So here we go with a round up of the best things I saw and listened to in 2024.
Opera
The Toronto opera scene is still a bit flat and lacking the vibrancy of pre-pandemic with Against the Grain pretty much invisible and Tapestry wrapped up in building out their new digs. Still, there were some good shows. The best of the CCC’s offerings, IMO, were Cherubini’s Medea in the spring and Gounod’s Faust in the fall. Beyond the COC, William Christie and co’s presentation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at TSM was refreshingly different, Opera 5 bounced back with a rather good production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and let’s throw Art of Time Ensemble’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale into this category too. There were a couple of excellent student shows. The GGS produced a very good Dialogues of the Carmelites early in the year and UoT Opera chipped in with their Three Islands show featuring three one act operas directed by Tim Albery. Continue reading
Lines of Life is a CD produced out of a deep collaboration between German baritone Benjamin Appl and Hungarian composer György Kurtág. It’s a mixture of works by Schubert and Kurtág (with one song by Brahms at the end). It centers on Kurtág’s Hölderlin-Gesänge Op.35a but there are other Kurtág works on the disk too, Most of these are sung a capella but there are four settings of texts by Ulrike Schuster that have piano accompaniment (Pierre-Laurent Aimard). The Schubert songs feature James Baillieu on piano except for the last one, and the Brahms, where Kurtág himself accompanies. 
Rachel Fenlon is a very rare, perhaps unique, talent. She’s the only Lieder singer I know who accompanies herself on the piano. 
Transpositions is an unusual album in more than one way. For starters, the music is composed by a duo; Unsettled Scores consisting of Spy Dénommé-Welch and Catherine Magowan. These are the folks responsible for 
I’ve enjoyed the music of Drew Jurecka and Rebekah Wolkstein in a variety of genres and formats; Payadora Tango Ensemble, Schmaltz and Pepper etc, but I’ve never heard their string quartet; the Venturi SQ. But now I’ve had a chance to listen to their debut album which is due to be released next year on Leaf Records. It features a new quartet by Drew Jurecka plus the Ravel String Quartet in F. Besides Jurecka and Wolkstein the Venutis comprise Shannon Knights on viola and Lydia Munchinsky on cello. 
operaramblings 