Tickets are now on sale for Against the Grain Theatre’s new show; The Seven Deadly Sins (and holier fare). These are the folks who did La Bohème in the unlikely surroundings of the Tranzac club. It should be a blast. I’ll be there with the lemur on opening night.
Forgive the grammar, you get the idea.
So at today’s COC season launch there was an exchange that went roughly like this:
Alexander Neef: Any questions?
Bald academic dude in jacket and tie: I’d like to ask about progress on the two commissions (unannounced) to Margaret Atwood and [somebody else] and more generally when are we going to see a Canadian opera on the Four Seasons stage? makes unflattering comparisons to the SF Opera announcement yesterday.
Clique of Canadian Academic Composers: Here, here, rhubarb etc.
Alexander Neef: That’s become a ritual question so I’ll give you my ritual answer “When we have something concrete to announce we’ll announce it”.
Grumpy female: Claims that there are “many” Canadian composers who could compose something better than L’Amour du Loin (though mentions no names).
More rhubarb etc.
In principle I can see that it’s part of the remit of a national opera company to produce operas by its nationals though to what extent the Canadian Opera Company is a national company is well open to question. It only plays in Toronto. It raises just about all its funding there and it gets next to no support from either the federal government or the hockey channel which masquerades as a national public broadcaster. That said, I doubt one Canadian in a million could name a Canadian opera composer and if they could it would likely be one that no sane opera house would consider working with. So there’s a problem. No company can afford to give a seventh of its season to a guaranteed flop and no-one in Canada is going to pay for a vanity production by an unknown composer even if the libretto is written by Atwood or Ondaatje. I don’t hear solutions. I just hear over-entitled academics demanding that someone else throw away a couple of million bucks.
Rant over. Normal service will now be resumed.
So this morning I was at the Four Seasons Centre for the press conference to announce the COC’s 2012/13 season.
Board President Philip Deck started off with a strong statement about continuing to improve the quality of the product on the Four Seasons Centre stage and striving for “uncompromising and inspiring” programming with a goal of becoming “one of the world’s great opera houses”. There are crucial words here. If General Director Alexander Neef is to meet these goals he will need a supportive Board. It looks like they are there with him at least for now and that’s very good to hear.
There was a very good “teaser video” with contributions from the many Canadians who will feature next season. I guess this will be available on line at some point. Then we got to the main business with Alexander presenting the line up. It’s pretty exciting so here it is in all its glory and with my commentary. Continue reading
David Cangelosi, who is in town to sing Spoletta in the COC’s upcoming Tosca has an interesting blog post about the buzz in the business about the COC. Check out the comments. I’d bet my mortgage (if I had one) that “Alan H” is Alan Held who will sing in the Zemlinsky/Puccini double bill in the spring. It’s good news indeed that he has more work here booked. FWIW, Lawrence Brownlee said similar things to me about the COC in a conversation late last year when he was in town singing in La Cenerentola. Like Cangelosi I’ve been impressed by the current management’s willingness to experiment both with new repertoire and bold productions. Keeping the seats full in the face of an audience with a significant ultra-conservative section and local newspaper critics who are both ignorant and conservative will be tough but I hope they stay the course.
… or at least if I ruled the COC and could design a fantasy season what would I do?
Design parameters:
operaramblings 