Toronto Operetta Company’s season opened with a run of a “modified” version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. It had the by now traditional updates predictably featuring numerous references to Mango Mussolini and the odd dig at Metrolinx but the bigger change, and a sensible one I think, was to peel away the the fake japonerie that must have seemed a bit lame in 1885 and is as intolerable as a “traditional” Madama Butterfly today.
On Thursday evening at the Canadian Music Centre soprano Maeve Palmer and pianist Jialiang Zhu gave a recital that explored Irish song in many of its aspects from traditional sean-nós to English language art songs for voice and piano and points in between. I don’t know if there is another country where traditional music and composed contemporary music co-exist in quite the same way, and produce such interesting fusions, so it was really interesting.
Here’s what’s coming up next month as best I know.
Miecysłav Weinberg’s The Idiot, based on the Dostoevsky novel, was composed in 1986/7 but didn’t get a full premiere until 2013 in Mannheim. The neglect of Weinberg’s music in USSR/Russia is probably explained by him being a Polish Jew but why he’s so little known elsewhere is a bit of a mystery as The Idiot shows that The Passenger wasn’t a fluke. Anyway, The Idiot got a second outing at Salzburg in 2024 in a rather complex production by Krysztof Warlikowski.
Some time ago I reviewed Leslie Ting’s CD set What Brings You In; noting that it was music “that was composed for performance as part of an art installation or a site specific performance or as therapy rather than a conventional concert hall experience”. On Sunday I got to hear it as part of Leslie’s show at Theatre Passe Muraille.
It’s always interesting when a top notch baritone (especially a native German speaker) and a first rate concert pianist get together to do Schubert’s Winterreise, which is, I suppose, the pinnacle of the Lieder repertory. That’s what we got at Koerner Hall on Thursday with a performance by Matthias Goerne and Daniil Trifonov.
Regular readers will know that I’ve seen my fair share of shows by Opera Revue but pretty much always in a bar or pub and as the band always says “The more you drink, the better we sound”. Thus it was with some trepidation that I went to see them in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on Wednesday. It was the core gang; Danie Friesen, Alex Hajek, Claire Harris. No ringers (except for the person who forgot to turn off their phone).
So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. There are eleven sketches involving four composers, three librettists, three singers plus Keith Klassen who does all three. Also two pianists and two directors.
Opera Atelier opened a run of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (in English) at the Elgin on Wednesday evening. It’s basically the 1991 production (tweaked in 2013) and features a rather spectacular Queen of the Night. Full review at Opera Canada.
Photo: Bruce Zinger
I don’t think I’ve been as frustrated by a video recording of an opera since I watched the 2007 recording of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland. This time the culprit is a recording of the 2024 production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler at the Salzburg Festival. It’s a Peter Sellars production set in the Felsenreitschule and it’s fascinating on many levels. The problem is that, as is wont, Sellars directs the video too and he seems to think people watch opera videos on their phones. There’s been a welcome trend since the advent of HD cameras to, generally, show as much of the stage action as possible and ration extreme close ups. Sellars takes the opposite approach and it drives me nuts. Not only do I feel that I’m missing a lot; especially in the cavernous Felsenreitschule, but I just don’t need to know how fast Asmik Gregorian is moving her tongue when she’s going for fast vibrato.
operaramblings 