Before heading over to the Daniels Spectrum last night I dropped in on the 2014/15 Royal Conservatory season announcement at Koerner Hall. The line up of 100 concerts is eclectic; chamber and orchestral, world music and jazz and a small number of vocal concerts which are probably the ones of most interest to readers of this blog.
In concept/development/workshop since 2001, Brian Current and Anton Piatigorsky’s chamber opera, Airline Icarus, got its first complete, staged performance last night in a production directed by Tim Albery in the Ada Slaight Hall at the Daniels Spectrum. It’s an ambitious work taking us on a journey into the minds of the passengers and crew on a flight to Cleveland. It explores fear and desire and our need, as a society, to reach for ever greater heights regardless of cost. Hence the title. It only runs 60 minutes or so but it covers a lot of ground. More in fact than I could fully grasp without a copy of the libretto or surtitles. It’s also, refreshingly, not afraid to be funny in places.
So along with the late night (10pm start) June 14th Roy Thomson Hall concert of Mason Bates’ Garages of the Valley (a Canadian première/TSO Co-Comission) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5 there’s a tailgate party at 7.30pm in the car park and an after party in the lobby. The former features all you can eat food from Kaplansky’s and Smokes Poutinerie with the after party featuring food from Big Daddy’s.Those of us over 40 are not encouraged to attend; a line will probably be endorsed by local cardiologists. Full details here.
There are a couple of Essential Opera shows scheduled for the KW area in June. On June 7th at 2pm they are presenting a double bill of Haydn’s L’isola disabitata and Donizetti’s Il campanello at the New Hamburg Festival of the Arts. Singers include Maureen Batt, Erin Bardua,Stefan Fehr and Giovanni Spanu. Tickets are $20 (free for students) and available here.
Norbert Palej’s new piece East o’the Sun and West o’the Moon, commissioned by the Canadian Children’s Opera Company opened at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront last night. It’s based on a Norwegian folk tale and tells the story of a girl, Rose, who does a deal with a magic white bear to feed her starving family. The bear, of course, is really a prince who has been cursed by a witch. Rose tricks the witch and marries the prince. There are also trolls. Lots of them.
Billy Budd is the second of Britten’s large scale operas. Originally envisaged as a four act piece with prologue and epilogue it was later reorganised into two acts and that’s the version the BBC recorded and broadcast in 1966. That broadcast has now been released on DVD. Technically it shows it’s age. The picture is 4:3 black and white though there’s a remastered, and very decent, LPCM mono sound track. There’s also an enhanced Dolby mono track. The video too has been restored and looks pretty decent.
There are a few operatic events coming up in June although, as usual things are slowing down a bit.
On June 1st at 7pm, Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky has a recital at Koerner Hall singing works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Medtner and Liszt. Ivari Ilja will accompany on piano.
Brian Current’s new opera Airline Icarus will open at 8pm on June 3rd at Ada Slaight Hall in the Daniels Spectrum complex. The piece stars Krisztina Szabó and Alexander Dobson, among others. Tim Albery directs. The show runs until June 8th. Tickets are $20-$75 and are available here.
The final show of the season for the Talisker Players, at Trinity St. Paul’s last night, was titled A Poet’s Love and featured baritone Alexander Dobson and actor Stewart Arnott in the usual Talisker format of alternating music and readings on a theme. The first musical piece was John Beckwith’s Love Lines which took five pieces ranging from Handel’s Where’er you walk to Gershwin’s Blah, Blah, Blah and presented them with the vocal line cleaving straightforwardly to the melody with the accompaniment “deconstructed” into “fragments” for violin, viola, cello and double bass. It’s a rather disturbing piece, especially when one knows the source material well. I’d like to hear it again. It was given an honest and engaging presentation by Dobson and the strings.
The last of this season’s Recitals at Rosedale was on the theme of the the Seven Deadly Sins. It was an interesting and enjoyable afternoon, perhaps notable as much for what it had to say about the state of the industry as for the music making. The format was four singers moving fairly rapidly between short (more the most part) songs linked by a one or two sentence chosen text. The effect was to keep things moving along swiftly and even to generate a kind of narrative arc. There was no time for applause between numbers for example. It was a very different feel from the traditional art song recital where one or two singers sing sets of related songs. It was also quite operatic. All the singers chose to act physically and with the voice. Again, a far cry from the art song tradition where a raised eyebrow is considered over acting. Overall I thought it worked and in a city where the music commentariat has been lamenting the death of the art song recital for years somebody has to try something!
Cecilia and Bryn at Glyndebourne is the DVD recording of a concert from 1999 featuring two of those singers who prove you don’t have to be dead skinny to be a great singer and have a commanding stage presence. It’s great fun, focussing on the lighter end of the repertoire for the most part. It’s mostly Mozart with some Rossini, Donizetti, Haydn and Handel thrown in. There are a couple of overtures and a few arias but the greatest pleasure comes in the duets. For the second time in a week I got to see Lá ci darem la mano sung by singers of extremely contrasting heights and where else is one going to see Mr. Terfel and Ms. Bartoli sing the Pa-pa-pa-pa duet from Die Zauberflöte. As ever Ceci’s coloratura is a thing of wonder and Bryn is no slouch. The accompaniment is ably provided by Myung-Whun Chung and the London Philharmonic. It’s the perfect antidote to a week of watching Wozzeck.
operaramblings 