Here’s a look ahead to March.
March 3rd and 5th, Opera York are presenting Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. Details are here. Also on the 5th at 1pm Opera Revue are playing a new venue; The Aviary in the Canary District. (They are playing another new venue, Granite Brewery, on the 12th. Opera Revue your source for craft beer!) And the following night at 7.30pm it’s AtG’s Opera Pub at the Drake at 7.30pm.
From the 9th to the 12th it’s UoT Opera’s spring offering at the MacMillan Theatre. This year it’s Arthur (not George) Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities. Benjamin is probably the only opera composer to be shot down by Hermann Göring. I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about his music.
Things are a bit sub fusc at the COC these days. The season reveal isn’t a glitzy gala with a big fight to grab the charcuterie. It isn’t even a 10am doughnuts and coffee presser in the RBA where the ghost of Robert Everett-Green could ask what happened to the promised new Canadian operas . It’s just an email arriving at the prescribed time. There isn’t even an embargoed press only version to let us get our ducks in a row before the broader public get the news. Such is life.
It’s the time of year when people start to make season announcements. First out of the blocks is the Royal Conservatory of Music with the Koerner hall line up. It’s more a teaser than a comprehensive announcement but there’s some interesting dope in it. On the vocal front Peter Sellars is back with the LA Master Chorale; this time with music by Heinrich Schütz. That’s on February 7th 2024. There’s also a recital by Ema Nikolovska with Charles Richard-Hamelin on March 24th 2024. If you haven’t erased all memories of the pandemic you will probably remember that Ema’s streamed recital with Steven Philcox was the highlight of the grim summer of 2020. The Glenn Gould spring opera will be on 2oth and 22nd March 2024. There are also some pretty classy orchestral visits with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin and Yannick Nézet-Seguin bringing the Philadelphia Orchestra. Full details of the season will be released in June but tickets go on sale next Tuesday. There’s more information on programming and ticket options
So the COC will announce the upcoming season on the 23rd. I’m really hesitant to try and predict what might be in it because with the change of management and the COVID hangover old patterns don’t seem to mean much anymore. But here goes anyway.
Here are a few more gigs that I didn’t check in my earlier February post.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in February plus a few gigs I can’t make:
January is looking quite promising on both the music and theatre front but there’s not a lot of opera… Here’s what’s in my agenda.
So what’s on as we move into the holiday season?
The line up for this year’s (and a bit of next’s) 21C at the Royal Conservatory has been announced. The full line up is