On Monday I attended an event at Hope United Church billed as “Toronto Vocal Showcase”. It was, in a way, an extended audition. Sixteen singers sang for representatives of a number of (mostly) Ontario based music producing organisations together with a small contingent from the media. The affair was organised by Ryan Hofman and designed to give (mostly) unrepresented singers a chance to display their talents to the invitees.
Sunday afternoon in the Temerty Theatre the participants in this year’s Ukrainian art song intensive presented the results of their efforts during the week. There were eight singers (nine if one adds in mentor Benjamin Butterfield who came in for a couple of numbers). Steven Philcox and Leanne Regehr shared the piano parts.
Infinite Voyage is billed as the final album from the Emerson Quartet capping a long and illustrious career. It’s also a collaboration with Barbara Hannigan so it’s perhaps not surprising that it includes music by Berg, Schoenberg and Hindemith though Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle belongs to a rather different style.
The disk starts with Hindemith’s Melancholie, Op.13. It’s quite a sparsely scored piece and Hannigan’s treatment of the text is interesting and quite individual. There’s a rhythmic flexibility, almost caressing the words. It’s especially marked in the third stanza “Dunkler Tropfe”. I’m not familiar enough with the piece to judge how unusual Hannigan’s treatment is or isn’t but I think it really works.
The new season starts to ramp up in September. My month will start at Factory Theatre on the 7th with Mary Beath Badian’s The Waltz; a coming of age drama set in Saskatchewan. That runs until the 17th. The following night there’s a screening at the Four Seasons Centre of Atom Egoyan’s new film Seven Veils that was created in conjunction with last season’s production of Salome. A young woman is tasked with remounting her former mentor’s production of Salome. It stars Amanda Seyfried, Ambur Braid, Michael Schade and Michael Kupfer-Radecky. It’s a chance to see the film ahead of the official premier at TIFF. More details and tickets here.
Humperdinck’s second “fairy tale” opera; Königskinder, is unusual in that, although it includes traditional fairy tale elements, it isn’t based on a traditional fairy tale but rather on a play by Else Bernstein-Porges. It’s, of course, also performed much less frequently than Hänsel und Gretel. It was given at Dutch National Opera, in a production by Christof Loy, in 2022 and recorded for video release.
Opera is full of patriarchy. It’s a bit odd then that Leoš Janáček wrote two operas about dominating matriarchs and the consequences of their actions. The better known of the two is probably Jenůfa but the later Kát’a Kabanová deals with similar themes. Both are bleak and have watery endings.
It’s quite rare nowadays to stage all three Il Trittico operas in one evening and it will probably get rarer as financial pressures force shorter shows. Nonetheless it was done in Salzburg in 2022 in productions by Christof Loy. The USP was having Asmik Grigorian sing all three principal soprano roles so, not unreasonably, the usual order was switched up with Gianni Schicchi coming first and Suor Angelica closing things out. Unsurprisingly, and as intended, the evening increasingly became the Grigorian show as each opera succeeded the previous one.
Back to Summerworks on Wednesday night, this time at the Theatre Centre, to see a double bill of works derived (loosely) from Shakespeare plays. Both works were experimental but in utterly different ways. Lady M (Margaret) is 60 minutes of carefully crafted physical theatre intended for both Deaf and hearing audiences with great attention to detail and a minimalist aesthetic. i am your spaniel, or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson is longer at around 90 minutes and is a mad cap series of vignettes exploring Shakespeare’s punctuation, patriarchy, capitalism, life as a trans person and yoghourt among other things.
Suddenly Last Summer is a 1958 play by Tennessee Williams set in New Orleans in 1936. It’s currently being performed by Riot King at Sorry Studios in a production directed by Kathleen Welch.
No, not a pandemic piss-up at No.10 but a newly released recording of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov recorded at Covent Garden in 2016. Funnily enough I remember Bryn Terfel, who plays the Tsar, alluding to learning the role during his Koerner Hall recital in April of that year.
