Florence Bourget
TSMF has made some small changes to the line up this year. Instead of the art song component recitals for the academy programme being given together as two concerts they have been spread across four concerts with the balance being made up of chamber music. The first two of the four were yesterday in Walter Hall.
There was no printed programme for the concerts. The singers announced themselves and their accompanists and their material. The last was repeated in the projected surtitles (yeah!) which also provided text and translation for the non-English items (including Scots) but not for songs to English texts. So, mad scribbling was required to get a complete listing and I may have made the odd error.
The Canadian Nightingale: Bertha Crawford and the Dream of the Prima Donna is a biography by Jane Cooper of early 20th century Canadian coloratura soprano Bertha Crawford who became, rather improbably, an “A” list opera star in Poland before returning to Canada to die in relative obscurity. It’s the story of an unusual life but it’s also the story of how opera and vocal music was impacted by war, revolution, depression, jazz and the cinema. It offers interesting insights into the Toronto (and wider) Canadian musical scene in the first quarter of the 20th century which was curiously similar to today in some ways and very different in others. There was neither opera nor a symphony orchestra in Toronto in that period so professional opportunities were few and far between but then, as now, most aspiring singers first professional gig was a section lead in a church choir and a main route to fame and fortune was to head for Europe. At least steamers had bigger baggage allowances than Air Canada.
At this point pretty much the only opera activity I’m aware of in Toronto for July and August is the Toronto Summer Music Festival. 
