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
So Toronto’s weather took a weird twist pushing the Humidex into the 40s just in time for the Opera Five movie themed fundraiser at Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu last night. And some people still managed to wear suits and ties and stuff. Made of sterner stuff than me I tell you. And even more props to the ladies who were sporting Rosemarie’s creations. They looked great but some of them must have been hell in the heat.
It was an interesting format with seven singers and two pianists appearing in various combinations and guests having an opportunity to sponsor a singer to sing their “feature” aria. It was fun and there were some fine singers on display. Two I’ve seen and enjoyed in the past were baritone Geoffrey Sirett and coloratura soprano Teiya Kasahara. Both were on good form with some fine Escamillo from Geoffrey and the mad scene from Lucia from Teiya in a rather good arrangement for voice, flute and piano. The other five were new to me but I’d happily go see any of them. Favourite moments for me would be some fine Carmen from the unpronounceable Olenka Harasymowycz (who looks disturbingly like Maria Ewing), a very cute “Poor Wandering One” from Caitlin Wood and a very fine “Ebben…” (from Catalani’s La Wally) from Calgary’s Krista de Silva. Accompaniment was from music director Mai Nash and Jo Greenaway on piano with flautist Amelia Lyon.
So, a fun event which seemed to be raising quite a bit of much needed cash. The first show it will be helping fund is In Pace Requiescat; a trio of one act operas based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. There will be The Cask of Amontillado by Daniel Pinkham, La Chute de la Maison d’Usher by Claude Debussy and the world première of The Masque of the Red Death by Cecilia Livingston. Performances will be at the Arts and letters Club on Elm Street on the 27th, 30th and 31st of October. Tickets are available from 05inpace.eventbrite.ca and are $30 ($25 concessions).
Toronto Masque Theatre has announced the line up for the 2013/14 season. There are three main stage productions. First up is Patrick Garland’s now classic play Brief Lives, based on John Aubrey with song and music from 17th century London. Second is a revival of Tears of a Clown, under a new title, Arlecchino Allegro. Finally, there is a reinterpreted classic from the world canon teamed up with a contemporary interpretation in the Myth of Europa. Details for the shows are as follows:
The Toronto opera world’s newest and cutest newly weds – Topher Mokrzewski and Caitlin Coull
So two “obituaries” on the trot. Now Lotfi Mansouri is gone. He was an interesting, larger than life, character. Arguably he was born in the wrong age. He would have been perfect in the days of entrepreneurial opera company owner/directors. 17th century Venice, London in Handel’s day or the US of the turn of the century would all have been natural homes. His ability to cut a deal, to charm money out of the rich, to persuade legendary singers to perform in opera backwaters and to create spectacle while counting the pennies were amazing. Was he so well suited for an age of complex artistic cultural politics and changing trends in opera production? Perhaps not.
The best bargain of the Toronto music season is the free lunchtime concert series at the Four Seasons Centre. The 2013/14 line up was announced today. Opera and vocal highlights include recitals by Sir Thomas Allen (Songs of the Sea, which sounds rather excellent), Simone Osborne, Robert Pomakov with The Gryphon Trio, Tracey Dahl, Russell Braun and Paul Appleby. Somewhat off the beaten track, there will be a performance of Gagliano’s La Dafne by Capella Intima and the Toronto Continuo Collective and the Canadian Art Song project will be premiering a new commission by a Canadian composer. There will also be the usual (and very popular) sessions from the COC Ensemble Studio (including two Britten themed concerts), the students of the University of Toronto opera division and the young artists of the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal.
For the less vocally inclined there is also a full line up of piano, chamber music, world music, jazz and dance. Here’s the full PDF brochure.
It may still be 90%+ humidity and hot as hell in Toronto but the signs of things to come are piling up. I have a stack of tickets for fall events at various venues and the smaller opera groups are starting to announce their seasons.
The latest news is from Opera 5 who are launching the year with a Hollywood Glam Gala at Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu. It’s a fundraiser with an “Opera in Hollywood” theme. Performers will include Teiya Kasahara (probably not with the butch lesbian routine), Elizabeth MacDonald, Graham Thompson, and the increasingly visible Geoffrey Sirett among others. Toronto photographer, Emily Ding will be on hand for Hollywood glam photos with food and alcohol provided by Fionn MacCool’s, notorious hangout of the COC Chorus.
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