Marriage of Figaro preview

Posted on February 10, 2016 by operaramblings

Today’s lunchtime concert in the RBA involved members of the cast of the Ensemble Studio performance of Marriage of Figaro in a semi-staged series of excerpts from the opera. The Ensemble Studio annual stage performance is always worth seeing and this year I think it’s going to be a real treat. Highlights today included Gordon Bintner’s Count. The guy can sing but here there was a swagger that should be just perfect for the Guth production. Jacquie Woodley’s Cherubino was utterly brilliant. Aviva Fortunata nailed Porgi amor, so often a disappointment I find. And I really liked Karine Boucher’s Susanna. She’s not always been a favourite of mine but her slightly dark for a soprano tone seemed really well suited to this music and blended especially well with Aviva. Ian MacNeil impressed too as Figaro, though it’s a role that’s a bit downplayed by this production, and I shall be curious to see what he does with it in the full version. Megan Latham, Jean-Philippe Fortier-Lazure and Aaron Sheppard rounded out today’s cast with the indefatigable Hyejin Kwon on piano. If you don’t yet have tickets for the performance on the 22nd I strongly suggest getting some. They are only $22 or $55 for the best seats. As Claire Morley said in her introduction this could be an event that’s talked of for years to come.

The Highwayman and Other Travels

Posted on February 10, 2016 by operaramblings

Burry 2 Most people in the Toronto opera world know Dean Burry principally as a composer of operas for children. He’s written several and a couple have been mainstays of COC school tours. It’s perhaps understandable then if his music is seen as approachable and maybe, even (sotto voce), a little unsophisticated. Last night, a recital of Dean’s works in Victoria College Chapel; part of his DMA program at UoT, provided a chance to hear a number of works in a much broader range of styles.

The concert kicked off with Tussah Heera playing InPerfections for solo piano. It’s a fully serial piece with the tone rows based on the DNA sequences of various hereditary diseases. It’s quite striking and way more than a just a theory exercise. The same could be said for Three Caprices for solo violin played by Dean’s partner Julia McFarlane. These used a range of extended violin techniques to good effect.

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Christopher Purves in the RBA

Posted on February 9, 2016 by operaramblings

British baritone Christopher Purves was the lunch special at the Four Seasons Centre today. Along with the amazing Liz Upchurch he gave us a most enjoyable program of Handel, Duparc and Mussorgsky. The two Handel arias were drawn from Handel’s two very different takes on Ovid’s Acis and Galatea. The first from the later (1718) English version “I rage, I melt, I burn!… O ruddier than the cherry tree” is a mostly comic furioso recitative and aria sung with great drama and not a little comedy by Chris but it was rather eclipsed by the next number taken from the earlier (1708) Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. Polyphemus’ aria “Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori” is just nuts but very beautiful. It ranges from the D below the bass staff to the A above it and is a continuous series of insane intervals accompanied by a really simple and very beautiful piano part. It’s amazing anybody can sing it all let alone as well as it was done here.

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A few announcements

Posted on February 9, 2016 by operaramblings

MY Opera have announced the cast for their spring production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Christina Campsall sings the title role with Nicholas Borg as Tarquinius. Jonelle Sills, Daevyd Pepper, Jacob Feldman, Evan Korbut, Victoria Marshall and Anne-Marie MacIntoshround out the cast. Natasha Fransblow will direct musically from the piano and stage production is by Anna Theodakis. There will be three performances April 29th to May 1st in the Aki Studio at Daniels Spectrum.

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The Devil it is

Posted on February 9, 2016 by operaramblings

Boito’s Mefistofele is a rather odd work. It’s truer to the original Goethe than other operatic versions of the Faust legend which means it’s very episodic and focuses on the Faust/Mefistofele relationship rather than on Margherita. In fact she’s dead with an act and an epilogue still to go. It’s hard to categorize musically too. Some parts are rather bombastic, vulgar even, yet at other times we seem to be drifting into bel canto territory. So it’s a bit uneven; listenable enough but not very memorable.

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Tapestry Songbook VI

Posted on February 7, 2016 by operaramblings

wallisgiunta This concert was the culmination of several days of workshops involving Wallis Giunta, Jordan de Souza and eighteen emerging artists; both singers and pianists. It’s a comparatively unusual opportunity to focus on contemporary repertoire for a while and the results were fun. As usual with these multi-participant efforts I’m not going to attempt to be exhaustive but just concentrate on my personal highlights.

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Week of 7th February

Posted on February 7, 2016 by operaramblings

sal This week kicks off with a concert performance of a rarity; Salieri’s Falstaff. It’s a concert performance by Voicebox:Opera in Concert. Larry Beckwith conducts the Aradia Ensemble and a cast of Voicebox stalwarts. You can catch it at 2.30pm today at the Jane Mallett Theatre.

There are two free events on Tuesday. Chris Purves, Alberich in the COC’s Siegfried, has a lunchtime recital in the RBA with Liz Upchurch at the piano. The programme includes Mussorgsky, Handel and Duparc. At 8pm in the Victoria College chapel you can catch Dean Burry’s graduate recital as he finishes up his PhD. Soon perhaps Canada’s most performed composer will no longer be a lowly TA. Oh the joys of credentialism!

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Guth’s Figaro at the COC

Posted on February 5, 2016 by operaramblings

Claus Guth’s production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, first seen at Salzburg in 2006, opened last night at the COC. I was curious to see how it would be received because, while by no means an extreme production by European standards, it’s well beyond the 1970s aesthetic beloved by sections of the Toronto audience. The aesthetic is Northern European; a Strindberg play or a Bergmann film perhaps. It’s monochromatic, quite slow and focusses on the darker side of the characters’ psyches. It’s the antithesis of Figaro as Feydeau farce. There’s also a non-canonical character, Cherubim. He’s a winged doppelganger of Cherubino and seems to be a cross between Cupid and Puck. Pretty much omnipresent he manipulates scenes and characters though with a power that falls well short of absolute. Perhaps the whole production is best summed up in the final ensemble. Cherubim visits each couple in turn and is brusquely rejected. Only Cherubino is still subject to his power and that seems to have become destructive. Perhaps the message is “Now we are married forget this love nonsense and let us get back to our drab lives of quiet despair”.

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TSO 16/17

Posted on February 4, 2016 by operaramblings

Last night saw the Toronto Symphony announce its 2016/17 plans. The event itself was rather an upgrade from last year. Rather than a 10am affair with coffee and donuts and a press conference in the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall we got wine and canapes and the “show” itself had the audience seated on the stage and in the choir loft of the hall itself; an unusual POV at least. There were also performances from the TSO Ensemble and a terrifyingly accomplished fourteen year old pianist Leonard Lediak who will debut with the orchestra during Mozart 261 (incidentally relocated to Koerner Hall this time around).

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Not a review

Posted on February 3, 2016 by operaramblings

Why do I keep finding myself in the backroom of the Tranzac? We’ve had a relationship for 20 years now; Nomads’ dances, Waterson/Carthy, the first Against the Grain La Bohème. I see ghosts there. Last night I saw the latest in the Vocalis performance series from the UoT Music Faculty grad students. It was a cabaret show with appropriate music from the 20s, 30s and 40s. There was Weill and Eisler and Satie and Poulenc and others. This is music I adore and it was gritty enough and well MC’d by Adi Braun. I wish I could tell you who was singing, Adi aside, because it was really good but there was no program and I wasn’t taking notes. I think it was Tom King on keyboards. There’s a surprising number of shows of this kind on in Toronto that don’t get the heavy promotion treatment. They are worth keeping an eye out for.

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