It’s official. Tony Dean Griffey will sing the title role in tomorrow night’s opening performance of Peter Grimes at the COC, replacing an indisposed Ben Heppner. The party line is that Ben will sing the remaining performances. We will see. Certainly Tony is scheduled to start a run of Fledermaus in Houston on the 25th and the last Grimes is on the 26th. This story isn’t over. Whatever else goes down, let’s hope Ben makes a speedy recovery from whatever ails him.
The lovely Miriam Khalil and Acadian pianist Julien LeBlanc will bring their recital Airs Chantés to Toronto for one performance at Gallery 345 on Oct. 24, 2013. The program comprises French and Spanish art songs of the Impressionistic and 20th-century period. The first half of the recital will include excerpts from Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées and will conclude with Poulenc’s well-known song cycle Airs Chantés. The second half is rounded out by three French melodies by Massenet, Ravel and Delibes in a Spanish style, Jesus Guridi’s uncommonly performed Seis Canciones Castellanas and three songs from Obrador’s Canciones Classicás españolas. The show begins at 7:30 p.m. with doors opening at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $25 and are available at http://www.miriamkhalil.com and at the door.
There are some interesting tidbits scattered through the latest edition of the COC’s house magazine Prelude. They include a return to a six production season from 2014/15 (the last few years there have been seven). This is intended to free up cash to make the remaining productions more ambitious (as well as stem what was shaping up as an increasingly dodgy financial position). There is talk of “more grand opera” and “a great amount of Wagner on the COC’s horizon”. It’s also very clear that the current model of “challenging” productions (including Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni) and encouraging established stars to make role debuts in Toronto will continue.
All of this makes sense to me from a business and an artistic viewpoint. Going more populist in search of a probably non-existent fringe audience seems to me wishful thinking at best. Giving the core audience a high quality product, aimed at those with real interest in the form, mixed with fiscal prudence just feels like the right way to go.
Anthony Dean Griffey was flown into Toronto yesterday to replace Ben Heppner in the final dress rehearsal of the COC’s Peter Grimes which opens on Saturday. There has been no official announcement of a cast change but I’m making enquiries. Reports from the dress say that the einspringer was splendid.
This in from the COC… “Yes, it’s true that Anthony Dean-Griffey sang the dress rehearsal. Ben wasn’t feeling well and since he knows the role so well, he was resting up for opening night.”
Also in today’s mailbox, the season announcement from the Talisker Players; a group who specialize in mixing music and the spoken word.
The 2013/14 season kicks off with City of the Mind, a concert about cities, ancient and modern featuring soprano Erin Bardua, mezzo soprano Vicki St. Pierre and baritone Joel Allison. The show begins in the 15th century, with Les Cris de Paris, a consort piece based on the cries of street vendors in the French capital. Moving ahead a couple of centuries, Tommasso Giordani’s Addio di Londra, for soprano with violin, viola and continuo, is an ode to a famous but unnamed personage upon his departure from London, entreating him to remember the sights of the city in his travels abroad. The programme also features a rare North American performance of a selection of Wiener lieder and the Venetian Boat Song, a 19th century salon piece by Jacques Blumenthal, for mezzo soprano, violin and piano. Very popular in its day, it is a reminder of the era of the “grand tour” of Europe. Moving into the 20thcentury we start in New York City with excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s iconic On the Town, arranged by Laura Jones for baritone, soprano and string quartet, and finishing in Toronto with two pieces; Andrew Ager’s Ellis Portal, for baritone, mezzo soprano, clarinet and string quartet, about the city at night; and Erik Ross’s Concrete Toronto for soprano and saxophone.
In perhaps the most anticipated announcement on the Toronto music scene, Against the Grain Theatre have released the line up for their 2013/14 season which features Handel’s Messiah and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande; both with fine casts. Full text of the announcement under the cut.
Casting details for Opera 5’s Halloween themed show, Requiescat in Pace, have been announced. The singing line up is soprano Lucia Cesaroni, American baritone and recent Tanglewood fellow David Tinervia and, making a welcome return to Toronto, baritone Adrian Kramer.
With two nights to go to the start of the COC’s season the discounting has started already. The deal is buy tickets for any two other operas and get free tickets for La Bohème. The deal is good for performances on October 16, 25, 27, 29 and 30 and appears to apply for all but the cheapest and most expensive seats. The website isn’t exactly splashing the news around. You will only see the offer if you try to buy tickets for La Bohème or if you just happen to be poking around to see how well things are selling.
Last night’s event in the Star Talks series at the Toronto Reference Library involved Richard Ouzounian interviewing Ben Heppner who is in town to sing the title role in Peter Grimes. It was a very genial interview; no tough questions about elitism or whether opera was dying. Rather it was very much the tale of the kid from Dawson Creek who beats Renee Fleming and Susan Graham in the Met auditions and becomes a superstar. It was curiously like Desert Island Discs without the music.
There were a couple of interesting stories. The best concerned Heppner and Richard Jones’ production of Lohengrin (available on DVD/Blu-ray with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role). It’s the one where Lohengrin and Elsa build a house then Lohengrin burns it down. Well it turns out the the three year old Ben Heppner managed to burn the family home down and during the dress of Lohengrin had a pretty strong repressed memory reaction at the point where he had to set the cradle alight. It says a lot for his professionalism that the first night went off without incident.
I did get to ask him for his views on different kinds of tenor singing the role of Grimes. After all it was created for one of the most ethereal operatic tenors ever but ids frequently sung today by full on heldentors. He said he didn’t think the voice was as important as how fully the singer inhabited the character and singled out Philip Langridge in that regard. I have to agree with him. I love Langridge’s Grimes. It’s a real pity the video recording of it is so awful.
Peter Grimes runs for seven performances at the COC starting October 5th.
Last night saw the launch of the first triennial Maureen Forrester Memorial Prize tour. Sponsored by Jeunesses Musicales Canada, soprano Simone Osborne and pianist Anne Larlee will tour some forty cities across Canada over the next two years performing material on the theme “Songs of Life and Love”. Each recital will include a new work; Birefringence, by Brian Current, commissioned by the Canadian Art Song Project. Continue reading
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