Usually by December I’ve had a pretty good chance to see the COC’s Ensemble Studio. Not this year of course. So it was good to see at least a few of them in a stream of a short concert recorded at the Aga Khan Museum.
I just watched the first in a projected series of “aria films” by Carson Gilmore. The first one features Morte col fiero aspetto from Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra. It features the rather impressive British mezzo Rachel Labovitch and it’s rather dark and disturbing. My sort of thing!
In other news the COC has announced a series of “solo spotlights” with some members of the COC orchestra. The first one is on December 15th with Marie Bédard. All the details are here.
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Does creativity follow an arc with age? Is a period of peak creativity followed by inevitable decline or is there, perhaps, a qualitatively different, kind of creativity in the later years of life? Linda and Michael Hutcheon; literary scholar and physician, explored this in their book Four Last Songs, which looked at the later works of Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen, and Britten. Last night they appeared in the Confluence Concerts Salon series to provide further thoughts with reference to the works of Messiaen and Leonard Cohen. Their thoughts were interwoven with performances of works by Messiaen and Cohen performed by Robert Kortgaard, Patricia O’Callaghan and Larry Beckwith. There’s no need to read my description of the show. It’s freely available on Youtube.
My sense of time, or rather lack of one, has made these “upcoming” posts a bit irregular. So anyway these are things I haven’t mentioned so far.
The usual suspects (check earlier posts for recommendations) are still also mostly producing new content.
Last night Koerner Hall live streamed a concert by the COC orchestra conducted by Johannes Debus with guest soloist Adrienne Pieczonka. It was a mostly Beethoven concert bookended by the Egmont Overture and the Symphony No.2. In between came a set of more Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner sung by Adrienne.
This is a bit of a belated plug for Opera 5 and Musique Trois Femmes’ virtual conference Opera Con. It’s on this Friday/Saturday so it’s too late to catch yesterday’s events live but they are all available on demand. There are more events this afternoon and evening where you can participate in the live text chat. All the sessions are on Opera 5’s Youtube channel. It’s mostly younger artists talking about how to make opera more diverse and accessible with everything from opera for younger audiences to whale song to virtual reality. Worth a look.
Elliot Madore’s recital with Rachel Andrist was supposed to have happened at Mazzoleni all with a limited live audience last weekend but that didn’t happen and the programme was recorded in an empty Koerner Hall and streamed last night. The programme’s first half was all French and the second half English.
There are schedule changes to the RCM’s line-up of webstreams. The key ones are that last weekend’s recital with Elliot Madore and Rachel Andrist that went ahead without an audience will be streamed at 8pm tomorrow and it’s free.
The December 3rd concert with Adrianne Pieczonka, assorted vanishing tenors, Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra will go ahead sans tenors. That one is ticketed ($50 I think) and streams live at 8pm.
Unsurprisingly the programme at the RCM is in a state of flux as they try to cope with the gyrations of the provincial government so do check anything and everything close to the expected date.
The web address for all the RCM shows is www.rcmusic.ca/livestream
Last night Confluence Concerts streamed their latest offering; a tribute to Henry Purcell, preceded by a pre-show interview between Larry Beckwith and Andrew Parrott. There was beautifully played instrumental music from Victoria Baroque, songs from Lawrence Williford and Lucas Harris recorded at the Elora Festival and a couple of interesting takes on If Music Be the Food of Love plus Two Daughters of this Aged Stream featuring Daniel Taylor, Rebecca Genge and Sinéad White plus instrumentalists from the UoT Faculty of Music Historical Performance Department. I was less taken with Duo Serenissima (Elizabeth Hetherington, soprano and David Mackor, theorbo). I can’t tell whether it was the recording acoustic or a diction issue but the words were pretty much unintelligible which is a big problem with Purcell!.
Further to my post earlier today. The GGS Fall Opera streaming is not on for tomorrow. It’s been postponed until January. This was not communicated to me. The same thing happened with the Opera Atelier postponed show where it was still showing for the original date right up to that date on the RCM website but in that case OA’s PR people were able to give me the correct information. I’m not best pleased.
operaramblings 