Opera Atelier’s webstream of Handel’s The Resurrection premiered on Thursday evening and will be available until this coming Thursday. It’s ticketed and you can buy an access code from the RCM box office. It’s the first Opera Atelier show conceived for webstreaming as opposed to filming a stage performance. The action was filmed in St. Lawrence Hall and the music was recorded at Koerner.
It seems like less on-line “opera” content is being produced as Europe prepares to return to theatres and Canada holds it breath. A few things are ongoing though and there’s fun new content from Natalya Gennadi and friends with HBD!Project April. More fine singing and stunning graphics. 
There’s also Isolation Series: Wash, Dry, Reset from Opera Revue featuring the mordant wit and musical talents of Dani Friesen, Alexander Hajek and Claire Harris, plus dish detergent and popcorn. Both are on Youtube on channels Natalya Gennadi and Opera Revue respectively.
Just a couple of “listings”:
Confluence are repeating most of their season during May. All concerts are free of charge, “premiere” at 7:00 pm on the Confluence YouTube Channel and will remain available for viewing for 48 hours.
Full descriptions of each concert are here. I reviewed them all first time up so if you want to know what I thought it it’s easy enough to find. Continue reading
SOS2 was at least as good as the first instalment. Krisztina Szabó came in as replacement for Simone McIntosh who is back on the west coast and showed that she’s at least as crazy as anyone else involved in this show (even Keith Klassen and that’s saying something). Highlights include Korin Thomas-Smith auditioning for Papageno and being asked to sing everything from Sarastro to the Queen of the Night, Krisztina as a manic photographer, the previously mentioned ABBA-nera, Teiya Kasahara breathing COVID on Keith Klassen and lots more rather dark virus humour. All sorts of people chipped in with cameos and/or music, Michael Mori and Keith Klassen directed with Jennifer Tung and Juliane Gallant providing music direction. Technical quality is excellent and it’s free. It’s only 30 minutes long so there’s no excuse for not watching. It’s available here.
Highlands Opera Studio is launching a series of digital recitals over the summer (now to the end of July) featuring past artists from the programme. Singers and participants include Catherine Daniel, Sara Schabas, Samuel Chan and Bruno Roy among others. There are 13 30-40 minute concerts and it’s ticketed; $10 per concert or $100 for a season pass. More details on the concerts and ticket info is here.
I only have two confirmed events for May. On Thursday 6th there is Tapestry’s Sketch Opera Singers 2. SOS1 was a hoot and the brief excerpt for the upcoming show on Tapestry’s Youtube channel suggests the new one will be fun too. If you haven’t seen it check it out. It’s the famous ABBA-nera by Sven Bizet. Like all Tapestry’s streams SOS2 will be free on Youtube.
The Glenn Gould School released their spring opera performance on the new Koerner livestream platform on Thursday night. It’s a concert performance of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. This is a piece I find hugely problematic but since I went into considerable detail about why in a review of an MYOpera production that I wrote exactly five years ago I won’t repeat myself. Let’s just look at what the GGS did with it.
My review of UoT Opera’s Opera in Miniature; A Festival of One Act Operas is up on the Opera Canada website.
What I really like about the Confluence concert series is that sometimes they do music that I love and sometimes they do stuff that’s completely unfamiliar to me and which I almost invariably enjoy. Last night’s streamed concert came into the second category. It was curated by Patricia O’Callaghan and featured the music of Astor Piazzolla who reinvented the tango and the Andean roots influenced music of Mercedes Sosa. Tangos are great fun of course but I was more struck by the music of Sosa who spoke for the voiceless and oppressed of dictatorship Argentina in the same way that Victor Juara spoke for the Chilean underclass. Fortunately for her she didn’t share his fate though she was forced into exile. The music was interwoven with spoken texts from the likes of Borges read by Diego Matamoros and the visual art of Kevork Mourad. All in all a very intriguing program.
It seems like Ontario is changing its policy on what’s open and what’s not and who gets vaccinated and who doesn’t about three times/week right now and, among other things, it’s playing havoc with the creation of on-line content.
operaramblings 