The Seven Deadly Sins

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yesNew kids on the block , The Friends of Gravity, presented their first show last night at St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church on Dundas East.  It was a silent film themed take on Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden.  Stephanie Conn sang both Anna I and Anna II in front of a film screen showing black and white film clips shot by Scott Gabriel for the show, replacing the ballet of the original.  The Family, who pop up mostly to criticize the Annas were sung by Charles Fowler, Christopher Wattam, Bryan Martin and William Lewans.  Scott Gabriel conducted his own arrangement of the score for a six piece band including accordion and ukulele.

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More season announcements

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russiaA few more season announcements have come in.  Off Centre Music Salon have moved to Trinity St. Paul’s.  They have announced two concerts.  This coming Sunday 27th there’s Russia Cast Adrift featuring mezzo soprano Emilia Boteva, tenor Ernesto Ramirez, baritone Geoffrey Sirett, and soprano Nathalie Paulin singing Sviridov’s song cycle Russia Cast Adrift plus works by Rachmaninoff, Gavrillin and Scriabin.  Then on Sunday, November 1st there’s a programme called The Geometry of Love featuring Joni Henson, soprano and Peter McGillivray, baritone with Mark Skazinetsky, violin, Igor Gefter, cello and pianists Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin performing works by Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler, Strauss and Wagner.

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And so it begins

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Yesterday saw the first free concert of the season in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  It was a chance to see the 2015/16 Ensemble Studio; two new singers, one new pianist and six singers and a pianist from last year.  The format was one aria per singer with few surprises.  We also got to hear the core quartet casting for the Ensemble Studio performance of Le Nozze di Figaro later in the season.  No surprises there either; Il Conte – Gordon Bintner, Iain MacNeil – Figaro, La Contessa – Aviva Fortunata, Susanna – Karine Boucher.  That leaves four tenors for the other roles…

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La Comtesse Cecilia

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Rossini’s Le Comte Ory is extremely silly.  It’s a crazy, gender bending romp with no real substance but plenty of rather crude humour and good tunes.  I suspect it’s beyond the wit of any director than do more than make sure the mad cap elements are mad enough but one is, I suppose, bound to try.  For their 2012 production in Zürich, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier chose to set the piece in immediately post war France.  It works well enough and allows for a few visual gags but it doesn’t really add much to the piece.  Nor, though, does it detract.

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Weaving a Tapestry

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Not Michael Mori

I met with Michael Mori of Tapestry Opera on Friday ostensibly to talk about their upcoming season but, as these things tend to, we covered a lot more ground than that.  As far as the season goes I have only a little to add to the previous piece I wrote on this subject.  I can confirm that there will be no LibLab or Tapestry Shorts in 2015/16.  Michael feels that the process has already produced enough composer/librettist connections to allow it to be scaled back to every other year which frees up more time/funds for other projects.  This is clear from this season’s exciting line up with two fully staged chamber operas.

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Coming up

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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.

screenshot-2015-06-19-21-42-15Friday 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

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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

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newvoicesNew 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

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RodolfoRichter-media-room-thumbnailTafelmusik’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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