Rameau’s Platée is a rather cruel satire on appearance and perception. Jupiter woos the unattractive swamp nymph Platée in order to prove to Juno how ridiculous her jealousy is. Platée is led to think that she is so beautiful that Jupiter will marry her only to be mocked and deflated when the crowd turns on her.
Debut albums from young singers usually play it fairly safe but mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo’s is anything but. Her new album, enargeia, on the Deutsche Grammophon label is bold indeed. All twelve tracks on the album feature works by contemporary female composers, though with a nod to Hildegard von Bingen. The accompaniments vary from solo cello to orchestra augmented with electric guitar, electric bass and drum kit. Singing style varies from austerely classical to verging on rock opera.
The COC’s production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi directed by Amy Lane is now available to watch for free, for the next six months, at coc.ca/watch . It’s given a 1950s Italian setting but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward approach reliant on good ensemble directing and acting, which it gets. It’s livened up by video projections by Alexander Gunnarsson, which come over really very well on the film.
The second of three concerts of the Bach cello suites prresented by Confluence Concerts and the Toronto Bach Festival is now up on Confluence’s Youtube channel. There’s an hour or so of really nice cello playing with Kieran Campbell playing the Suite no.4 and Eleanor Fry performing the Suite no.6. The most interesting segments though are hearing the musicians talk about their rather unusual instruments. Kieran was playing an early 18th century instrument that is quite a bit larger than a modern cello and has no spike at the foot. It’s strung with gut of course though two of the strings are metal wrapped. Eleanor’s instrument is a modern reproduction of a baroque five stringed cello. I had no idea such a thing existed! As with all the Confluence streams, technical quality is impeccable. Definitely worth a look.
Opera Atelier’s new film Angel premiered last night. It consists of six scenes which, we are told, can be performed as a sequence or individually. There’s a basic theme of “angels” and the texts are drawn from Milton and Rilke (in translation). The score is by Edwin Huizinga and Christopher Bagan with some of the dance music being actual baroque works.
Here are a couple more shows I missed one way or another.
Tomorrow (October 29th) at 7pm the second of Confluence’s Bach cello suites concerts will be streamed on Youtube.
Saturday November 13th at3 pm at St. Andrew’s Church in Toronto and Friday November 19th at 7.30pm at People’s Theatre for the Performing Arts in Markham, Toronto City Opera are doing Verdi’s <em>Nabucco</em> in concert. It’s the usual formula; young local singers, volunteer choir and piano accompaniment. There will be no surtitles but the libretto will be available plus a narrator. More details here.
As the rest of the world moves to live in-person performance Toronto is still mostly stuck in Covidland. My calendar for the month currently has two in-person shows (both courtesy of the RCM) and three streams. So:
November 6th at 7.30pm in Mazzoleni Hall. The GGS Opera programme is presenting Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba. It seems hard to believe that the premiere was over ten years ago!
November 27th at 8pm in Koerner Hall. Stewart Goodyear, soloists, the Penderecki Quartet and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir present the premiere of Goodyear’s Piano Quintet plus Beethoven’s 9th symphony in piano reduction. This one is also livestreamed.
And so to streams:
November 19th at 8pm. Soundstreams presents Love Songs; a 45 minute programme of music by Claude Vivier and Christopher Mayo. (ticketed)
November 25th at 7.30 pm (and the following three days). UoT Opera is performing Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. (free)
November 26th at 7.30pm. The COC and Against the Grain are collaborating on a staged Mozart Requiem. (free)
Back to the Royal Conservatory yesterday for the first time since the plague struck. Ironically the programme, which had originally featured the Dover Quartet with Davóne Tines, had to be rearranged at less than 24 hours notice due to one of the Dovers testing positive for COVID. What we got instead was two mini concerts. In the first half the New Orford Quartet performed works by Caroline Shaw and Mendelssohn and in the second Davóne Tines, with Rachael Kerr, performed excerpts from his Recital No. 1: MASS. Continue reading
The third SOS – Sketch Opera Singers from Tapestry Opera is now up on Youtube. It’s quite similar to the previous episodes with inspired lunacy from KrossØver (Teiya Kasahara, Keith Klassen, Krisztina Szabó, Korin Thomas-Smith and a snail but definitely not Simone McIntosh). I think it’s a bit darker and a bit weirder than earlier episodes, even a bit surreal in places. The sketch where people are helped through break-ups by soft toys singing well known arias comes to mind. Still, it’s half an hour of (mostly) harmless fun. Definitely worth a watch.
Listening to Emily D’Angelo’s new CD set me off on a search for more music by Hildur Gu∂nadóttir. This led me to Nortdic Affect; an ensemble who play contemporary music, mostly by female Iceandic composers) on baroque instruments. The older of the two albums is Clockworking, from 2015. It’s rather hypnotic. The music kind of inhabits the space between ambient sound and something more structured. Certainly the range of sounds that the musicians generate is remarkable, even when electronics aren’t involves, as they sometimes are. The album booklet is quite detailed and it’s more eloquent than I would be. Continue reading
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