We are starting to see full length, made for streaming content appearing rather than the rather variable quality, mainly amateur efforts of a few months ago. Here a couple of examples:
- Jeff Crompton’s new chamber opera based on the life of jazz musician Buddy Bolden was due to premiere in Atlanta in June. It’s now been recorded and mixed with visuals for an online release on October 16th. It’s a 45 minute piece for five singers and saxophone trio. More details here. I think this one is free. I checked out bits of the free press preview and it seems interesting and well produced.
- Decameron Opera Coalition; a collective of nine smaller opera companies in the US have come up with an innovative idea for a series of opera evenings. It’s based on Boccaccio’s Decameron, which tells of ten people who, in time of plague, isolate themselves and tell stories (some of them quite naughty as I recall). So, in our time of plague, each company has created a short opera plus there’s a collective intro and ending. They will go online on four Friday nights in October (9th/16th/23rd/30th) and stay available for a while. This one isn’t free. A ticket is $15 (US presumably) and covers all four shows. More details.
Vladimir Jurowski is a notable Mahler interpreter so a new recording of Mahler’s great symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde is welcome; especially when Jurowski’s own Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin is combined with soloists as fine as Sarah Connolly and Robert Dean Smith.
This new recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes was recorded from semi-staged performances in the Grieghallen in Bergen in November last year. It’s very good indeed. Of course, there are many good audio and video recordings of this piece going back to the composer’s own version with Peter Pears in the title role; recorded in 1959 and many fine singers have recorded the title role. To stand out from the field, a new recording needs an outstanding Grimes and in Stuart Skelton this version has one. He manages to encompass both the brutal, gritty side of Grimes as well as the more ethereal side. Pears did the latter brilliantly but could never quite manage the grit. Vickers, who practically owned the role in the 1970s, was brutal but didn’t have the voice or the stage skills to bring out the gentler side. Perhaps the first person to really portray the full complexity of the character was the late Philip Langridge and there’s much about Skelton’s portrayal that reminds one of him. It shades toward the delicate most of the time with some lovely singing in “Now the Great Bear” and in the mad scene. But when Skelton needs to be brutal he’s downright scary.
The latest Tapestry/Red Truck digital short is up. It’s called Silly Distance and it features an overheated Keith Klassen, in a suit, singing to 5000 cormorants. Find it 
Canadian bassist (and much more) George Koller is giving a solo recital in aid of St. Mike’s COVID-19 fund. It’s resented by Canzona Chamber Players on their Youtube channel and by the looks of it fills the slot for this year’s Elizabeth Krehm memorial concert. It’s on September 27th at 7pm and it’s free but, of course, 
This CD contains three works by Thea Musgrave. Two are fairly recent but the first, and to my mind the most interesting, dates back to 1973. It’s called Rorate coeli desuper! It’s a setting of text by the 16th century Scots poet William Dunbar interspersed with short Latin sections. The text is given, as sung, in Middle Scots and Latin but no translation. It’s a wonderfully varied and eclectic piece scored for five soloists and SATB choir. It is, I suppose, a sort of modern polyphony with lots of extended vocal techniques including droning, chattering, hissing and a very high soprano duet that imitates bird song. The text is wonderfully evocative. Here’s one verse as an example:
operaramblings 