Alex Hetherington and Ariane Cossette’s last recital as members of the Ensemble studio happened on thursday lunchtime in the RBA. It was charming. We got a varied selection of art songs bookended by a couple of opera duets. They opened with “Miro O Norma… Si, fino all’ora estreme”. They blended well with Ariane, as Norma, displaying considerable power and richness of tone without overwhelming her Adalgisa.
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. Continue reading
Dvořák’s Rusalka is pretty well served on video but the latest recording has a very strong cast and I was intrigued. It was recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2023 and features, among others, Asmik Grigorian in the title role and Sarah Connolly as Ježibaba.
The Wrong Bashir by Zahida Rahemtulla is currently playing at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Paolo Santalucia. The story is set in the Isma’ili community in Toronto and all the families concerned were among those kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin. Quite a lot of the story concerns Isma’ili religious institutions and practices about which I am woefully ignorant. Not knowing doesn’t detract from the experience of seeing the play and I have used circumlocutions below rather than try and figure out the technical terms used in the play
Throughout the history of Italian opera the long running feud between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines has provided composers and librettists with endless opportunities for pointless revenge killings and other assorted mayhem. They werer still doing it in 1907 when Frencesco Cilea premiered his short three act opera Gloria.
The second Tapestry show this week which played Wednesday night at Theatre Passe Muraille was Jennifer Tung’s Iron Chef d’Orchestre. Knowing Jennifer’s kitchen prowess I expected this to be at least as food inspired as the previous night’s Le Kitchen Party but it wasn’t.
On Tuesday night Theatre Passe Muraille hosted the first of two “music and food” shows curated by members of the Women in Musical Leadership programme under the auspices of Tapestry Opera. Juliane Gallant trawled her Acadian roots to create Le Kitchen Party.fun.
Here’s an events listing for June as it currently stands:
The late Sir Andrew Davis was a life-long advocate for the music of Sir Michael Tippett so it’s fitting that one of his last recordings (perhaps the last?) should be of that composer’s A Child of Our Time. It’s an unusual piece in many ways. It’s an oratorio for solo quartet, chorus and orchestra and its structure reflects both Messiah and the Bach Passions. The subject matter is anti-Semitism in Germany as a specific example of “man’s inhumanity to man” more generally.
Bygone Theatre’s production of The Rear Window; written and directed by Emily Dix, opened at Hart House Theatre on Friday night. It riffs off the Hitchcock film, or rather its source material, but really doesn’t manage to create a sense of menace or foreboding that would make such an adaptation worthwhile.
operaramblings 