Tag Archives: against the grain

Young artists

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The prizewinnersThe Canadian Opera Company has announced the addition of three singers and a pianist to the Ensemble Studio for next season.  The singers, unsurprisingly, are the three prize winners from November’s Centre Stage; Soprano Karine Boucher, tenor Jean-Philippe Fortier-Lazure and bass-baritone Iain MacNeil,  The pianist is Jennifer Szeto.  The COC also announced the setting up of an orchestral equivalent of the Ensemble Studio in which a number of young musicians will work with Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra.  Names were announced on Wedneday night but I can’t find them in any of the press releases. Continue reading →

Best of 2013

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So what was I most impressed with on the opera and related scene in in 2013?

Big house opera

frau1The COC had a pretty good twelve months.  I enjoyed everything I saw except, maybe, Lucia di Lammermoor.  Making a choice between Christopher Alden’s probing La Clemenza di Tito, the searing opening night of Peter Sellars’ Tristan und Isolde; the night when I really “got” why people fly across oceans to see this piece, Robert Carsen’s spare and intensely moving Dialogues des Carmélites or Tony Dean Griffey’s intense and lyrical portrayal of the title character in Peter Grimes is beyond me.  So, I shall be intensely disloyal to my home company and name as my pick in this category the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Wernicke’s production is pure magic and Anna Schwanewilms was a revelation.

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AtG’s Messiah

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Expectations could hardly have been higher for last night’s first performance of Against the Grain’s new production of Handel’s Messiah.  By and large they were met.  It’s become quite the thing to stage Handel’s oratorios and, for the most part, that’s fine.  They are really operas in disguise and work well when liberated from the concert setting.  Messiah is trickier.  Rather than a linear narrative there are a series of Biblical texts selected by librettist Charles Jennens to promote a literal and conservative evangelical Christianity.  There is no obvious staging solution.  One possibility is to invent a narrative and spin the story around it as Claus Guth did at Theater an der Wien in 2009.  AtG’s Joel Ivany’s solution is to stage it as a choreographed performance and use movement to bring depth to the words.  Here he is aided and abetted by choreographer Jennifer Nichols who has created a movement language tailored to the abilities and limitations of the singers.

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The knot is tied – Figaro’s Wedding at The Burroughes

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figaro

Photo credit: Roger Rousseau

Figaro’s Wedding music by W.A Mozart, libretto by Joel Ivany, opened last night at The Burroughes.  A full house, many dressed as if attending a wedding as requested, saw an extremely effective realisation of another ambitious project from Against the Grain Theatre.  This isn’t just another low budget production of a well known opera. Figaro’s Wedding is a complete rework of the piece.  The music is the familiar Mozart in a very effective piano quintet arrangement by Topher Mokrzewski, albeit with cuts to suit the new libretto,  The libretto is in English, cuts the chorus (and Barbarina) and reshapes the story around a wedding in today’s Toronto.  Gone are aristocrats, servants and hangers on.  Instead we have a young couple – Susanna and Figaro, his boss and boss’ wife – Alberto and Rosina, and the various arrangers and functionaries connected with the wedding.  Oh yes, and there’s a lesbian grad student called Cherubino living in Alberto and Rosina’s basement.  The story unfolds in a way that’s close enough to da Ponte for the twists and departures to add a little extra amusement for those who know the libretto well.  It’s very smart, extremely funny and surprisingly singable.

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Back to the future

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euphoniaIt seems I spend a lot of my time in physical and electronic conversations about the declining audience for classical music; especially song recitals and chamber music.  I understand where the doom and gloomers are coming from.  The figures don’t lie.  The number of people who will pay $60 to sit in a dark room for two hours listening to a middle rank act in reverent silence is unquestionably on the decline.  On the other hand there are newer forces at play.  Tonight Against the Grain Theatre open a new show, Figaro’s Wedding, that will be as far removed from the “opera house as temple of culture” idea as their ground breaking La Bohème and it’s pretty much sold out.  Today the following arrived in my in-box:

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Another thought on offing nuns

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I was riding my bike in the Don Valley this morning and, as I passed underneath the Bloor Street Viaduct, a thought struck me.  Maybe Against the Grain Theatre’s next Toronto-centric opera adaptation coud be Dialogues des Carmélites.  The last scene could be staged with the nuns jumping, one by one, from the viaduct.  I don’t know whether enough people have read In the Skin of a Lion to get the reference but what could be more Toronto than Ondaatje?

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