Yesterday I went to a Met “live in HD” broadcast for the first time since The Nose two years ago. It was an interesting and ultimately rather depressing experience. This review really falls into two parts; a review of the production and performance, including how it was filmed for broadcast, and a piece on how the Met is “presenting” the work and how that seems to fit in with its overall HD strategy. The latter may turn into a bit of a rant.
The AGO has a new initiative; AGO Friday Nights. For the price of admission to the gallery one also gets to hear a one hour concert of music programmed by Tapestry’s Michael Mori to reflect something going on at the the gallery. Right now the big exhibition is JMW Turner: Painting Set Free. It’s a decent sized exhibition of works mainly drawn from the later stages of Turner’s career and it’s well worth seeing. The music; half piano, half works for mezzo and piano reflects aspects of the exhibition.
Tap:Ex METALLURGY is the second experiment by Tapestry Artistic Director Michael Mori in engineering a collaboration between opera people and an alien musical form; in this case punk experimentalists Fucked Up. The program consistec of two pieces. Metallurgy A was written by Fucked Up’s Jonah Falco to a dense libretto by Mike Haliechuk and David James Brock. In half an hour it tells the story of a mother and father trying, unsuccessfully, to come to terms with the death of their young daughter. Dramatically it’s quite clever. There’s dialogue and then the performers (the musicians are on stage with the singers) leave one by one until only the mother (Krisztina Szabó) and the violinist (Yoobin Ahn), representing the ghost of the daughter, are left on stage to play out a final duet.
I really liked the “look” of the two pieces from the Glenn Gould School last week so I’m more than happy to share some additional pictures. I like the first one in particular.
Photo credits: Stuart Lowe
We are remarkably lucky in Toronto to get as much contemporary opera as we do. Courtesy of groups like Tapestry and Soundstreams , it seems that two or three new pieces get performed every year. They tend to be home grown, which is fine but does mean we don’t often get a glimpse into what’s happening with new work in Europe. In fact, in the last few years, I think the only European contemporary piece I’ve seen in Toronto was Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin. So, I was really pleased, courtesy of Soundstreams and CanStage to be able to see Philippe Boesmans’ Julie which opened last night at the Bluma Appel theatre.
Last night was the third memorial concert for Elizabeth Krehm in support of the ICU at St. Mike’s. This year the piece was Mahler’s Symphony No.2 appropriately enough. It’s a piece I’ve lived with for a very long time and it never fails to move. It’s a curious contrast with the Fourth which we heard at the symphony last week. If 4 gives a naive and optimistic view of the afterlife, 2 is much darker, more troubled and less certain. Even the very beautiful Urlicht is not without its sense of angst and the final movement is majestic, powerful and has the deepest possible sense of yearning.
Next week is a bit crazy. Tomorrow is the Elizabeth Krehm memorial concert in aid of St. Mike’s ICU. They are playing Mahler 2 and it’s PWYC with a tax receipt. 8pm at Metropolitan United Church. Tueday sees the opening of Philippe Boesmann’s Julie at 8pm at the Bluma Appel. It’s an important, if bleak, contemporary piece and for the first time here, in a Soundstreams/CanStage presentation, it will be sung in English. It runs until the 29th so plenty of chance to catch it.
Xavier Montsalvatge’s El Gato con Botas, given last night by the Glenn Gould School at Mazzoleni Hall, may not be the most profound thing in the opera canon but it is fun. The 1948 score is jazzy and accessible and the libretto has fun with the fairy tale of the scheming cat and her gormless monkey servant. The lighter, even absurdist, elements of the plot were rather played up, and to good effect, in Liza Balkan’s production. Mazzoleni Hall is not the easiest place to present opera. There’s no pit and no way to do surtitles. Not much in the way of wing space or scenery handling either. Balkan got round this by placing the band on stage and using very simple sets and props that often spilled over into the auditorium even getting Charles Sy, sitting in the front row, to take a selfie of the wedding party at the end. Given that the Spanish numbers were not surtitled, it was smart to add extra English dialogue, much of it improvised. I certainly didn’t have any difficulty following the story. Credit too to lighting designer David Degrow too for making the most of the limited resources of Mazzoleni.
Last night’s TSO concert was pretty satisfying. It kicked off with The Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome. I don’t think I’ve ever really listened to this without visuals before so that was interesting. I thought Michael Sanderling did a good job of maintaining clarity while building towards the big climax. For the rest of the program the orchestra was joined by Simone Osborne. We got some “lollipops” in the first half. The Song to the Moon from Rusalka, Depuis le jour from Louise and, unannounced, Vilja from The Merry Widow. Lovely singing, here sensitively accompanied by Sanderling and the orchestra. Simone was clearly audible throughout which doesn’t always happen at Roy Thomson Hall.
Sometimes I illustrate, usually snarky, posts with a picture of a little grey cat in one of her her many and expressive moods. Today I want to talk about her for, as Benjamin Britten put it in Curlew River, “Today is an important day”. Ten years ago this day the lemur and I had just dropped off a batch of foster kittens at the Humane Society. We had seen them through the first hard motherless weeks until they were big enough, independent enough and healthy enough to be adopted by “normal” people. To be honest, we were pretty much kittened out and we needed a break. We had cleaned and packed up the Kitten Kondo and resolved to take at least a few weeks break before taking on another batch of kittens who needed bottle feeding every four hours day and night. Continue reading
operaramblings 