If you have been following this saga from the beginning you have probably already concluded that Herheim’s approach is radical in some ways and very, very detail oriented. If anything, in Götterdämmerung, it gets denser and more complex with some of the central production features used in somewhat different ways. It’s also spectacular. Not least because of the contributions of lighting designer Ulrich Niepel and video designer Torge Møller. They were important contributors to the first three operas. Here they are even more crucial. This opera also has more going on across the full width of the stage more of the time so it’s actually much harder to film. So let’s get into it.
January is looking quite promising on both the music and theatre front but there’s not a lot of opera… Here’s what’s in my agenda.
2022 was the year when live performance in Toronto rose from the dead. It almost didn’t happen though. It’s a bit weird to remember just how strangely 2022 started. The theatres and concert halls had reopened in late 2021 and it looked like “normality” was returning. Some venues had masking policies or vaccine mandates and there were some “50%” performances but my calendar was starting to look something like pre plague. Then the government lost its marbles. Two weeks after a spike in COVID cases and at a point where all the indicators were actually heading south at the speed of a Messerschmidt in a power dive they closed everything down again. And although the shutdown was brief it was extremely disruptive causing all manner of cancellation and rescheduling. But get going again we did eventually and here’s a summary of the best things that came my way in 2022. 
Today’s CD is a bit of an oddity and a bit of a period piece. It’s Paul Bowles’ 1953 work A Picnic Cantata setting a libretto by James Schuyler. It’s scored for two pianos and percussion plus a vocal cast of two sopranos and two altos. It’s hyperrealistic in detail and surrealistic in time line. The “plot” (roughly) is that friends decide to go on a Sunday picnic which is described in some detail, Then someone picks up the Sunday paper and starts to read bits from it. Then there’s a sort of clearing up and clearing out. Scene succeeds scene with almost breath-taking rapidity to complete a work that lasts less than half an hour
operaramblings 