Minimalist Magic Flute with a Japanese twist

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The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening.  The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut.  The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand.  There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.

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joy & asymmetry

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joy & asymmetry is a new recording from the Helsink Chamber Choir and their conductor Nils Schweckendiek.  It consista of music by Finnish composers Kalevi Aho and Einojuhani Rautavaara, although by no means all the texts are in Finnish.

There’s some interesting music on the recording but a lot of it is relatively stately, layered, polyphony.  That’s not exactly unusual for contemporary choral music and if it’s your thing there’s a lot to like her.  I’ll admit though to finding much of it quite soporific.

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Coups de roulis

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One might be forgiven for thinking that French operetta ended with Offenbach since, outside of France anyway, nothing much gets performed.  However, the tradition continued.  Reynaldo Hahn, for example, produced Ciboulette in 1923.  Another has now come my way.  It’s an audio recording of Andrê Messager’s 1928 work Coups de roulis.

It’s set on a French battleship, the Montesquieu in the Mediterranean.  Christmas leave has been cancelled to allow the visit of the High Commissioner M. Puy-Pradal on a cost saving expedition.  He is accompanied by his daughter Béatrice who is his secretary.  Both the ship’s captain Gerville and a young officer Kermao fall in love with Béatrice. During a party given during a courtesy visit to Egypt Puy-Pradal forms a liaison with the aspiring actress Sola Myrrhis who believes Puy-Pradal’s influence can get her into the Comédie-Française. He accompanies her on her Egyptian tour.

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UoT Opera’s Così

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The spring production from UoT Opera is Mozart’s Così fan tutte and it’s playing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre.  Anna Theodosakios directs with some conceptual input from Michael Patrick Albano.  The production is interesting and I think there are three layers to unpack.  On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward 18th century setting with uniforms, wigs, elaborate dresses and so on but with a rather striking colour scheme; pinks and lilacs.

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Flaming Toscas and oinking hogs

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Last Wednesday’s noon hour concert in the RBA was a collaboration between the Canadian Art Song Project and the UoT Faculty of Music.  It was an all Canadian programme; mostly living composers and mostly in a lighter vein; hence the title Songs of Whimsy and Humour.

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Born-Again Crow

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There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow is perhaps the longest play title ever but the play itself, written by Caleigh Crow, is a fast moving ninety minutes.  It’s a collaboration between Native Earth Performing Arts and Buddies in Bad Times and it opened on Thursday night in a production directed by Jessica Carmichael.

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Carried by the River

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Diana Tso’s Carried by the River is currently playing in the Extraspace at Tarragon Theatre in a production directed by William Yong for the Red Snow Collective.  It’s the story of a Chinese girl, Kai, who is abandoned by her birth mother because of the “one child policy”, adopted by a Hong Kong mother and brought to Canada as a baby.  When she’s about twenty her mother dies unexpectedly leaving her with many unanswered questions.  She travels to the province of her birth in search of.. do we ever know what we “are in search of”?

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Greene’s Jephtha

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Fourteen years before Handel’s 1751 work Jephtha Maurice Greene produced a different English language oratorio on the same theme and with the same title.  It’s now been recorded by the Early Opera Company.

Thje story is taken from Judges and concerns the recall of Jephtha from exile to lead the Israelite army against an Ammonite invasion (the people from the East bank of the Jordan not the cephalopods).  Jephtha promises Jehovah that if he is victorious he will sacrifice the first creature “of virgin blood” he meets (shades of Idomeneo) which, of course, turns out to be his daughter.  There’s no divine intervention and no happy ending.

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