Recitals at Rosedale opened the season yesterday afternoon with a program entitled A Walk on the Dark Side featuring Leslie Ann Bradley, Alysson McHardy and Geoff Sirett with Rachel Andrist and Robert Kortgaard at the piano. It was an extremely well put together program with a range of pieces on the themes of myths, legends and fairy tales.
This Sunday sees the first of the season for Recitals at Rosedale. Entitled A Walk on the Dark Side: Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales, it will feature soprano Leslie Ann Bradley, mezzo soprano Allyson McHardy and baritone Geoff Sirett with pianists Robert Kortgaard and Rachel Andrist. The programme features works by Mahler, Debussy, Symanowski, Weil, Gershwin and more. It’s on November 9th at 2.30 pm at Rosedale Presbyterian Church and tickets are available here.
Stefania Turkewich
Yesterday, for the second time inside a week, I found myself at a musical event celebrating a nation and a nationalism not my own. It’s a rather weird experience (1). The first had been a performance of Dvoràk’s Jakobin, not reviewed here as I was reviewing for Opera Canada, and yesterday was the launch of the CD set Galicians 1; the fourth instalment of the Ukrainian Art Song Project. This latter is the lovechild of British Ukrainian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka. Indeed it’s almost an obsession. He has tracked down scores for 1000 largely unknown art songs by Ukrainian composers and has plans for them all to be recorded by 2020. The latest bunch are by Galician composers Denys Sichynsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky and Stefania Turkewich. The party line reason for the neglect of this music is, unsurprisingly, persecution under both Tsarist and Soviet regimes. This was mentioned in at least one of the many introductions and speeches of thanks yesterday and provoked a loud “Absolute rubbish!” from the rather scholarly looking gentleman two seats to my right. It does rather look a bit more complicated with composers holding prestigious conservatory posts but eventually falling foul of someone in the apparatus and getting sent to a labour camp for obscure reasons. I don’t think that was unique to Ukrainians.
Every time I go to Roy Thomson Hall, as I did last night to see the TSO perform Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, I have to recalibrate for the acoustic. It’s just much quieter than the Four Season’s Centre and, indeed, many other venues. This has the advantage that coughing is largely inaudible but also that even a large orchestra playing full bore doesn’t exactly blow one’s socks off. So, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that I was more struck by the meditative aspects of this score than its moments of high drama such as the chorus of demons. I’m pretty sure this was just the acoustic because conductor Peter Oundjian was certainly going for maximum effect in those sections. Continue reading
New Yorkers will get a chance to see Zhang Huan’s somewhat controversial production of Handel’s Semele at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in March. The COC is touring the production, seen in Toronto in 2012, with the wonderful Jane Archibald again taking the title role. The supporting cast is, on paper at least, more than a match for the one seen at COC. Colin Ainsworth is the god Jupiter, and Welsh contralto Hilary Summers portrays both Jupiter’s jealous wife, Juno, and Ino, Semele’s sister. Katherine Whyte playsJuno’s messenger, Iris and Kyle Ketelsen sings both Semele’s father, Cadmus, and the god of sleep, Somnus. Athamas will be sung by Lawrence Zazzo. Christopher Moulds conducts with the COC Orchestra and Chorus.
Last Days is a staging of songs and texts from and about WW1. It’s directed by Tim Albery with music direction by David Fallis and it’s performed by students from the University of Toronto Opera Program. 
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From the Stadttheater Bern. It’s Ariadne auf Naxos of course. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out who is who.
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Talisker Players’ first concert of the season was an interesting mix of material around the general theme of travel; the music neing intersperse with related texts read most pleasingly by Derek Boyes. First up was soprano Virginia Hatfield with a French baroque rarity; Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Le Sommeil d’Ulisse. This piece is scored for flute, violin and harpsichord continuo and the violin part in particular, very well played here, takes an important role. The piece, which is largely recitative, was sung stylishly, beautifully and, as always, extremely accurately by Ms. Hatfield. One quibble though. If one is expecting the audience to use the provided translation of the text it might be advisable to leave the lights up enough to allow them to be read!
November 17th sees the second annual Elizabeth Krehm memorial concert. It’s at Metropolitan United Church at 8pm and will feature Beethoven’s 9th sympony. The soloists will be Rachel Krehm, Erin Lawson, Adrian Kramer and Jeremy Bowes with the Canzona Chamber Players and a choir drawn from the Univox Choir and friends of the Krehm family. Evan Mitchell conducts. Admission is by tax receiptable donation to St. Michael’s Hospital where Elizabeth spent the last month of her life.
On 28th November, at Runnymede United Church a starry cast are donating their services for a charity performance of Bach’s Weinachtsoratorium. The beneficiaries will be the Toronto Symphony Volunteer Committee Education Program and Open Table Community Meal at Runnymede United Church. Johannes Debus will conduct the Bach Consort with soloists Monica Whicher, Vicki St. Pierre, Lawrence Wiliford, Colin Ainsworth and Russell Braun. Tickets are $50 in advance or $60 on the door.
2013/14 saw the decline in ticket sales and box office revenue at the COC continue, though less precipitously than in the previous couple of years. Sales were down from 109297 tickets in 2012/13 to 106748 seats sold in 2013/14. Revenue was also down from $9.9 million to $9.7 million. A reduction in performances boosted capacity utilisation to 94% but heavy discounting at both ends of the season left the revenue per seat essentially static at just under $91.
operaramblings 