Czardas Princess

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Toronto Operetta Theatre’s New Year’s offering is Imre Kalman’s Czardas Princess.  It’s lively and tuneful and not overly serious being basically a succession of Austro-Hungarian Empire stereotypes.  To whit Prince Somebody von und zu Wherever-Etcetera is in love with a Hungarian cabaret singer with an unpronounceable name from a pig rearing village with an equally dubious moniker when he’s supposed to be marrying his countess cousin.  All the usual s/he loves, s/he loves me not plus parental disapproval play out until a shocking revelation.  So the Prince gets his girl and his cousin gets a Hungarian count (probably a somewhat richer pig farmer) as a consolation prize.  They all live happily ever after, or at least until 1914.

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Upcoming in the New Year

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Here’s some of what January has to offer…

Toronto Operetta Theatre is doing Imre Kalman’s The Czardas Princess over the New Year holiday.  It’s st the Jane Mallett Theatre and there are shows on December 30th and January 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

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Shostakovich from the Leningrad Philharmonic

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Back when I was first getting acquainted with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich perhaps the most widely available recordings of the symphonies were the ones by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky on the Melodiya label.  They were quite distinctive; blaring brass, and in some ways sounding rather crude.  Was that what the conductor/composer wanted?  Was that how the orchestra played?  Or was it an artefact of the recordings?  As many of them are now available in various remasters from assorted labels I could dig a bit bit deeper and maybe I will but meanwhile what has come my way is a remastered release from two concerts the Leningrad Philharmonic; conducted by Arvids Jansons (father of Maris), gave in London in September 1971 and which were broadcast on the BBC.

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Opera Revue at Granite Brewery

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Last week I caught Opera Revue’s last Toronto show of the year at Granite Brewery.  The usual gang; Danie Friesen, Alexander Hajek and Claire Elise-Harris, were joined by tenor Ryan Downey for, what else, a holiday themed show.  There was a mix of secular  and sacred Christmas music plus a few parodies.  And the Grinch put in an appearance.  So a pretty typical OR show and, as always, a welcome opportunity to hear some music performed well in an informal setting, beer in hand.

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Ensemble Studio do the standards

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Last Tuesdays’s concert in the RBA featured four singers and two pianists from the Ensemble Studio in a concert of highly recognisable opera arias.  I guess with Barber of Seville and Rigoletto coming p on the FSC stage that was a bit inevitable.  It was though very well done with all four singers not only singing well but really conveying a sense of character.

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Where Her Music Blooms

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Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a challenging programme of song by contemporary women composers presented by soprano Ariane Cossette and pianist Brian Cho.  Kaija Saariaho’s Quatre instants sets four related poems by Amin Maalouf.  In some ways it’s in the same sort of psychological space as their L’amour de loin; love at a distance, love requited and unrequited, love sensual and quasi-spiritual, but musically it’s very different.  It’s much more abrasive and (mostly) less lyrical.  Sometimes its really busy and quite angry.  It’s also very, very complex and often quite loud, demanding great skill and stamina from both performers.  The piano part features loads of trills and arpeggiation and the vocal line has awkward intervals and even screaming.  It was handled really well.

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C’est nous les dieux, ni yw y duwiau

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HORIZON:MADOG is a new chamber opera with music by Paul Frehner and a trilingual libretto by Angela J. Murphy.  In a not too distant future where the world has been devastated by flooding and electro-magnetic storms, Madog; a descendant of the legendary Welsh prince, leads a movement for a more eco-friendly, less tech dependent future.  He hears (scratchily) a radio broadcast from Wales promising, essentially, a tech fix, which he regards with scorn, and, in his dreams, his ancestor urging him to action.  A plan emerges. Continue reading →

A most unusual cello recital

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Anyone familiar with the work of cellist Peter Eom, who performed on Wednesday in the RBA, would not have been expecting a collection of Bach and Britten pieces.  They might have been surprised though by the floor layout, which featured six “cello stations”.  Peter’s introduction stated that his recital was titled Primordial because he wanted to suggest rituals, dreams and surrealism and he wanted us to take the recital on whatever terms we, or our subconsciousnesses, chose but to experience it as a single whole played end to end.

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Rogers v. Rogers

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Michael Healey’s Rogers v. Rogers directed by Chris Abraham opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night.  It’s a sort of follow up to The Master Plan in that it’s Toronto based and deals with corporate greed and incompetence coupled to governmental ineptitude and general inability to keep up with the corporate world.  It’s different in that it’s two related stories mashed together and, more notably, in that Tom Rooney plays all the characters.

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