1939, written by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan and directed by Jani ,opened last night at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street theatre. The setting is a Residential School in Northern Ontario which is set to host the King and Queen as part of their 1939 tour of Canada. The Welsh, but fiercely anglophile[1], English teacher decides that putting on a production of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well would be suitable fare for the royals.
I am not a huge fan of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore which has some pretty music but a rather feeble plot, even by bel canto comedy standards. I was enchanted though by the recently released recording of the 2023 Royal Opera House production.
The Happenstancers ended their 2023/24 season last night at 918 Bathurst with a concert called Babes in Toyland. It consisted of mainly late 20th and 21st century chamber works with one unusual Mozart piece (K617 for glass harmonica (Kevin Ahfat), viola (Hee-Soo Yoon( ,cello (Peter Eom), oboe (Aleh Remezau) and flute (Tristan Durie) to spice things up.
The main interest for me was that there was plenty of vocal music featuring soprano Reilly Nelson who not only sang some highly technical music but played bells, scattered playing cards and carried a boom box. The first substantial vocal work was Unsuk Chin’s acrostic-wordplay which is in seven movements with texts created from fragments from Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. (Chin seems to have a bit of an Alice fixation). It’s a complex piece for soprano and a fairly large chamber ensemble with no clear musical structure. The textures vary from spooky and ethereal to aggressively loud and dissonant. Great work here from Reilly and the ensemble conducted by Simon Rivard. Continue reading
Crow’s Theatre opened the season last night with a production of Ibsen’s Romersholm in an adaptation by Duncan Macmillan directed by Chris Abraham. It’s not perhaps Ibsen’s best known play but it’s powerful and somewhat topically relevant and the production at Crow’s is excellent in every way.
Infinite Life, by Annie Baker, in a production directed by Jackie Maxwell, opened at Coal Mine Theatre last night. It’s a play that has garnered acclaim in both London and New York. It’s not hard to see why. It’s the sort of play that perhaps appeals to theatre people (including critics) more than it does to the general public, though it’s not without wider appeal. It requires great skill and precision to bring off precisely because nothing really happens. There’s no narrative thread for a general audience to grasp. That said it is remarkably effective on its own terms.
Edmonton Opera today announced that Robin Whiffen, Executive Director of Against the Grain (though on mat leave for a while now) is joining as their new Executive Director; teaming up again wiith Joel Ivany, Artistic Director, in Edmonton.
Now all the original forces behind AtG have left and what was supposed to be the stability and continuity team has lost its leader (and pretty much everyone else as best I can tell).. AtG have only produced one live show since COVID and that wasn’t really their’s, it was Theatre of Sound’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle which played in Toronto in March 2023. Add to that that they have been without artistic leadership since Ivany left in July 2023 and that’s officially. He took up his Edmonton post in November 2021. Continue reading
Martin Kušej’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Salzburg in 2023 came 20 years after he had last directed a Mozart opera at Salzburg. My reviews (and follow up pieces) of his productions of Don Giovanni (2002, revived 2006) and La clemenza di Tito (2002) are probably two of the most commented on on this blog. So I’m interested to see where this goes.
A couple of months ago I reviewed Jennifer Nicholls’ film of Sweat by Anna Chatterton and Juliet Palmer. It was the main feature in a double bill that also included an animated short from the Canadian Art Song Project of Cecilia Livingston’s arrangement of Wade Hemsworth’s The Wild Goose performed by Lawrence Wiliford and Steven Philcox with animation by students from OCAD.
Well late August has been a bit thin in terms of live performances but September. sees things back with a bang.
I guess I’ve learned never to expect the predictable from Emily D’Angelo (except for the black clothes and boots). Her new album; freezing, is as unexpected as enargeia was four years ago. This album is even less “classical”. The seventeen tracks cover a range of genres. I think I’d classify them as contemporary art song, traditional folk song, singer/songwriter covers and English renaissance. All in all there is a total of 47 minutes of music. Continue reading
operaramblings 