Born to the anvil, not the hammer

Posted on by
3

Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve is often credited with being the first true Spanish opera.  It’s certainly one of very few works in that language one might encounter in an opera house.  It’s hard to see why it’s not performed more often.  It’s a dramatic story about the tragic love affair of a gtpsy girl and a wealthy young man and the music is a blend of verismo and flamenco.  The orchestration is quite exciting and the Spanish influenced vocal lines are very easy on the ear.  It really ought to have a rather wide appeal.

1.salud Continue reading →

Season announcements

Posted on by
2

Announcements for the upcoming season in Toronto are starting to come in.  Voicebox: Opera in Concert have announced a thee show season at the St. Lawrence Centre for the arts. The season opens on Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 2:30 PM with Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana.  This isn’t a work one gets to see very often so even a piano accompanied concert version is very welcome.  Musical Director and Pianist will be Peter Tiefenbach.  Soprano Betty Waynne Allison will sing Elizabeth I with tenor Adam Luther as Essex. The cast also includes Jennifer Sullivan, Jesse Clark and Mark Petracchi.

Continue reading →

Starry Tosca

Posted on by
3

Puccini’s Tosca doesn’t seem to lend itself to Regie type treatments.  Even quite adventurous directors seem to mostly stick to the very specific time and place of the libretto (even though, as Paul Curran pointed out to me, the plot makes no sense in the Rome of 1800).  In the 2012 Royal Opera House recording Jonathan Kent certainly takes very few liberties with the piece; the church is a church, the palace a palace and the castle a castle. There are a few deft design touches.  Both Cavaradossi and Tosca wear very bright colours indicative of the new dyes that became available at the period (actually I think this is a slight anachronism – must check with the fashion lemur) whereas Scarpia is more conservatively attired.  Generally though it’s pretty straightforward.

1.painting Continue reading →

What makes a piece of classical music famous?

Posted on by
6

princess_padA friend posted the following question on Facebook:

“What is the most famous piece of classical music?”

Most of the answers seemed to be an attempt to find a piece of classical music (for some value of “classical”) that was well known as itself.  That surprised and puzzled me a bit but it did cause me to ask the question:

“What makes a piece of classical music famous?”

Continue reading →

Campy Poppea

Posted on by
2

J-P Ponnelle’s 1979 film of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea with Zürich forces conducted by a young Nikolaus Harnoncourt is like his Orfeo only more so.  Sets and costumes are that rather odd “ancient baroque” that Ponnelle is so fond of.  The acting is stylized and hyperkinetic and so is the camera work with close ups from weird angles all over the place.  So far, so Ponnelle.

1.wtf Continue reading →

Straightforward but effective Il Trovatore

Posted on by
1

Verdi’s Il Trovatore really is a peculiar piece.  It’s a bit of a musical hybrid with huge, rousing choruses interspersed with bel canto arias which I suppose is fairly typical of middle period Verdi.  It has a truly silly plot (perhaps based on Blackadder’s lost novel) with gypsies, dead babies and  improbable coincidences galore.  It’s also notoriously hard to cast with five very demanding roles combining a need for flawless bel canto technique with lots of power.  David McVicar’s production at the Metropolitan Opera was broadcast in HD in April 2011 and subsequently released on Blu-ray and DVD.  I saw the HD broadcast and enjoyed it enough to buy the Blu-ray.

1.legend Continue reading →

Paramore shall welcome woe

Posted on by
4

Various thoughts about the Channel 4 film of Britten’s Owen Wingrave led to me seeking out the original BBC TV version from 1970, now available on DVD.  It’s extremely interesting and worthwhile.  Britten himself conducts and the cast includes many of the people involved in the first productions of many other Britten operas.  They include Peter Pears (General Wingrave/Narrator), John Shirley-Quirk (Coyle), Benjamin Luxon (Owen), Janet Baker (Kate), Heather Harper Mrs.Coyle) and Jennifer Vyvyan (Mrs. Julian).  The quality of the music making is superb and I found myself constantly surprised and delighted by details brought out by Britten supported by the excellent English Chamber Orchestra.  At the same time, the fluent and idiomatic singing pointed up the excellence of Myfanwy Piper’s libretto.  This really is Britten at his best.

1.portrait Continue reading →

Another transladaptation

Posted on by
4
Cassandra Warner

Cassandra Warner

There’s another indie opera company in town; Loose Tea Music Theatre.  They are going to be putting on a crowd source funded transladaptation of Carmen called La tragédie de Carmen at Buddies in Bad Times on September the 6th, 7th and 8th.  Details of the show are here and the crowd source funding page is here.  This is no amateur effort.  It’s directed by Alaina Viau who has worked at the ROH.  The title role will be sung by Cassandra Warner, last seen in Opera Atelier’s Magic Flute, and the Don José is Ryan Harper, previously a Rodolfo for Against the Grain’s Tranzac La Bohème.

This was brought to my attention by Lisa Faieta who has a new blog, Soprano vs. the World.  Check it out!

 

Schade rocks

Posted on by
5

Today’s summer second thought is the 2004 Salzburg festival production of Purcell’s King Arthur.  I really enjoyed this first time around and I think it stands up extremely well to repeat viewing.  I pretty much stand by my original review but certain aspects of the production did stand out on repeat viewing.  The first thing that struck me is how these English 17th century works are very much a blend of the vulgar and the sublime (one could argue that that is the defining characteristic of English culture; from Chaucer to Trooping the Colour).  This production, like Jonathan Kent’s The Fairy Queen, successfully blends the two elements.  There’s a really good example at the very end where Michael Schade’s panty strewn rock star “Harvest Home” is followed by a gorgeous and dignifieed “Fairest Isle from Barabara Bonney but there’s lots more; much of reinforced by the sort of special effects that a Restoration audience would have loved.  There’s also some real depth in how it’s done.  First up I found the Merlin dressed as banker’s wife episode very funny but just that.  On rewatching I realised that much more is going on as the scene segs into Merlin explaining to Arthur that everything around him is an illusion.

1.scene Continue reading →