It’s official. Tony Dean Griffey will sing the title role in tomorrow night’s opening performance of Peter Grimes at the COC, replacing an indisposed Ben Heppner. The party line is that Ben will sing the remaining performances. We will see. Certainly Tony is scheduled to start a run of Fledermaus in Houston on the 25th and the last Grimes is on the 26th. This story isn’t over. Whatever else goes down, let’s hope Ben makes a speedy recovery from whatever ails him.
The lovely Miriam Khalil and Acadian pianist Julien LeBlanc will bring their recital Airs Chantés to Toronto for one performance at Gallery 345 on Oct. 24, 2013. The program comprises French and Spanish art songs of the Impressionistic and 20th-century period. The first half of the recital will include excerpts from Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées and will conclude with Poulenc’s well-known song cycle Airs Chantés. The second half is rounded out by three French melodies by Massenet, Ravel and Delibes in a Spanish style, Jesus Guridi’s uncommonly performed Seis Canciones Castellanas and three songs from Obrador’s Canciones Classicás españolas. The show begins at 7:30 p.m. with doors opening at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $25 and are available at http://www.miriamkhalil.com and at the door.
There are some interesting tidbits scattered through the latest edition of the COC’s house magazine Prelude. They include a return to a six production season from 2014/15 (the last few years there have been seven). This is intended to free up cash to make the remaining productions more ambitious (as well as stem what was shaping up as an increasingly dodgy financial position). There is talk of “more grand opera” and “a great amount of Wagner on the COC’s horizon”. It’s also very clear that the current model of “challenging” productions (including Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni) and encouraging established stars to make role debuts in Toronto will continue.
All of this makes sense to me from a business and an artistic viewpoint. Going more populist in search of a probably non-existent fringe audience seems to me wishful thinking at best. Giving the core audience a high quality product, aimed at those with real interest in the form, mixed with fiscal prudence just feels like the right way to go.
Anthony Dean Griffey was flown into Toronto yesterday to replace Ben Heppner in the final dress rehearsal of the COC’s Peter Grimes which opens on Saturday. There has been no official announcement of a cast change but I’m making enquiries. Reports from the dress say that the einspringer was splendid.
This in from the COC… “Yes, it’s true that Anthony Dean-Griffey sang the dress rehearsal. Ben wasn’t feeling well and since he knows the role so well, he was resting up for opening night.”
Also in today’s mailbox, the season announcement from the Talisker Players; a group who specialize in mixing music and the spoken word.
The 2013/14 season kicks off with City of the Mind, a concert about cities, ancient and modern featuring soprano Erin Bardua, mezzo soprano Vicki St. Pierre and baritone Joel Allison. The show begins in the 15th century, with Les Cris de Paris, a consort piece based on the cries of street vendors in the French capital. Moving ahead a couple of centuries, Tommasso Giordani’s Addio di Londra, for soprano with violin, viola and continuo, is an ode to a famous but unnamed personage upon his departure from London, entreating him to remember the sights of the city in his travels abroad. The programme also features a rare North American performance of a selection of Wiener lieder and the Venetian Boat Song, a 19th century salon piece by Jacques Blumenthal, for mezzo soprano, violin and piano. Very popular in its day, it is a reminder of the era of the “grand tour” of Europe. Moving into the 20thcentury we start in New York City with excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s iconic On the Town, arranged by Laura Jones for baritone, soprano and string quartet, and finishing in Toronto with two pieces; Andrew Ager’s Ellis Portal, for baritone, mezzo soprano, clarinet and string quartet, about the city at night; and Erik Ross’s Concrete Toronto for soprano and saxophone.
In perhaps the most anticipated announcement on the Toronto music scene, Against the Grain Theatre have released the line up for their 2013/14 season which features Handel’s Messiah and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande; both with fine casts. Full text of the announcement under the cut.
Casting details for Opera 5’s Halloween themed show, Requiescat in Pace, have been announced. The singing line up is soprano Lucia Cesaroni, American baritone and recent Tanglewood fellow David Tinervia and, making a welcome return to Toronto, baritone Adrian Kramer.
With two nights to go to the start of the COC’s season the discounting has started already. The deal is buy tickets for any two other operas and get free tickets for La Bohème. The deal is good for performances on October 16, 25, 27, 29 and 30 and appears to apply for all but the cheapest and most expensive seats. The website isn’t exactly splashing the news around. You will only see the offer if you try to buy tickets for La Bohème or if you just happen to be poking around to see how well things are selling.
As part of yesterday’s Koerner Hall concert yesterday there was a panel discussion between the President of the RCM, the Artistic Director of the ARC Ensemble and the Director of Koerner Hall. Unsurprisingly the President at one point made a pitch about the value of the arts in education and deprecated the cuts that have been made in that area by various governments. Fair enough. That’s his job and, anyway, I agree with him. What did raise my hackles was his contrasting the “creative” arts with “drilling” (his word) in maths and science.
As some of my readers may know, mathematics was once my field and it, and theoretical physics, remain important interests. Now it’s quite possible, likely even, that someone running a conservatory never got far enough in mathematics to experience just how deeply creative it can be but there’s no excuse for not knowing it can be. Some of the most subtle and beautiful ideas can only be understood mathematically. And here’s the irony. It’s just like music. You have to do a hell of a lot of grunt work to get to the point where you can do beautiful mathematics just as even the best musicians still have to practice and play scales. This is probably true of anything where deep skill is involved. That apparently effortless blind back of the hand pass of Richie McCaw’s comes from hours on the training field as much as from brilliance.
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“Culture Days” is a weekend long festival in Toronto where various arts organisations put on free events. This year it included a concert in Koerner Hall by the ARC Ensemble with guests Baritone Peter Barrett and cellist Se-Doo Park. The main draw for me was Respighi’s Il tramonto; a setting for baritone and string quartet of an Italian translation of Shelley’s The Sunset. This was indeed very well executed but was far from the most interesting part of the afternoon.
It was actually the final piece that was the revelation; Castelnuevo-Tedesco’s Piano Quintet No. 1. It’s a really fun piece in high romantic style with tons of melodic ideas and lots of colour. It was given a truly virtuoso performance by Erika Raum, Benjamin Bowman, Steven Dann, Se-Doo Park and Dianne Werner. I think I’ll be looking for more examples of Castelnuevo-Terdesco’s work.
operaramblings 