The second concert in the OPUS IV series, which took place on Tuesday evening at the Arts and Letters Club, had a similar structure to Sunday evening. The concert was anchored around a major, well known, work. In this case Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with the rest of the programme featuring less familiar material. It was given by the same five instrumentalists as Sunday; Stella Chen and Isabella Perron – violins, Matthew Lipman – viola, Brannon Cho – cello and Kevin Ahfat – piano.
Opera Sustenida was started during the pandemic and came to my attention because of a couple of well produced on-line shows. Feeling very strongly that it’s time to move back to live performance, and not seeing much yet from the smaller opera companies, I could hardly overlook Opera Sustenida’s show, even if I might not have chosen Verdi’s Il Trovatore for my first go at a live production.
Back in January I saw Opera 5’s show Modern (Family) Opera at the Arts and Letters Club. I didn’t review it here because I was covering it for Opera Canada. It seems that there was some breakdown in communication, probably the dodgy email connection at our temporary digs last winter, and it never made it to the mag and so wasn’t printed. It’s a pity as it was a good show and so, belatedly, I’m sticking the review here, for the record, instead.
Opera 5’s new show at the Arts and letters Club pairs Wolf-Ferrari’s 1909 comedy Il segreto di Susanna with a new work , Storybook, by Darren Russo inspired by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. I can’t do a full review as I’m writing it up for Opera Canada but I think I can fairly say that the Wolf-Ferrari is hilarious and the Russo weird, rather wonderful and quite disturbing. It’s a show well worth seeing and you can catch it tonight or tomorrow at 7.30pm. Here are some production photos by Emily Ding. Continue reading
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