Thursday night at the Four Seasons Centre saw the tenth iteration of the COC’s Centre Stage: Ensemble Studio Competition. It’s a competition for young singers for cash prizes and, more opaquely, potential places in the COC’s Ensemble Studio.
L-R: Duncan Stenhouse, Emily Rocha, Elisabeth St-Gelais
Threepenny Submarine is a nine episode puppet animation series of videos on Youtube inspired by the idea that most of us got at least some of our exposure to classical music as kids from Looney Tunes and other cartoons. It’s produced by Opera 5 and Gazelle Automations and concerns an underwater journey by the submarine Threepenny Submarine investigating a mysterious sound coming from the equally mysterious Salieri Sector. The sub is commanded by a cockatiel called Iona (voiced by Lindsay Lee and sung by Caitlin Wood) assisted by a fox called Lydian (voiced and sung by Rachel Krehm). They befriend a “sea monster” called Flute, represented, appropriately enough, by Amelia Lyon on flute. Various adventures take place punctuated by well known arias using new text by Rachel Krehm. For example, the first episode features “Una voce poca fa” and “Dich, teure Halle” in arrangements for string quartet. There are also classical instrumentals used as incidental music. It’s all arranged by Trevor Wager and directed by Evan Mitchell.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
Dean Burry’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman has now been released on CD. I think it’s the same performance that was previously released on Youtube by Queen’s University. If it’s not the same performance then it’s certainly the same performers and I really don’t have more than a few incidental thoughts to add to my review of that concert.
Listening to it again though I was struck by the links to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and also by the way Burry subverts popular tunes along the way. There’s a particularly weird version for flute and struck cello of The British Grenadiers for example.
Toronto Operetta Theatre opened a run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance at the Jane Mallett Theatre last night.I think it’s got everything one could expect from a modest budget G&S production and maybe a bit more. Bill Silva-Marin’s production is energetic with a lot of stomping, marching and mincing going on which makes the small stage (even smaller than usual as the band is on stage) look lively and busy. The chorus is good and sings idiomatically. The principals also appear to understand the genre and there’s some good acting and good, at times excellent, singing.
Franz Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber premiered in Frankfurt in 1920. It was his last and most successful opera but it disappeared from the repertory under the Nazis and performances have been rare since WW2. Christof Loy directed it for Deutsche Oper Berlin in a new production in 2022, marking the 100th anniversary of the first performance in Berlin. It was also a continuation of Loy’s project of bringing less well known opera with “strong female characters” to DOB, following his production of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane and Zandonai’s Francesca di Rimini.
WILDWOMAN, by Kat Sadler (who also directed), is part of the {{her words}} festival at Soulpepper and I attended the first preview performance on Thursday night at the Young Centre. It’s not usual to review previews but I’m out of the country for most of the run proper so there it is. It’s an interesting piece. It weaves together two (more or less) real stories that are quite tenuously related into a single integrated narrative that explores humanity, power and the role of women in society.
It wasn’t supposed to happen for another couple of weeks but Jonelle Sills jumped into the COC’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème as Mimi on Sunday afternoon, replacing an indisposed Amina Edris. It added some spice to a production I’ve seen rather a lot of times before. I don’t have a lot to say about the production that I haven’t said before. It’s still efficient and serviceable and it’s always looked a bit (not inappropriately) down at heel. If it’s now a bit more worn and faded t doesn’t detract from that. If you want more detail here’s a link to my May 2019 review.
I use the word sumptuous in at least two senses. This is a really good recording with a fine period instrument ensemble and voices carefully matched to parts. It’s also very carefully researched in the quest to get as close as what Monteverdi’s audience heard as possible. It’s also sumptuous in presentation. It’s a beautiful hardback book with 3 CD slots built in. The binding and printing are Folio Society quality. It’s sumptuous also in terms of book content. The English language version has 165 pages of explanatory essays plus libretto and translation! There is a wealth of information on what was happening in Venetian theatre , as well as influences from further afield. There’s a section on how discoveries in the sciences were reshaping perspectives on art and aesrthetics and there’s a load of detail on the links between the commedia dell’arte and the opera stage. For a music loving bibliophile it’s a real treat.
Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning opened last night in a production by the Howland Company in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s. This is a play about a group of people who have assembled in the wilds of Wyoming for the inauguration of a new President at a small, extremely conservative, Catholic university. All of them, to greater or lesser extent, buy into the mix of ideas; an essentially pre-Vatican II Catholicism, traditional American Conservatism rooted in an idea of “Western Civilization:” and a kind of neo-Spartan survivalism, taught at the university in question. The play is a long (over two hours without a break) conversation between these characters about ideas and values. I strongly suspect these ideas and values are not shared by the author or the director (Philip Akin). but they are treated in the play on their own terms with no attempt at satire or parody. I don’t share those values either but I shall try in this review to keep my own feelings out of it as well.
operaramblings 