Season announcements, it seems, are like the King Street streetcar(1). You wait for ages then three come along at once. This time it’s Opera Atelier announcing the 2017/18 season. As ever there are two productions. A remount of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro runs October 26th to November 4th. The cast icludes Douglas Williams, making his Opera Atelier debut, in the title role, with Mireille Asselin (Susanna), Stephen Hegedus (Count Almaviva), Peggy Kriha Dye (Countess Almaviva), Mireille Lebel (Cherubino), Laura Pudwell (Marcellina), Gustav Andreassen (Bartolo), Christopher Enns (Basilio/Don Curzio), Olivier Laquerre (Antonio), and Grace Lee (Barbarina). This one will be sung in English.
Patrick Jang, Carla Huhtanen and Phillip Addis in “The Marriage of Figaro” (2010). Photo by Bruce Zinger.
Hot on the heels of the RCM, the Toronto Symphony has announced its 2017/18 season, whih will be Peter Oundjian’s last as Music Director. There’s lots of sesquicentennial stuff of course but here’s a summary of the interesting vocal stuff (rock and roll and other children’s music omitted).
Croatian bass Goran Jurić is currently making his North American debut as Sarastro in the COC’s Magic Flute. Today he gave a lunchtime recital with Anne Larlee in the RBA. It was an all Russian programme; Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Sviridov. I don’t want to do a blow by blow review because I don’t know the rep well enough and it seems a bit pointless. Instead let’s talk about Jurić as an artist, as shown by his performance here (and not surprisingly as Sarastro). He’s a genuine bass, no messing. The low notes are all there and the timbre is rich and dark when he wants it to be. But he’s also extremely lyrical. He can lighten up without ever stopping sounding like a bass. It’s a most pleasant combination. He’s also a terrific storyteller. This seems like an odd thing to say about a recital where not a word was spoken and all the songs were in a language I scarcely understand at all, yet I felt he was communicating the essence of the text with great clarity as a good lieder singer must. Anne was great as an accompanist too. There was quite a lot of range in the piano parts from quite delicate and playful in some of the Sviridov to cranking the pedals up to 11 in some of the Rachmaninov. A very good way to spend one’s lunch break.
The Royal Conservatory has just announced its Koerner Hall line up for the 2017/18 season. There are 23 classical and 6 jazz concerts. This doesn’t include the Glenn Gould School or concerts in the RCM’s other halls. Highlights from a vocal point of view are as follows:
This time last year I attended a workshop performance of a work in progress; Aaron Gervais’ The Harvester. That time it was in piano score but semi staged. Last night it was presented, at Gallery 345, in concert format but with chamber orchestra. I’m not going to recap the plot etc because it’s all in 
