Tuesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA featured soprano Teresa Tucci and baritone James Coole-Stevenson; both Rebanks fellows at the Conservatory, and pianist Vlad Soloviev. It was a carefully curated concert with a thematic line and featured far more duets than one usually gets in such a show.
Colonial Circus; currently playing at Aki Studio, is a hilarious and intermittently disturbing sideways look at colonialism. It’s a clown show performed by Two2Mango; Shreya Parashar and Sachin Sharma. So, we have two people of Indian origin in slightly bizarre white-face playing both “native” characters; a priest and his disciple, and representatives of the Raj; a British lady and her manservant.
It’s been 73 years since the first performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Vladimir and Estragon are still waiting. The play though has become an established icon of experimental 20th century theatre and millions of words have been written about it. It’s currently running at Coal Mine Theatre in a production directed by Kelli Fox. As far as I remember (and it’s been fifty years since I read the play) this production plays it straight and pretty much entirely according to the stage directions in the script. The set is a tree and a bunch of dirt. Nobody sits in a dust bin. So everything turns on subtlety and timing which is quite a challenge.
My review of last Thursday’s TSO season opener is now published on bachtrack.com.
Photo credit: Alan Cabral
Chelsea Woodley’s Enormity, Girl and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, in a production directed by Andrea Donaldson for Nightwood Theatre, opened at the Jackman Performance Centre on Saturday night. It’s enormously ambitious and performed with great skill and energy but I’m not sure it entirely works.
The free concert series in the RBA kicked off on Wednesday with, as usual, a performance by the artists of the COC’s Ensemble Studio. Owing to illness only five singers performed and only one of those, Emily Rocha, was a returnee. The other four singers and both pianists were newcomers. It was short but enjoyable.
In 2003, in conjunction of a revival of Peter Sellars’production of Handel’s Theodora at Glyndebourne ,Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson went into the studio and recorded a Handel album with Harry Bicket and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. That album was released to great acclaim in 2004. It’s now been remastered and the new version will be available on October 17th.
The album contains all of Irene’s music from Theodora including superb versions of “As with rosy steps the morn” and “Lord, to Thee, each night and day”. There’s also the cantata Lucrezia where she is accompanied by Harry Bicket on harpsichord & chamber organ, Stephen Stubbs on 10-course lute and Baroque guitar, Phoebe Carrai on cello and Margriet Tindemans on viola da gamba. There are also two arias from Serse; “Se bramate d’amar, chi vi sdegna” and “Ombra mai fu”. Continue reading
Octet, by Dave Malloy, opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday evening. I guess it’s Crow’s big musical this year; a kind of follow up to Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet, but it’s actually a very different kind of show. One major difference is musical. All the singing is a capella which puts extra demands on the singers (and isn’t unpleasantly loud). The whole cast; eight of course, are really rather good singers and pull off the solo and ensemble numbers extremely well. They can also act and they are backed up by a really effective lighting plot Imogen Wilson) and video (Nathan Bruce) that pretty much replace the set, which is pretty basic.
King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild opened at Soulpepper on Wednesday evening but I saw a preview on Sunday which forms the basis for this review. It’s an unusual and compelling show with a clever story line, some terrific acting (verbal and physical) and a Sufi influenced Arabic jazz band for good measure.
Tapestry Opera has announced its first full season since leaving the Distillery District and it looks like “back to the future”. Most of the usual (much missed) stuff is there. So here’s the line up:
Welcome back Tapestry!
operaramblings 