So I’m in Montreal for the Concours musical international de Montréal – Chant. Today was very much about preliminaries. There was a press event where we were introduced to the judging panel and a short performance by the contestants. There was also the chance to catch up with old friends over lunch. The real business starts with the preliminary rounds of the art song competition tomorrow afternoon and evening.
The contestants rehearsing this morning
This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main stage performance is The Monkiest King. It’s from the team of Marjorie Chan and Alice Ping Yee Ho who collaborated most successfully to create another highly successful Western/Chinese fusion piece; The Lesson Of Da Jee. The inspiration for this one is the antics of Sun Wukong, the mischievous and arrogant Monkey King in the Chinese classic Journey to the West.
Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony were in town last night for a one night stand at Roy Thomson Hall. My reason for going was primarily to see Marion Newman sing Ancestral Voices; a work composed for her by Tovey. It’s the composer’s contribution to the sesqui and it deals with the Dominion of Canada’s troubled relationship with the original peoples of this land. The four movements trace an arc from an imagined pre colonial “Arkady” cleverly using a Keats text that deals with a clearly not Canadian imagined state of nature through to Charles Mair’s The Last Bison; a very early warning of what happens when Man and Nature get out of balance. Then comes the most chilling part; an excerpt from a letter in the government archives about residential schools”…separate, isolate, educate; dominate, assimilate; Sow the seeds and forcibly, effectively; Kill the Indian in the child.” It concludes with fragments of letters from Harper and Trudeau cut with parts of the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples.
David Fallis
David Fallis’ last show after 28 years as Artistic Director of the Toronto Consort is, perhaps appropriately, the earliest opera in the repertoire; Monteverdi’s Orfeo. The first performance of three was last night at Trinity St. Paul’s. It’s a concert performance with surtitles and some interesting orchestration. The expected strings and woodwinds are supplemented here by the sackbuts and cornettos of Montreal based La Rose des Vents as well as triple harp and an assortment of keyboards including, I think, two different organs. Continue reading
A couple of things that I found out about too late to include in my June preview post…
On June 26th and 27th at Calvin Presbyterian Church there are workshops of a new opera, The Llandovery Castle, based on the story of a Canadian hospital ship sunk by a U-boat 100 years ago in June 1918. It’s being mounted by Bicycle Opera Project. The music is by Stephanie Martin with a libretto by Paul Ciufo. Tom Diamond directs. More details here.
I’m not sure how I’ve not come across the music of Howard Skempton before but it took a flyer for a disk with a setting of The Ancient Mariner to get my attention. I’m fascinated by what contemporary composers do with the broadly defined field of art song and Skempton’s piece is really interesting. He sets a mildly abridged version of the Coleridge but there’s enough to last past the half hour mark. The vocal writing is tonal, rhythmic and declamatory; hardly song at all in a way, but it supports the text rather well. It’s sung here by baritone Roderick Williams, for whom the piece was written. He has a clear, bright voice and the setting tends towards the upper end of the baritone range. He also has superb diction in the manner of the best of the “English school”. The result is complete comprehensibility for the text and full value for every word.
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades is a rather odd opera. It’s got some really good music but it’s dramatically a bit of a mess; it’s episodic and the plot contains highly implausible occult elements. The 2016 production at Dutch National Opera was given to Stefan Herheim to direct which is what piqued my interest. There are few directors as capable of applying some radical rethinking to an opera and coming up with something fully coherent. I think he manages it here.
I’d hesitate to call Eliza Carthy a “folk musician”. Like the rest of the Waterson/Carthy clan she’s much more than that and she’s always had the capacity to surprise; moving from a member of her mum and dad’s band to the principal behind albums like Red and Rice. Her latest effort; Rivers and Railways is something else again. At 17’33” I hesitate to call it an “album” but it’s released in digital and physical formats on the NMC label (another outfit which is a bit hard to pigeonhole). It’s a collaboration with the equally uncharacterizable Moulettes and the Freedom Choir and it’s, implausible as that may seem, about Hull (as in “From Hull and Halifax and Hell, good Lord deliver us”.)
I think I now have the complete schedule and broadcast information for the Concours musical internationale de Montréal édition Chant 2018.
Tuesday May 29th, 3pm and 7.30pm: Art Song First Round
Wednesday May 30th, 3pm and 7.30pm: Aria First Round
Thursday May 31st, 7.30pm: Aria First Round
Friday June 1st, 3pm and 7.30pm: Art Song Semifinal
Sunday June 3rd, 3pm: Art Song Final
Monday June 4th, 7.30pm: Aria Semifinal
Tuesday June 5th, 7.30pm: Aria Semifinal
Thursday June 7th, 7.30pm: Aria Final, Prizes, Gala
Everything up to and including June 3rd takes place at the Salle Bourgie at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The Aria semis and final take place at the Maison Symphonique at the Place des Arts.
I’m not sure that I had ever heard anything by Heinrich Schütz before this afternoon but I’m glad that I have now. His St. John Passion formed the first half of the closing concert of the Toronto Bach Festival at St. Barnabas on the Danforth this afternoon. Written in 1666, towards the end of his life ,it’s steeped in the Lutheran tradition. There’s no orchestra. The main burden of the Gospel is taken by the Evangelist as narrator in a style not very far from the Anglican traditional style of singing metrical psalms. The emphasis is on the text; indeed on The Word. Members of the chorus contribute in similar style as Jesus, Pilate and so on. The narrative is interspersed with polyphonic choruses with sparse organ accompaniment perhaps hinting at an even older tradition where the meaning of the words mattered less.
operaramblings 