Category Archives: Toronto opera news and views

May 2023

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wordcloudmay23Things happening next month…

But first this month… on April 27th to 29th male soprano Samuel Mariño is appearing with
Tafelmusik in a programme titled Higher Love: Virtuoso Arias.  Details here.

Crow’s Theatre has a couple of shows.  True Crime opens on the 2nd.  It’s a short run.  Preview on the 1st then closes on the 7th.  It’s basically a one man, semi-improvised show about an imprisoned con man.  The Chinese Lady, which runs 5th to 21st (previews 2nd to 4th) in the smaller Studio Theatre tells the story of the first Chinese woman in the USA.  Written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Marjorie Chan it should be interesting.  There’s also Boom X.  Rick Miller plays over a hundred characters to narrate events from 1969 t0 1995.  It runs from the 10th to the 28th.  More details at crowstheatre.com.

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Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s The Resurrection

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Ahead of Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s The Resurrection (La resurrezione) at Koerner Hall next week (6th to 9th April) there was a lunchtime preview in the RBA on Tuesday.  Later that day I sat down with director Marshall Pynkoski to find out more about the work, OA’s relationship to it and its rather tortuous journey to the Koerner Hall stage.

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Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2023/24

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Here’s what’s coming up at Toronto Mendelssohn Choir/Singers next season.

There are a couple of shows for the TM Singers; the professional core of the TMC:

  • September 22nd/23rd 2023 at trinity St. Paul’s there’s a multidisciplinary show featuring dance by Compagnie de la Citadelle.  The works on offer are Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Bach’s Christ Lag in Todesbanden.
  • March 16th 2024, also at Trinity St. Paul’s, it’s Schubert’s Winterreise in an arrangement for choir, baritone and piano featuring Brett Polegato and Philip Chiu.  The programme also includes works by Fanny Hersel and CClara Schumann.

TMC - Credit Taylor Long

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April 2023

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april2023Here’s what I know about so far for April.

On April 6th at 1.30pm in Walter Hall, Music in the Afternoon is presenting a concert featuring Marion Newman, Melody Courage, Evan Korbut and Gordon Gerrard in a mix of classical song and contemporary works on Indigenous themes including music by Ian Cusson, Bramwell Tovey and Tomson Highway.

Later that day, at 7.30pm at Koerner Hall, Opera Atelier have the first of three performances of Handel’s The Resurrection.  This is the fully staged version of the production that streamed during lockdown.  There are further performances on the 8th at 7.30pm and the 9th at 2.30pm.

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More March events

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march2023suppHere are a few more events not listed in my previous March post.

On Saturday 18th the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir have a concert at 7.30pm at Church of the Holy Trinity featuring David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion and a new work by Shireen Abu-Khader; Diaries of the Forgotten.

Theatre Smith-Gilmour are presenting Metamorphoses 2023 at Crow’s Theatre.  It’s a contemporary take on Ovid that combines mime, illusion, spoken word, silence and Bharatanatyam dance.  Previews are on the 21st through 23rd with the run proper from the 24th to April 9th.

Against the Grain’s reworking Of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Gerald Finley in the title role plays at the Fleck Dance Theatre on March 29th and 31st at 7.30pm with a matinee on April 1st.  The new English language libretto is by Daisy Evans who also directs,  Stephen Higgins conducts.

Toronto Summer Music 2023

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Web-homepageMost of the line up for this year’s Toronto Summer Music, which is themed Metamorphosis, was unveiled last night at the Lula Lounge.  Basically it’s back to the full on festival with some exciting headline acts, some rising stars and the usual ReGen and Shuffle concerts, mentor programmes and community programming.  Plus a few surprises.  The festival runs July 6th to 29th in a variety of venues mostly around the Bloor Street Culture Corridor. Continue reading →

More seasons and so on

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tso2324Here are a couple more season announcements.

The 2023/24 TSO season is the usual mix of symphonic, vocal and lighter fare.  Several concerts caught my eye.  The first is the return of Sir Andrew Davis on November 8th and 9th 2023 with a programme that includes Fauré’s Requiem.  Later that month, on the 22nd, there’s the first of two concerts featuring Emily D’Angelo.  She’ll be singing the Berg Seven Early Songs with Michael Tilson-Thomas on the podium.  That programme also includes Mahler Symphony No. 5.  She’s back on May 1st and 2nd 2024 with the music from her excellent enargeia CD.  Gustavo Gimeno conducts a programme that also includes Brahms Symphony No.1 and a new work by Alison Yun-Fei Jiang.  On Sunday June 16th in North York there’s a programme that includes a new piece by Ian Cusson created as part of the Art of Healing project with CAMH.  Gimeno conducts a programme that also includes Bartok and Mozart.  Full details of the season are here. Continue reading →

Haydn’s Orfeo

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Orfeo (_icon)On May 26th and 27th in the MacMillan Theatre there’s a chance to see Haydn’s rarely performed Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. It was composed for London in 1791 but was shut down during rehearsals because the Lord Chamberlain’s office thought it subversively supportive of enlightenment values at a time when Pitt’s government was cracking down brutally on pro French Revolutionary sentiment in the UK.

It finally made it to the stage in 1951 in Florence with Maria Callas as Euridice.  It’s had a few runs in Europe since, including Cecilia Bartoli’s Covent Garden debut, but can scarcely be called a “staple of the repertoire”.  Now it’s being given its North American  premiere by a collaboration between the music schools at University of Toronto and McGill University led by Dr. Caryl Clarke. Continue reading →

Hear! Hear!

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Last night the faculty of music at UoT hosted a concert in memory of John Beckwith who passed away in December.  It was a fitting tribute to a man whose 70 year career in Canadian music was massively influential.  There were speeches; informative, funny, sometimes both, and lots of John’s music showcasing both the breadth of his output and its evolution.  But there’s really no need for me to say more because the whole thing is available on Youtube.  Recommended.

beckwith_memorial

More season announcements

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bovary_nbThe National Ballet has announced a season that includes two world premieres, two Noorth American premieres and two Canadian premieres.  It makes me wonder whether this isn’t part of why ballet isn’t suffering the same long term audience decline as opera.  Worth thinking about.

Anyway the first of the world firsts is a new piece based on Flaubert’s Emma Bovary with a score by Peter Salem and choreography by Emma Pickett.  The other is   The other is a yet to be announced short work by choreographer William Yong.

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