Announcements round up

Posted on October 27, 2017 by operaramblings

Church Here’s an assortment of announcements from my In Box…

December 10th at 4pm Rosedale Presbyterian there’s a fundraiser for the church. The program is called Respite and Dream and will include Santoliquido songs, Tosti and Verdi songs, French and English songs, Brahms, Strauss, some excerpts from Rosenkavalier and some Xmas stuff. Rachel Andrist will be at the piano with Sara Schabas, Danielle MacMillen, Jessica Scarlato, Jonelle Sills, Nicole Percifield and Jocelyn Fralick singing. Not sure about ticketing yet but take a cushion.

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Into November

Posted on October 27, 2017 by operaramblings

eberwien So coming up in the next week or so…

On Monday LooseTEA have another Whose Opera is it Anyway? show. It’s at 9.30pm at Comedy Bar, 945 Bloor West. Alaina Viau directs with hosting by Greg Finney, Natasha Fransblow at the piano and Jeff Boyd, Amanda Cogan, Adanya Dunn, Gillian Grossman, Rachel Krehm, Jonathan MacArthur, Erin Stone, and Lindsay Sutherland Boal doing silly things.

On Tuesday Lauren Eberwein and the Rosebud Quartet have a noon time concert in the RBA including the fascinating and very difficult Schoenberg String Quartet No.2. Barbara Hannigan was the last person to do that in the RBA so no pressure.

Wednesday evening is Centre Stage, the COC’s Gala/Singing Competition/Audition for the Ensemble Studio. Things kick off with booze and snacks at 5pm. It’s at the Four Seasons Centre of course.

Thursday, UoT Opera are previewing their Don Giovanni in a free concert at 12.10pm in Walter Hall. Later, at 9pm, it’s AtG’s Opera Pub Night at the Amsterdam Bicycling Club.

In the continuing runs department, Arabella closes out tomorrow at the COC but The Elixir of Love runs through the 4th. Soundstreams’ Müsik für das Ende, which opens tonight, runs all week at Crow’s Theatre and Opera Atelier’s The Marriage of Figaro also runs through the 4th.

Four marriages and a Figaro

Posted on October 27, 2017 by operaramblings

Opera Atelier’s remount of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro opened last night at the Elgin. It’s a curious production made up of parts that don’t really fit together, hence the review title. At the core is a rather elegant traditional production. It’s wigs and crinolines and might have been seen almost anywhere almost any time in the last fifty years or so. Most of the excessive baroque gesturing is gone and the acting is stagey but no more so than in many opera productions.

suscher

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Musical Chairs II – On the Move

Posted on October 26, 2017 by operaramblings

Todays concert in the UoT’s Thursdays at Noon series at Walter Hall was given by baritone Giles Tomkins, soprano Elizabeth McDonald, pianist Kathryn Tremills, clarinettist Peter Stoll and cellist Lydia Munchinsky. The music they played was sometimes in familiar combinations of players and sometimes very much not. Hence the title.

musical chairs

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Encounter with Brett Polegato

Posted on October 26, 2017 by operaramblings

modal As previously noted the International Resource Centre for Performing Artists is once again running its program for young professional singers in Toronto. The program is in two parts. There was an “Encounter” (career workshop) with Brett Polegato on October 20th and there will be a concert at 7pm on November 6th at the Zoomerplex which will be broadcast by Classical 96.3. Yesterday I spent some time talking with Brett about the program, its rewards and challenges and, inevitably, we drifted off into some broader issues about careers in the opera world.

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Opera for Disaster Relief

Posted on October 26, 2017 by operaramblings

I have spent most of the last two decades working in healthcare. Most of that has been at the high tech, big dollar end of the business and one thing one learns in that world is that the big dollars are big. Sometimes one questions the large salaries of hospital administrators and ministry “off scale” bureaucrats. Sometimes one asks whether spending very large sums to provide a marginal life extension of poor quality makes any sense. Always one is aware that much of the money spent that way could have a much greater impact elsewhere. Nobody would deny that a dollar spent on providing emergency medicine in a disaster area or conflict zone goes a lot further than a dollar spent on the latest experimental chemotherapy or dubious IT mega-project. That’s why I, personally, support Médecins Sans Frontières and why I was so glad that to say thanks for their shiny new piano acquisition, Tapestry decided to stage a concert benefitting MSF and local “first responder” charity Global Medic.

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The World of Yesterday

Posted on October 25, 2017 by operaramblings

Yesterday’s lunchtime concert was my second chance in just over a week to see Erin Wall in recital, in a completely different program from the Mazzoleni gig. There were three sets. First up were Korngold’s Three Songs Op.22. I’m all for more German songs in recitals, especially someone other than the Schus, but I wasn’t really taken with these. They seem closer to the later film music in style than to, say Die tote Stadt. They got the operatic treatment from Erin which is probably not a bad thing here.

2017-10-23-Wall_Horst-018

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(Dido and Aeneas)x2

Posted on October 21, 2017 by operaramblings

The decision by Toronto Masque Theatre to pair Purcell’s miniature opera, Dido and Aeneas, with James Rolfe and André Alexis’ piece on the lovers’ inner thoughts, Aeneas and Dido, paid off last night. It produced an evening of just the right length with two contrasting but complementary pieces working really well together.

sorceress2

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Osborne and Haji

Posted on October 20, 2017 by operaramblings

SONY DSC Yesterday’s free lunchtime concert should have been the first opportunity to see Simone Osborne and Gordon Bintner in recital together but, sadly, Gordon had the lurgy so, if you want to see them perform together you will just have to go and see L’elisir d’amore at the COC. Fortunately Andrew Haji was able to jump in at short notice. Not such a bad guy to have on the bench!

Andrew started out with Santoliquido’s I canti della sera. I had heard him sing these before at Mazzoleni but it was good to hear them again. Genuine Italian art song isn’t all that common and these show the voice off nicely. There was both some lovely limpid singing and plenty of power when needed. He’s a pretty good story teller too. He also gave us the three Duparc songs that he and Liz Upchurch, once again at the piano, gave us earlier in the year. Again the standout was Le manoir de Rosemonde, a most beautiful and haunting song given the full treatment here.

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A Tribute to Maureen Forrester

Posted on October 20, 2017 by operaramblings

Last night’s TSO concert was billed as a Tribute to Maureen Forrester with Ben Heppner MCing. Inevitably the main even was Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde but first there was a sesquie and the premiere of a new piece; L’Aube, for mezzo and orchestra by Howard Shore (he of Lord of the Rings etc). This was a setting of five poems by Elizabeth Cotnoir. It was retro, lush, tonal and, in a sense, well crafted but with very little variation between the movements, all of which were very slow. Susan Platts rich mezzo added to the rather soporific effect. Call me an unreformed modernist if you like but I’m really not sure what a piece like this adds to the symphonic repertoire.

Susan Platts, Peter Oundjian (@Jag Gundu)

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