October 2024

Posted on September 29, 2024 by operaramblings

oct24 Opera’s back with the start of a new COC season and more. Here’s a look at what I think looks interesting in October.

First up there are two theatre festivals with multiple shows. Aluna Theatre’s RUTAS International Performing Arts Festival runs from September 26th to October 9th (various venues). There’s a distinct Latinx twist to this one. Then from the 16th to the 27th at Buddies in Bad Times there’s the Next Stage Theatre Festival run by the same folks as the Fringe. Both are pretty varied with something for pretty much everyone.

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The Ensemble Studio kicks off a new season

Posted on September 27, 2024 by operaramblings

Wednesday lunchtime saw the members of the COC’s Ensemble Studio kick of the free concert series season in the RBA. It was good. Pianists Brian Cho and Mattia Senesi started off in fine style with a four hands version of the overture to The Barber of Seville and then it was on to the singing.

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Mukashi, Mukashi

Posted on September 26, 2024 by operaramblings

Mukashi, Mukashi; Once Upon a Time, currently playing at the Theatre Centre, is a collaboration between two companies; Toronto’s CORPUS and Osaka’s KIO. It explores two characters who feature prominently in the folklore of Europe and Japan; the wolf and the crane. This is done via a playful exploration of two well known folk tales; Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the Crane-Woman who weaves miraculous cloth.

Kohey Nakadachi in Mukashi, Mukashi_CORPUS_photo by Yoshikazu Inoue

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Lucie de Lammermoor

Posted on September 24, 2024 by operaramblings

Lucie de Lammermoor is Donizetti’s reworking of his Scottish opera for a smaller, non-subsidised Paris theatre. It’s not just a translation. Some scenes are rearranged and minor characters are pruned leaving only six in the cast plus chorus. Donizetti also incorporated what had become performance practice in Italy, substituting an aria from Rosmonda d’Inghilterra; “Que n’avons nous des ailes”, for “Regnava del silencio”. Otherwise the plot is much the same.

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Roberto Zucco

Posted on September 21, 2024 by operaramblings

Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Roberto Zucco (translated by Martin Crimp) is currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times in a production directed by ted witzel. It’s a piece from the 1980s, written as Koltès was dying of AIDS and set in the mean streets of the less salubrious part of a European city, perhaps Paris.

Roberto Zucco_photo of Daniel MacIvor and Jakob Ehman by Jeremy Mimnagh_set and costume by Michelle Tracey, lighting by Logan Raju Cracknell

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The Maple Leaf Forever?

Posted on September 20, 2024 by operaramblings

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.

CS1939-photobyDahliaKatz-7

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Lovely elixir

Posted on September 14, 2024 by operaramblings

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.

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Babes in Toyland

Posted on September 13, 2024 by operaramblings

babesintoyland 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 →

A brilliantly atmospheric Rosmersholm

Posted on September 12, 2024 by operaramblings

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.

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Infinite Life

Posted on September 11, 2024 by operaramblings

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.

Brenda Bazinet, Kyra Harper, and Jean Yoon in InfiniteLife_CoalMineTheatre_byElanaEmer_EE_1589

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