The latest video recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is from Versailles. It’s a 2024 recording using the same production, by Cecille Roussat and Julien Lubek, as the 2014 Rouen recording and, like that one, there’s a lot of additional instrumental/dance music consistent with the idea that the piece was conceived as a court entertainment in the French style. There’s not much point in repeating what I said back then about the production. Check out the earlier review.
So the other Pressburger and Powell film that I recently acquired is their 1951 version of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. There have been claims that this is the first film made of asn opera as opposed to a film of an opera performance but, assuming one accepts that Die Dreigroschenoper is an opera then that prize surely goes to the 1931 Pabst film.
Following on from this year’s successful festival at Theatre Passe Muraille Opera 5 are once again running a sort of mini festival at that venue in June next year. There will be two programmes. There’s a Puccini double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi which, I’m guessing will be given with chamber ensemble accompaniment. Rachel Krehm headlines as the theologically unsound nun while Gianni Schicchi has Greg Dahl in the title role. Krisztina Szabó will appear in both operas as Princess Zia and Zita. Jessica Derventzis directs and Evan Mitchell is in charge of matters musical. This one runs June 3rd to 7th. Continue reading
I recently got my hands on restored versions of two Powell and Pressburger opera films. The first is a film of Bartók’s Herzog Blaubarts Burg broadcast on Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963. It’s directed by Powell alone I think. The current version was restored by the BFI from an original Eastmancolor negative in their archives and a sound master on magnetic tape from SDR under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker. It was subsequently released on Blu-ray by BFI in 2023 but currently seems very hard to find! It doesn’t help that the BFI on-line shop is currently off-line!
The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie Lacombe (violins), Marilou Lepage (viola) and Audréanne Filion (cello).
The first piece is by Florence M. Tremblay and is titled Insides. It’s slightly under twelve minutes and uses a fairly wide range of sonorities without, I think, going into any of the weirder types of extended technique. Most of what I was hearing hear were a drone like ground at varying pitch and volume on which more solid segments of both bowed and plucked notes were superimposed. The dynamics are quite complex and one section even sounded weirdly like what you hear inside a plane when it’s taking off. Plenty there to maintain interest across a fairly short piece. Continue reading
Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is a rather difficult opera to stage. There’s no definitive performing edition and there’s a lot of (too much?) material to work with so decisions have to be made about what to cut. There’s also the fundamental problem of how to frame the stories of Hoffman’s three great loves as he’s supposed to be recounting them in a bar, while drunk, some years after the events described. Plus, there is some sense that all three are really just projections of his current infatuation; the opera singer Stella.
So, Saturday night I reacquainted myself with pantomime after a gap of sixty years or so. I think the last panto I saw was Aladdin at the Alhambra in Bradford c.1965. Well why not? Much has changed and Canadian Stage’s Robin Hood; written by Matt Murray and directed by Mary-Francis Moore discards much that would once have been seen as de rigueur. I guess much more fluid gender roles, general acceptance of same sex relationships and, maybe, less familiarity with the canonical stories means that what once seemed risqué now seems passé and absent a general idea of how the story should go there’s more freedom to experiment.
Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock. It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have been stranded on St. Kitt’s by a storm. It being a holiday they decide to have a night on the town.
Wednesday evening at The great Hall witnessed a seminal event in the history of opera; Operamania. Our beloved art form; courtesy of the indefatigable Opera Revue, mashed up with pro-wrestling; in the persons of Junction City Wrestling. What could possibly gio wrong you ask? Well how about Mango Mussolini showing up during the Anthem to claim his 51st state? No worries! Danie Friesen despatched him with a whack over the head with a chair.
This season’s main stage production from Tapestry Opera will be Ten Days in a Madhouse; music by Rene Orth, music by Hannah Moscovitch. It’s based on the true story of 19th century journalist Nellie Bly who pretended to be insane in order to expose the conditions women patients were being kept under at New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum. It’s the Canadian premiere of a Tapestry/Opera Philadelphia commission co-presented with the COC and Luminato. This follows a critically acclaimed run last year at Opera Philadelphia.
operaramblings 