Much as I enjoy full scale opera productions by conventional, large opera companies like the COC, some of my best experiences in the last few years have been with smaller companies mounting unconventional productions in smaller and often unusual venues. There’s another opportunity of that type coming up over the next two weeks. Starting Sunday night Volcano Theatre are staging A Synonym for Love at the Gladstone Hotel. The music is by Handel but it’s using a new English libretto by Deborah Pearson. The action will take place in different locations in the Gladstone and the audience will follow the action around. The music director for this project is Ashiq Aziz who was responsible for an excellent Dido and Aeneas at the Winchester Dance Theatre a few years ago as well as last year’s innovative Orlando Lunaire in a warehouse in the west end.

The preview is on Sunday evening with ten more performances between then and the end of the month.  Tickets run $20-$42.  I’ll be at the preview.

Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre is an utterly gorgeous theatre.  You can find lovely photographs of it all over the place including as the background to this blog. The front of house area is all glass fronted and looks over University Avenue; one of downtown Toronto’s busiest, and noisiest, streets.  There are three hospital ERs within five minutes walk of the FSC so you can work out the siren potential.  Add to that the subway runs under the building and you get some idea of the brilliant engineering required to isolate it acoustically.  Any way, that’s just a preamble to saying that at night, and perhaps especially on a dreary winter evening like last Tuesday, one can see some striking vistas.  I was in the house to see Saariaho’s L’Amour du Loin for a second time and I was up in Ring 3.  In the interval I was struck by the view across the atrium to the street.  I only had my iPod for photography purposes so it’s not a great shot but I rather like it.