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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Classics Reimagined

Posted on February 2, 2016 by operaramblings

I’ve seen Robert Pomakov and the Gryphon Trio perform together a few times now and it’s always interesting. Today’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was no exception. Four of Mozart’s concert arias for bass and orchestra, arranged for string trio by Bohdana Frolyak, were interspersed with movements of Heather Schmidt’s Lunar Reflections; a 2008 piece commissioned by the Gryphons inspired by the moon in different seasons of the year. It was stimulating. The concert arias (K.432, K.513, K.512 and K.612) all showcase the bass voice with tectonic low notes and plenty of opportunity for virtuosity. I think they suited Robert pretty well. He’s perhaps not the most subtle of singers but he’s exciting (and loud!) and the trio accompaniment provided so much more than piano alone could.

The Schmidt piece was also enjoyable. It’s fairly approachable and the five movements are quite varied. The first two; Blue Moon and Pink Moon, are quite lyrical, even lush in a slightly post romantic sort of way then comes Wolf Moon which is in an altogether darker place; slower, louder and more dissonant with lots of work for the low notes on the cello. Snow Moon continues in a slower, somewhat dissonant vein but is much lighter textured and the piece concludes quite violently with the aggressive and abrasive Thunder Moon which puts serious demands on all three players but especially the piano. Unsurprisingly, I feel I’ve probably not done this piece justice. I find I need to hear work of this kind more than once to fully appreciate it.

I Capuletti e I Montecchi

Posted on January 31, 2016 by operaramblings

The story line for Bellini’s opera I Capuletti e I Montecchi will be familiar enough though it’s very condensed and based on the earlier source by Bandello rather than Shakespeare’s more elaborate reworking. So, lots of feuding but no back story, no balcony scene, no friar’s cell. But (spoiler alert) the ending is the same. Vincent Broussard’s production, originally from Munich but filmed in San Francisco in 2012, sets the work around the time of its composition and seems at times to reference that it was composed for the Venice Carnivale. It also veers around between being quite literal and trying to make the story something going on in Romeo’s head. The production is quite influenced visually by the fact that the costumes were designed by Christian Lacroix and it’s unclear whether he’s trying to support the production concept or promote his brand.

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