Coming up

Posted on September 20, 2015 by operaramblings

Three things on the calendar this coming week. Tuesday 22nd sees the first free noon concert of the season in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. As custom seems to dictate it’s the Ensemble Studio performing. The full programme is here. It’s also the first gig with Claire Morley in charge.

Friday 25th and Saturday 26th, Friends of Gravity (who curiously do not include our cats) are presenting an intriguing looking version of Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins. The show is at 8pm at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Dundas Street East. Tickets and details.

Also on Saturday, Metro Youth Opera have a season launch party/fundraiser at Opera Bob’s (a watering hole owned and operated by bass Robert Pomakov) It’s at 5pm. Details and tickets.

It’s starting to get busy again.

Pyramus and Thisbe

Posted on September 19, 2015 by operaramblings

The COC’s first main stage production of a contemporary Canadian work in over fifteen years; Barbara Monk Feldman’s Pyramus and Thisbe, is now in the early stages of rehearsal and, yesterday, some of us got a bit of a preview by way of a working rehearsal. What seems to be happening here is that the COC is creating a show of a kind that has not previously been seen on the Four Seasons stage and will shake up a lot of preconceptions of what a company like COC can offer.

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New Voices

Posted on September 18, 2015 by operaramblings

New Voices is the latest CD from the Brooklyn Art Song Society. It features songs by Glen Roven, Michael Djupstrom, James Kallenbach and Herschel Gerfein. What most struck me was the retro feel of all four composers’ works. We are in a tonal sound world with occasional jazz/folk inflections and the piano line is clearly written to support the voice. One might be listening to, say Ned Rorem. I say this because it’s such a contrast with the songs being written by contemporary Canadian composers with their chromaticism, experimental and frequently changing time signatures and often almost adversarial relation between voice and piano. Which one prefers, of course, is a matter of taste.

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The Human Passions

Posted on September 18, 2015 by operaramblings

Tafelmusik’s opening concert of the season, The Human Passions, was structured around the idea that baroque composers use the soloist in a piece; instrumentalist or vocalist, to explore an emotion and that, in the baroque world, from this point of view, the human voice is just another instrument to be explored/exploited. At least I think that’s more or less what Rodolfo Richter said in his introduction.

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Introspection

Posted on September 17, 2015 by operaramblings

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I write here and why I write and where I want to go. Some of this is just that nagging “what is my purpose” thing that’s always hovering in the background, some of it is driven by writing more for Opera Canada and some of it by knowing that I was going to have to talk about it at the Massey College Opera Club. The Massey event happened last night with Iain Scott moderating a session in which Robert Harris of the CBC and Globe and Mail and I were very politely grilled by the formidably intelligent audience. It was a really interesting evening and one that’s led to some really long conversations with Katja this morning and maybe even some conclusions

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Met vs COC – the numbers

Posted on September 16, 2015 by operaramblings

Inspired by this post at Likely Impossibilities on the Met’s 2015/16 season I thought I’d take a look at how the COC compared. Now, one season at COC wouldn’t provide much in the way of stats so I’ve looked at the eight seasons from 2008/9 to 2015/16. (In all the numbers each work in a double bill has been counted as 0.5).

Productions by composer

Verdi unsurprisingly tops the COC list with 15% (Met 17%) closely followed by Puccini (10%) and Mozart (13%) but Puccini is nowhere near as heavily represented as at the Met (21%) and Donizetti only scores 5% versus a whopping 21% in New York. Throw in Rossini and the “big 4” Italians account for 68% of productions in New York versus 36% in Toronto. I didn’t do a full analysis of the percentage of performances because I didn’t have all the data but Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Mozart tend to get more performances per production so, as in New York, production percentages somewhat understate their position. Continue reading →

Toronto Masque Theatre 2015/16 season

Posted on September 16, 2015 by operaramblings

Toronto Masque Theatre’s season features an intriguing mixture of old and new. First up is a contemporary show. It’s Dean Burry’s take on the mumming tradition in his native Newfoundland. The Enoch Turner Schoolhouse is the venue for this retelling of the St George legend with soprano Shannon Mercer as the saint. It tells of his encounters with a rival knight and dragon (both played by mezzo soprano Marion Newman) and romance with the mysterious Princess Zebra (tenor Christopher Mayell). I think you get the general idea. The Mummers’ Masque is on at 8:00pm, 17th-19th December 2015 with a pre-show event at 7:15 pm each evening.

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The ur Nixon

Posted on September 16, 2015 by operaramblings

I found it a bit shocking that John Adam’s Nixon in China wasn’t released on DVD until after the MetHD broadcast in 2011. I was even more shocked when I found out that the original 1987 Houston production had been recorded and broadcast on PBS. Just recently, thanks to a kind reader of this blog, I’ve been able to watch that original broadcast. It’s TV from 1988 recorded on VHS and then digitized so the picture quality isn’t state of the art but the sound is surprisingly good. Continue reading →

This week

Posted on September 15, 2015 by operaramblings

I think it’s about time I started doing a weekly preview of upcoming Toronto events. I’m going to try and make this in a regular slot, probably Sunday, so this is a bit late. The main event this week is the opening of Tafelmusik’s season with a concert featuring mezzo Mireille Lebel. It’s a pretty mixed line up. Lebel will perform arias from Vivaldi’s Il Farnace, and Handel’s Alcina, Ariodante, and Rinaldo. Dominic Teresi performs Vivaldi’s Bassoon Concerto in F Major, RV 485, and Rodolfo Richter performs his own violin transcription of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052. The opening bash is tomorrow night at 7pm with repeats at 8pm on Friday and Saturday and a matinée on Sunday. Trinity St. Paul’s of course.

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Where would you go to see opera in cinema?

Posted on September 15, 2015 by operaramblings

So further to my rant the other day about the ROH and ENO approach to their cinema broadcasts in Canada and the Met’s lock up with Cineplex Odious…

Suppose one were responsible for marketing the Royal Opera or ENO’s product in Canada what would you do? Personally I wouldn’t worry about signing up loads of suburban and small town fleapits. I’d go for the where the opera audience is in the downtown areas of the cities that have opera companies and maybe university towns. I’d also go for the upscale theatres with decent sound and bars with decent beer and that sort of thing. In Toronto that would be the TIFF Lightbox and Bloor Hot Docs. Elsewhere I don’t know but I’d like to push the idea with the ROH marketing folks so any ideas on the “right” cinemas in Montreal or Vancouver or even Hamilton would be most welcome.