Season announcements

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koernerhallIt’s the time of year when people start to make season announcements.  First out of the blocks is the Royal Conservatory of Music with the Koerner hall line up.  It’s more a teaser than a comprehensive announcement but there’s some interesting dope in it.  On the vocal front Peter Sellars is back with the LA Master Chorale; this time with music by Heinrich Schütz.  That’s on February 7th 2024.  There’s also a recital by Ema Nikolovska with Charles Richard-Hamelin on March 24th 2024.  If you haven’t erased all memories of the pandemic you will probably remember that Ema’s streamed recital with Steven Philcox was the highlight of the grim summer of 2020.  The Glenn Gould spring opera will be on 2oth and 22nd March 2024.  There are also some pretty classy orchestral visits with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin and Yannick Nézet-Seguin bringing the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Full details of the season will be released in June but tickets go on sale next Tuesday.  There’s more information on programming and ticket options here.

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COC 2023/24??

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2-saul-and-the-witch-of-endor-benjamin-westSo the COC will announce the upcoming season on the 23rd. I’m really hesitant to try and predict what might be in it because with the change of management and the COVID hangover old patterns don’t seem to mean much anymore. But here goes anyway.

Last year they did one new production and five revivals.  I can’t see them doing that again.  But then, finances being what they are I’d be surprised if they did more than two new shows.  There’s a hot rumour that one of those will be Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen.  It makes sense if it’s true.  It hasn’t been done by the COC since 1998, it’s a relatively easy sell and there are a bunch of recent productions out there for the COC to choose from thus avoiding creating one from scratch.

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More this month

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feb23_2Here are a few more gigs that I didn’t check in my earlier February post.

This Saturday (18th) at 7.30pm at 918 Bathurst the Happenstancers have a concert.  It’s called Hypersuite and it will consist of movements from Bach works for solo instrument interspersed with contemporary works in like vein. Composers to be featured include Ana Sokolovic, Augusta Read Thomas and Elliot Carter.  More info and tickets here.

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A black hole in Florence

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Carlus Padrissa’s (of La fura dels baus) take on Verdi’s La forza del destino for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is nothing if not ambitious.  He interprets this rather banal and meandering melodrama as a tale of cosmic inevitability.  Leonora and Alvaro are metaphors for two stars, which after an epic journey through time and space, will collide and form a black hole extinguishing each other.  FWIW the recording was made in June 2020 under COVID restrictions so the chorus is masked and it sounds as if the theatre is a lot less than full.

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An unusual lunchtime recital

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Luca Pisaroni, currently singing in the COC’s The Marriage of Figaro, and pianist Timothy Cheung performed in the RBA at Tuesday lunchtime.  It was unusual and what was unusual was the choice of repertoire; rarely heard 19th century songs by composers who are much better known for opera.  In fact I’m not sure I had heard any of the programme before.

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Film of Salome

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It kind of makes sense I guess.  Atom Egoyan is making a film about a production of Richard Strauss’ Salome using the current COC production and cast as part of the process.  It’s to be called Seven Veils and is backed by Rhombus Media and will star Amanda Seyfried as Jeanine, a young woman who has been given the task of remounting a production of Salome originally created by her mentor.  One press release describes Jeanine as a “tortured opera director” which is an idea that might appeal to a certain section of the local opera audience.  No word on a prospective release date.  I guess this is about the only way many people will experience (at least part of) Ambur Braid’s amazing portrayal of the title role.

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Quilico Awards 2023

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Last evening saw the first post-plague edition of the Christina and Louis Quilico Awards competed for by the singers of the COC Ensemble Studio. Six of Ensemble’s seven singers competed with Vladimir Soloviev and Brian Cho providing piano accompaniment.  It wasn’t the most thrilling Quilico Awards ever.  The judges; Perryn Leech, Carolyn Sproule and Steven Philcox probably had a pretty easy time of it.  So herewith how it came out.

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Mavra/Iolanta

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The 2019 production from the Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper (basically their young artists programme) was a bit unusual.  Director Axel Ranisch created a kind of mash up of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s very short opera Mavra.  Iolanta is about a blind princess who doesn’t realise she is blind.  It’s only when she meets her future husband, a French count Vaudémont, that she realises this.  Her father the king employs a Moorish doctor to try and cure her, which fails, but believing that if she doesn’t pretend to be sighted her suitor will be executed she fakes it and is given to him in marriage.  He alone realises she is still blind and puts out his own eyes in sympathy (this is pretty hard to watch!). In the process they both realise that God’s creation is much greater than human eyes can perceive.

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