Canadian tenor Jamie McLennan has a video blog. As he puts it, “It’s just me, my iPhone, a $40 mic and whoever I can grab to work the camera.” Below you can see him at work during rehearsals of Verdi’s Falstaff in Hamilton(*). It’s worth watching just to see Sasha Djihanian twerking.
(*)For non Canadians, Hamilton, ON is a sort of Canadian Scunthorpe or Redcar. Not, perhaps a typical opera venue.
So what was I most impressed with on the opera and related scene in in 2013?
Big house opera
The COC had a pretty good twelve months. I enjoyed everything I saw except, maybe, Lucia di Lammermoor. Making a choice between Christopher Alden’s probing La Clemenza di Tito, the searing opening night of Peter Sellars’ Tristan und Isolde; the night when I really “got” why people fly across oceans to see this piece, Robert Carsen’s spare and intensely moving Dialogues des Carmélites or Tony Dean Griffey’s intense and lyrical portrayal of the title character in Peter Grimes is beyond me. So, I shall be intensely disloyal to my home company and name as my pick in this category the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Wernicke’s production is pure magic and Anna Schwanewilms was a revelation.
Dieter Dorn’s production of Idomeneo, filmed at the Bayerisches Staatsoper in 2008 has some interesting ideas and some arresting images but ultimately it’s hard to figure out where he is trying to go. There’s a lot to like. He clearly places Elettra as a member of the House of Atreus which makes her more believable. He also creates credible personalities for Ilea, Idamante, idomeneo and Arbace. No mean feat. Some of the images are quite arresting too. There is lots of blood and plenty of stage action. The sets are chaotic piles of stuff. Idamante gets a killer sea monster hunting rig. Then there is the ending. Instead of finishing on the “final chorus” the chorus drape the set with white sheets and for ten minutes the orchestra play what is listed in the booklet as a ballet but there is noone on stage and nothing is happening. Going out on ten minutes of the most boring music in the opera is just bizarre.
First up is Toronto Operetta Theatre’s annual holiday offering. This year it’s Lehar’s Land of Smiles and the cast includes Adam Fischer, Curtis Sullivan, Ernesto Ramirez and Lara Ciekiewicz. Guillermo Silva-Marin directs and Derek Bate conducts. There are eight performances between December 27th and January 5th including a gala performance and dinner/dance on New Year’s Eve. Venue is the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts and tickets are available here.
My acquaintance with Korngold’s Die tote Stadt has been pretty much limited to recital and competition performances of Glück, das mir verlieb, better known as Marietta’s Lied and, apparently, the last opera aria to become a hit single and Fritz’ act 2 piece Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen. So, I was quite glad to get my hands on a complete recording of this lushly lyrical and rather weird piece. The “dead city” of the title is Brugge and the story concerns a wealthy man, Paul, who has turned his house, and his life, into a shrine to his dead wife Marie. He encounters a dancer, Marietta, who very closely resembles his late wife. What follows is wild and chaotic and is, ultimately, revealed to be a dream. Paul realises that only in the next world can he be reunited with Marie.
Here are a few images of the Against the Grain Messiah reviewed earlier. They are all from the final dress rehearsal. Photo credits – Darryl Block.
Expectations could hardly have been higher for last night’s first performance of Against the Grain’s new production of Handel’s Messiah. By and large they were met. It’s become quite the thing to stage Handel’s oratorios and, for the most part, that’s fine. They are really operas in disguise and work well when liberated from the concert setting. Messiah is trickier. Rather than a linear narrative there are a series of Biblical texts selected by librettist Charles Jennens to promote a literal and conservative evangelical Christianity. There is no obvious staging solution. One possibility is to invent a narrative and spin the story around it as Claus Guth did at Theater an der Wien in 2009. AtG’s Joel Ivany’s solution is to stage it as a choreographed performance and use movement to bring depth to the words. Here he is aided and abetted by choreographer Jennifer Nichols who has created a movement language tailored to the abilities and limitations of the singers.
La Fura dels Baus mounted a spectacular production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at the Festival Castell de Peralada in 2012. The concept has the orchestra in costume, on stage and fully involved in the action. There are lots of video projections and spectacular lighting effects. In fact at times the whole thing resembles a son et lumière. There’s also lots of aerial action. It’s all rather exciting. Great work from director Carlus Padrissa.
Have you got your tickets? You really should.
Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th at the Opera House on Queen East it’s the Against the Grain Messiah.
Well there wasn’t actually an open fire at Koerner Hall last night, though one would have been very welcome on a very cold Toronto evening, but there were plenty of old chestnuts at the Great Songs of Italy concert given by the Ontario Philharmonic Orchestra under Marco Parisotto with tenor soloist Richard Margison. The concert consisted of a mixture of opera extracts; vocal and instrumental, a couple of Neapolitan songs and Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. It was a bit like eating one of those giant Toblerone bars all at once but I don’t suppose anyone really expected it to be any different and the audience for the most part loved it.
operaramblings 