Lucy Kirkwood’s The Welkin is a rarity. It’s a serious play with an overwhelmingly female ensemble cast that looks at issues of class, gender, power and authority almost entirely through a female lens. It’s hard hitting, sometimes violent and often shocking which makes for compelling theatre. It opened on Thursday evening in the Baillie Theatre at Soulpepper in a co-pro by Soulpepper, Crow’s and the Howland Company, directed by Weyni Mengesha.
My review of the Château de Versailles Spectacles recording of Rameau’s Pygmalion and Iso’s Zémide featuring, among others, Ema Nikolovska is now up at Opera Canada.
Songs of Passion is a new recording from mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre with the Jupiter Vocal and Instrumental Ensemble and their director and lutenist Thomas Dunford. It’s ninety minutes of music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell arranged for various combinations of voices plus the instruments; violins, viola, double bass, viola da gamba, recorders, lute, harpsichord and organ. They are interesting and varied arrangements and suit the range of emotions of the music well. Continue reading
On Friday evening Toronto’s Diapente Renaissance Quintet [1] combined with Montreal based medieval music ensemble Comtessa [2] to create an intriguing programme at St. Thomas’ Anglican. The concert was titled Across the Channel : English and French Music of the Hundred Years War; which was more or less accurate! The works; vocal and instrumental, actually spanned from the 13th century to the latter half of the 15th; so a rather longer span than the war, but the “English and French” bit was true enough. Unlike the war, Scots and Gascons were notably absent!
My review of Andrew Staniland’s highly experimental The Laws of Nature is now available at La Scena Musicale.
My review of Il Pomo d’Oro’s CD of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Joyce DiDonato as the Queen of Carthage is now available at La Scena Musicale.
My review of the sumptuous Criterion Collection reissue of the classic Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is now up at La Scena Musicale.
Every few weeks Second City hosts a couple of sketch comedy acts for two nights in their Theatre 73. Last night and tonight it’s Toronto troupe Potato, Potato and Montreal based Small Friend Tall Friend. Details on this are going to be a bit sparse as the house programme contained almost no useful information and the two groups web presence seems to be limited to Instagram (Kids these days!).
Anyway it was fun in a Fringe kind of way (though way more comfortable than most Fringe venues). I really rather like Potato, Potato’s slanted look at life in Toronto; the housing crisis (room mate drops dead when forced to flatshare with a cat), Ontario Place (apparently gifted to Doug’s favourite German metal band), Doug again (this time shooting a cyclist) sand Olivia Chow (crashing everybody’s parties). Daft of course, but nicely paced and energetic. I’d go see them again. Continue reading
There are a couple of concerts at the end of September that I didn’t hear about in time to include in my September listings post. The concerts are being given by the Happenstancers and Slow Rise Music who each represent some of the interesting and different approaches that Toronto’s younger musicians are taking to presenting chamber music.
The production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale recorded at the 2024 Donizetti Festival in Bergamo is lively colourful and, generally, well done. Amélie Niermayer’s production is essentially contemporary with a heavy emphasis on class difference between the relatively upscale Pasquale clan and the Malatestas who are shown as some sort of Italian equivalent of “Essex man”. Doctor Malatesta has tattoos and wears a heavy gold chain and when we first see Norina she’s in braids, a T shirt, fishnets and also sports tattoos. Her taste doesn’t improve much after the “wedding”. In contrast, Ernesto is more stylish and less of a dweeb than in other productions I’ve seen.
operaramblings 