handle on the possible encores.
Then it’s on to April 1st itself and here the gods are laughing. At 5pm, at the McMillan Theatre, UoT Opera are doing the The Art of the Prima Donna; a selection of staged and costumed scenes from classic operas. Parts of this were performed in the RBA in October last year. Then at 8pm at the Arts and Letters Club, Bicycle Opera Project and the Toy Piano Composers’ Collective have a show called Travelogue featuring short operas about travel. This one is repeated on the 2nd. Finally, Voicebox:Opera in Concert are premiering Isis and Osiris by Peter Anthony Togni and Sharon Singer. This one is at 8pm at the Jane Mallett Theatre and it’s sponsored by the Egyptian Tourist Authority who can probably use all the help they can get right now (and no jokes about pyramid marketing schemes please). This one is repeated at 2.30pm on Sunday 3rd April.
With Easter almost upon us it’s not surprising that the upcoming week is a bit light. Tonight Danika Lorèn and friends at Collectìf have a show at Heliconian Hall at 7.30pm. It’s called As a Stranger and is their take on Schubert’s Winterreise. I’ve been quite taken by this young group’s efforts to date. Tickets are available 
Back to relative quiet! The main event in the coming week is the GGS spring production. They are doing Handel’s Alcina. The cast includes Meghan Jamieson, Irina Medvedeva, Christina Campsall, Lillian Brooks, Joanna Burt, Asitha Tennekoon and Keith Lam. Leon Major directs and Ivars Taurins conducts. The publicity material suggests a 1920s setting. Anyway it’s at Koerner Hall at 7.30pm on Wednesday and Friday.
It’s getting a bit busier again. This afternoon there are a couple of concerts. At 2pm in Mazzoleni Hall you can catch Mireille Asselin and Brett Polegato with Peter Tiefenbach and Rachel Andrist in a painting themed program of lieder, artsongs and chansons called Le travail du peintre. At 4.30pm at Metropolitan United Church Bach’s Mass in B Minor meets German film maker Bastian Clevé’s film The Sound of Eternity. The soloists are Marjorie Maltais, Geoff Sirett, Jennifer Krabbe and Charles Sy plus the Orpheus Choir, Chorus Niagara and the Talisker Players. I suppose it would just about be possible to do both…
Soundstreams have just announced their 2016/17 season. There’s quite a lot there for those with an experimental taste in vocal music as well as a bunch of instrumental stuff. Probably the biggest deal is a staging of “musical curiosities” from R. Murray Schafer’s Patria cycle. Odditorium will feature selections from The Greatest Show, Ra, and others, immersing audiences in a circus-like atmosphere, complete with host carnival barker. This one is directed by Chris Abramson and runs March 2nd to 5th, 2017 at Crow’s Theatre, a new 215 seat venue on Carlaw. Time for my annual fix of Shafer nuttiness!
It looks like another fairly quiet week ahead. Just a couple of listings. Tomorrow at 7.30pm, at Walter Hall, Benjamin Butterfield and Steven Philcox are performing Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. Tickets 
The next couple of weeks have some items of interest. Tonight at 7pm Dmitri Hvostorovsky is singing at Koerner Hall with a program of Russian songs plus some Strauss. This recital has been getting very good reviews in the US. On Wednesday there is, after a fashion, a chance to see Jonas Kaufmann in concert. It’s a cinema broadcast of a La Scala concert from last June and it’s an all Puccini program. Curiously it’s directed by Brian Large who I had long since thought retired. It’s being distributed by Arts Alliance who are the folks who do the ROH cinema broadcasts but the Met doesn’t seem to have got heavy on this so you can see it at your local Cineplex. Full dates and listings are 
Not so much on this week. Tuesday COC chorus member and guitarist Doug MacNaughton, currently appearing as Antonio in Marriage of Figaro, has a noon hour concert on Tuesday in the RBA featuring a new piece by Dean Burry and other works ranging from John Rutter to Donald Swann. Then on Friday CASP have an evening recital at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse featuring Philip Addis and Emily Hamper.
operaramblings 