Chinatown; music by Alice Ho, words by Madeleine Thien and Paul Yee, is a multilingual opera about the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia. It ws commissioned by Vancouver City Opera where it played in 2022. It’s now been recorded for CD by the original cast.
Like some of Alice Ho’s previous work (The Monkiest King, The Lesson of Da JI) Chinatown is cross cultural in many ways. It combines Western and Chinese instruments, musical styles and vocal styles and in this case it uses three languages; Hoisan dialect, Cantonese and English. Unlike the previous two operas though this one isn’t based in myth and legend. Rather, it’s a gritty and moving story that doesn’t shy away from confronting the brutal institutional racism that Chinese people faced in BC well into the 20th century. Continue reading
Mi País: Songs of Argentina is a CD from bass-baritone Federico de Michelis and an ensemble that includes Steven Blier on piano, Shinjoo Cho on bandoneon, Sami Merdinian on violin and Pablo Lanouguere on bass. The songs are basically from the middle decades of the 20th century and mostly by classically trained composers such as Carlos Guastavino and Carlos López Buchardo.
Benjamin Appl’s latest CD is a selection of Schubert Lieder arranged for orchestra. Most of the arrangeents are by Max Reger or Anton Webern but there are a few surprising ones like an arrangement of “Ständchen” by Jaques Offenbach. The songs themselves are a mix of the very familiar; “Die Forelle”, “An die Musik”, and the less well known such as “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” but, to be honest, it’s mostly Schubert’s Greatest Hits.
operaramblings 