Tag Archives: against the grain

June – festivals and more

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Here are some shows to take in in June:

Opera, music etc

  • Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille. The double bill of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi runs June 3rd to 7th with casts including Rachel Krehm, Krisztina Szabó and Greg Dahl. June 12th to 14th is the world premiere of Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane’s Parélios.
  • June 11th to 14th the TSO is performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall. Soloists are Golda Schultz, Ema Nikolovska, Saimir Pirgu and Jongmin Park. Gustavo Gimeno conducts. The Friday performance will be livestreamed to Sankofa Square with a singalong option for the Ode to Joy.
  • June 16th to 21st, COC, Tapestry Opera and Luminato are presenting Rene Orth’s Ten Days in a Madhouse at the Bluma Appel Theatre.
  • June 22nd is Against the Grain’s Opera Pub (Pride edition) at the Tranzac.
  • June 27th and 28th Toronto City Opera presents a fully staged version of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld with orchestra. It’s at Trinity St. Paul’s.
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How many Indigenous artists does it take to make an opera Indigenous?

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How many Indigenous artists does it take to make an Opera Indigenous? That was one of many questions up for discussion at Stories Don’t Die presented by the Artists of Indians on Vacation at the Terminal Theatre on Saturday afternoon. The backdrop to all this of course is the withdrawal of Edmonton Opera from their role in the creation and presentation of Ian Cusson and Royce Vavrek’s Indians on Vacation in February following the not entirely unexpected “revelation” that Thomas King; author of the novel on which the opera is based, is not Indigenous as he had long claimed. Edmonton Opera chose, unilaterally, to pull out after a protest by a small group of Indigenous activists in Edmonton. To the protesters, the false claim by Thomas King was reason enough to cancel an opera they hadn’t seen but is it? The Artists of Indians on Vacation clearly believe otherwise and Stories Don’t Die makes a strong case for its survival and further development.

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Opera Pub back at the Tranzac

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Maeve Palmer

I finally made it to AtG’s Opera Pub for the first time in a long time.  Ladst couple of times I went it was at the Drake and that just felt so wrong!  It’s now at the Tranzac which just makes all kinds of sense.  It’s a decent size, it has a pretty good bar and it’s easily accessible on the the TTC.  And it feels like a pub, not the lobby of a five star hotel.  Also it has lots of AtG history including the original La Bohème (2011) and the 2017 remount.  Stay there please AtG. Continue reading →

News and stuff

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Royce_Vavrek_at_the_Kennedy_Center,_2018

Roiyce Vavrek. Photo by Ser Amantio di Nicolao

Today’s big news is that Against the Grain Theatre have announced the appointment of a new Artistic Director and it’s Royce Vavrek.  He’s probably best known to opera audiences as a librettist.  He has written the libretti for 23 operas including a bunch with Missy Mazzoli of which perhaps my favourite is Proving Up, done in Calgary recently by Ammolite Opera.  He’s also the writer for Ian Cusson’s Indians on Vacation and Luna Pearl Woolf’s Jacqueline which features in Tapestry’s recently announced season and is just out on CD.   So not dead yet then!

And talking of Tapestry, they announced their season today.  With the new space at 877 Yonge almost ready they have emerged from semi-hibernation.  As implied above the first show is Luna pearl Woolf’s Jacqueline in The Betty Oliphant Theatre in February .  I’m assuming it’s essentially the same show as five years ago (see Opera Canada Summer 2020).  There’s also a venue launch concert for the new home on March 22nd.  The first Tapestry show at the new venue will be Sanctuary Song; music by Abigail Richardson, libretto by Marjorie Chan, which, apparently, is about an elephant.  Which may be an operatic first. Continue reading →

May 2023

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wordcloudmay23Things happening next month…

But first this month… on April 27th to 29th male soprano Samuel Mariño is appearing with
Tafelmusik in a programme titled Higher Love: Virtuoso Arias.  Details here.

Crow’s Theatre has a couple of shows.  True Crime opens on the 2nd.  It’s a short run.  Preview on the 1st then closes on the 7th.  It’s basically a one man, semi-improvised show about an imprisoned con man.  The Chinese Lady, which runs 5th to 21st (previews 2nd to 4th) in the smaller Studio Theatre tells the story of the first Chinese woman in the USA.  Written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Marjorie Chan it should be interesting.  There’s also Boom X.  Rick Miller plays over a hundred characters to narrate events from 1969 t0 1995.  It runs from the 10th to the 28th.  More details at crowstheatre.com.

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Bluebeard’s Castle

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Against the Grain Theatre’s presentation of Theatre of Sound’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle opened last night at the Fleck Dance Theatre.  It’s in English translation (by director Daisy Evans) with chamber ensemble and it reimagines the piece as the story of an elderly man caring for a wife who has dementia.  What’s extraordinary is that the libretto works extremely smoothly with no changes.  The rooms in Bluebeard’s castle are replaced by a trunk with objects that evoke memories from the couple’s long life together.  The “torture” of uncertain first love, military service, marriage, children etc.  In each scene a silent, younger, Judith (there are three of them representing different ages and life stages)  appears until at the end all three are on stage looking at themselves in mirrors.  It’s very beautiful and very moving.

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Introducing Bluebeard

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Tuesday’s lunch time concert in the RBA featured some of the people involved in Against the Grain Theatre’s new, updated version of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle which opens next week at the Fleck Dance Theatre.  There was an excellent descripttion of what the project was all about from Gerald Finley (Bluebeard) and Stephen Higgins (conductor and arranger – the orchestration is reduced to a seven person chamber ensemble).

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More March events

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march2023suppHere are a few more events not listed in my previous March post.

On Saturday 18th the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir have a concert at 7.30pm at Church of the Holy Trinity featuring David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion and a new work by Shireen Abu-Khader; Diaries of the Forgotten.

Theatre Smith-Gilmour are presenting Metamorphoses 2023 at Crow’s Theatre.  It’s a contemporary take on Ovid that combines mime, illusion, spoken word, silence and Bharatanatyam dance.  Previews are on the 21st through 23rd with the run proper from the 24th to April 9th.

Against the Grain’s reworking Of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with Gerald Finley in the title role plays at the Fleck Dance Theatre on March 29th and 31st at 7.30pm with a matinee on April 1st.  The new English language libretto is by Daisy Evans who also directs,  Stephen Higgins conducts.

March 2023

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march2023Here’s a look ahead to March.

March 3rd and 5th, Opera York are presenting Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts.  Details are here.  Also on the 5th at 1pm Opera Revue are playing a new venue; The Aviary in the Canary District.  (They are playing another new venue, Granite Brewery, on the 12th.  Opera Revue your source for craft beer!)  And the following night at 7.30pm it’s AtG’s Opera Pub at the Drake at 7.30pm.

From the 9th to the 12th it’s UoT Opera’s spring offering at the MacMillan Theatre.  This year it’s Arthur (not George) Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities.  Benjamin is probably the only opera composer to be shot down by Hermann Göring.  I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about his music.

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Miscellany

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Less a Toronto listings summary than a quick review of things going on in various real and virtual spaces.

  • On November 6th my good friends at Opera Revue have a “gala”; Ruckus! at the Revival.  Besides the usual suspects there are several guests and I believe it starts at 6.30pm not 7.30 like the poster says.  There’s a very short and very silly trailer here.

ruckus Continue reading →