August 11th marked the five year anniversary of Opera Ramblings. Statistically we are now at 1350 posts and over 350,000 views. “Cheap Seats at the COC” and the review of the notorious Maria Ewing Salome DVD continue to be the most popular posts. Thanks for the ride!
I’ve become a little wary of operas based on best selling novels and/or Hollywood films so I approached Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain with a certain amount of skepticism. I should not have. It’s a Gerard Mortier commission; originally for NYCO but, following that débacle, it followed him to the Teatro Real in Madrid where it premiered in 2014. The libretto is an adaptation by Annie Proulx of her original story. Always a good sign.
In 1986 a French diplomat was sentenced to six years in prison for spying for China. It began with an affair with a Chinese opera singer who the diplomat claimed to believe to be a woman. Mr. Shi and his Lover is a piece exploring the relationship and the inner thoughts of the two characters. It was developed by Macau Experimental Theatre between 2013 and 2015 and got its North American premier in Toronto last night as part of SummerWorks.
Yes, those flags are stuck to my head
Last night’s Toronto Summer Music Festival concert, continuing the the me of “London Calling” was titled (Almost) the Last Night of the Proms and was a sort of recreation of that weird fusion of music and retro imperialism that hits the Albert Hall once per year. I went because I was curious. Toronto is no longer terribly British and it’s also notoriously buttoned down. Koerner Hall is a 1200 seat concert hall with no promenade space. The concert wasn’t the celebratory conclusion of eight weeks of promenading. Could it remotely match the atmosphere of the Last Night and, if not, would there be musical merit enough to make it worthwhile? The answer, sadly, is not really though some people did try.
This review first appeared in the print edition of Opera Canada.
Mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne’s new CD Alma Oppressa, recorded with the Clavecin en Concert and Luc Beauséjour, features arias by Vivaldi and Handel as well as a few short instrumental pieces taken from their operas. It’s a pleasing combination of the dramatic and the more lyrically relaxed, though as pretty much all these arias were written for star castrati it’s also highly virtuosic. The first two numbers give a very good sample of what’s to come. The title track, from Vivaldi’s La fida ninfa is dramatic and allows Ms. Boulianne to use the darker colours of her voice to good effect as well as providing coloratura hijinks. “Sovvento il sole” from the same composer’s Andromeda Liberata is much more lyrical. Indeed, it’s very beautiful with a haunting melody line and an interesting dialogue between voice and violin. It shows off both the brighter tones of the voice and her very attractive lower register. The Vivaldi pieces will likely not be too familiar to most opera goers but there are much better known Handel pieces on the CD including “Lasci ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo and “Cara speme questo core” from Giulio Cesare. The latter shows off the brighter side of the voice as befits an aria for a juvenile character. The twelve piece band, with Beauséjour directing from the harpsichord is quite excellent. They provide a brisk and transparent accompaniment to the arias and sound really excellent in their three short instrumental pieces. I think this is a sensible sized ensemble for this music and probably not far away from what the composers would have expected.
So the Toronto Summer Music Festival continued last night with a Shakespeare themed show called A Shakespeare Serenade. Curated and directed by Patrick Hansen of McGill it fell into two parts. Before the interval we got Shakespeare scenes acted out and then the equivalent scene from an operatic adaptation of the play. After the interval it was a mix of Sonnets and song settings in an overall staging that was perhaps riffing off The Decameron. Patrick Hansen and Michael Shannon alternated at the piano.
A co-production between the COC and Opéra de Lyon has just opened in France. It’s Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with rewritten dialogues by Lebanese-Canadian-French playwright Wajdi Mouawad, who also directs. It can be watched online here. It’s geoblocked but you can use something like Tunnel Bear to watch it. There’s a very complete analysis of the production by Lydia Perovic over on her blog.
The one thing Daniel Taylor did not explain in his introduction to The Coronation of King George II, presented by Toronto Summer Music Festival, last night was how on earth he, and whatever friends and substances were involved, came up with the concept. It’s not immediately apparent that interweaving some of the music from the 1727 coronation service with snippets from the liturgy while throwing in some earlier music that might have been used in earlier coronations and, to cap it all, Tardising in some Parry and Tavener makes any sense at all but in a weird way it did. There was even a real priest brought in to play the Archbishop of Canterbury (looking disturbingly like the Bishop of Bath and Wells) and an actor playing the king. Oddly it made for an hour or so of rather good music mixed with just enough levity to offset the mostly extremely lugubrious text of the liturgy.
American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, 2013 winner of Cardiff Singer of the Year, sang at Koerner Hall last night with veteran Bradley Moore at the piano. Her first set; Joaquin Turina’s Homenaje a Lope de Vega gave us a pretty good idea of the basic value proposition. She has a fantastic instrument. There is power to burn, a pleasing dark tone, accuracy and musicianship. She never sounded remotely strained even while pushing out a very impressive sound. The rest of her first half programme; Chausson’s Three Melodies and four of Schubert’s Goethe settings showed that there was more than just a big accurate voice. Basically, it’s all there. She can vary colours and scale vibrato up and down. There’s some agility. She can float quiet high notes and she can tell a story. Her diction was clear in all three languages. I would say at this point the only question mark I had was around her ability to engage the audience. If I were to judge by the very highest standards, and I’m think Bryn Terfel or Karita Mattila, there was something just the merest shade cold and technical. The second half would see whether she could, as it were , lighten up a bit.
The Academy Program is an important part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival. It allows selected young artists; singers, collaborative pianists and chamber/orchestral musicians, to work with experienced professionals in an intensive series of coachings, masterclasses etc culminating in a concert series. This year the mentors for the vocal/collaborative piano component were pianist Craig Rutenberg, who has worked everywhere and with everybody, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; a last minute replacement for an indisposed Anne Schwannewilms. I didn’t make it to any of the masterclasses, though word on the street is that they were exceptional, but I did make it to yesterday’s lunchtime concert in Walter Hall.
operaramblings 