Telling Tales

Posted on November 7, 2025 by operaramblings

This year’s Wirth Vocal Prize winner, Kate Fogg, gave the now customary recital in the RBA on Thursday accompanied by Nate Ben-Horin. The recital was titled Telling Tales and covered soprano rep across art song, musical theatre and opera (just); all in English. Since the opera and art song pieces were by Ricky Ian Gordon, Ned Rorem and Stephen Sondhem as opposed to say brett Dean or George Benjamin it all had pretty much a musical theatre feel; so in many ways not really my music.

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Composers who fled the Nazis

Posted on November 5, 2025 by operaramblings

Äneas Humm and Renata Rohlfing’s new album Sehnsucht features songs from four composers whose careers were derailed by Nazi persecution of the Jews. Three of them; Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Eric Zeisl were Viennese composers who left for the United States though none of them managed to make the kind of success (financially at least) that Korngold and Weill achieved, though Schoenberg’s reputation was sufficiently established that he survived the transition pretty much intact. The fourth composer is Henriette Bosmans who was half Jewish and survived the war in Amsterdam though unable to perform after 1942. The songs by the Germans are settings of German texts. Bosmans’ songs are in French. Continue reading →

Julie Boulianne and friends

Posted on November 4, 2025 by operaramblings

Last Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a showcase for the collaborative pianists of the McGill-UdeM Piano Vocal Arts programme. Each of the five pianists on show got to accompany mezzo Julie Boulianne for a set of songs. Or put another way, Julie got to perform for an hour with five pianists.

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Like Flesh

Posted on November 3, 2025 by operaramblings

So another rather interesting chamber opera from Europe has come my way. It’s Like Flesh; music by Sivan Eldar and English language libretto by Cordelia Lynn. It’s 80 minutes long and uses three soloists, a chorus of six and an eight piece instrumental group plus electronics. It’s sort of a modern ecological take on Ovid’s idea of a woman turning into a tree. Here the woman is unhappily married to the Forester who buys into the basic idea that Nature exists to serve humans and is a willing accomplice in environmental degradation. There’s also a female student who is studying the forest and is discovering much that isn’t covered in the classroom. The transformation takes place against a back drop of destructive wild fires and the wanton felling of woodland to make way for concrete. Given the subject matter, the libretto is really quite poetic. Continue reading →

The Far Side of the Moon

Posted on November 2, 2025 by operaramblings

The Far Side of the Moon opened at Canadian Stage on Saturday evening. It’s a Robert Lepage production; written, designed and directed by him. It’s very Lepage with the strengths and weaknesses one might expect. We will come to that in more detail. It’s a homage to Lepage’s childhood obsession with the US and Soviet space programmes and to the moon in general. It plays out in two parallel narratives; the space programmes from Sputnik 1 to the Apollo Soyuz mission in 1975 and the tale of two brothers in Quebec City circa late 1990s. The older is an introverted nerd working on a doctoral thesis about popular perceptions of the space programmes and narcissism. The younger brother is a presenter for the Weather Channel and is shallower than the water over Dogger Bank at low spring tide. Their mother has just died and they are clearing out her apartment in an Old People’s Home.

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Judita

Posted on October 31, 2025 by operaramblings

Frano Parać’s opera Judita is unusual in at least one respect. The libretto is in Old Croatian and is based on a 1501 epic poem by Marko Marulić, in turn based on the Book of Judith so the story is the familiar one about Judith and Holofernes. It’s quite short; around 70 minutes, and it follows the biblical story pretty closely.

It premiered in Split in 2000 (both Parać and Marulić are/were from the city) but the recording was made at a live concert performance in Munich in 2023. It’s a pretty interesting piece. The music is clearly modern but essentially tonal. It’s got lots of energy and is sometimes quite grand and dramatic but also with quieter moments. There are elements of minimalism, especially in the rather declamatory and percussive music given to the Assyrian soldiers. Continue reading →

Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night

Posted on October 30, 2025 by operaramblings

In my review of Opera Atelier’s production of The Magic Flute I had this t say about Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night… “Her coloratura was powerful and pinpoint, and as the applause died down she reappeared and reprised the most spectacular section with additional stratospheric high notes.”

Now you can see the reprise for yourself on Instagram. I wasn’t kidding.

L’Empire Étrange

Posted on October 29, 2025 by operaramblings

The first concert in Soundstreams’ Encounters series took place at Hugh’s Room on Tuesday evening. It was a presentation of Andrew Balfour’s L’Empire Étrange which is a sort of meditation on the idea of Louis Riel. It begins “Comment chanter Louis Riel, Do you know me?” and that’s the only time his name appears so it’s not, in any way, a narrative of Riel’s life and it’s not hagiographic.

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Sky of My Heart

Posted on October 28, 2025 by operaramblings

New York Polyphony are a quartet of singers; Geoffrey Williams – counter-tenor, Steven Caldicott Wilson and Andrew Fuchs – tenors and Craig Phillips – bass. On Sky of My Heart they mostly sing unaccompanied but are joined by the LeStrange Viols (Loren Ludwig and John Mark Rozendaal – treble viol, Kivie Cahn-Lipman – tenor viol, Zoe Weiss and Douglas Kelley – bass viol).

The album is a mix of Renaissance and contemporary pieces; most of the latter composed for NYP. They are very good singers with terrific control and a very clean largely vibrato free sound that works well for most of the music on the disk. Some of the material is religious; William Byrd’s setting of Ecce quam bonum, Becky McGlade’s setting of Prudentius’ Of the Father’s Love Begotten and Ivan Moody’s settings of three excerpts from the Song of Songs. All of these are unaccompanied in a churchy sort of style. Continue reading →

Lohengrin with a twist

Posted on October 26, 2025 by operaramblings

Sometimes opera directors come up with a twist to a plot hat is illuminating without requiring pretzel logic to actually align it with the libretto. I think Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabit’s production of Wagner’s Lohengrin for the Wiener Staatsoper in 2024 manages that pretty well.

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