Tuesday’s lunchtime recital in the RBA, the first of 2026, was given by Israeli mezzo-soprano Michal Aloni and pianist Alona Milner. All the music, most of it Hebrew language art song, was by composers who either emigrated to Palestine/Israel or who were born there. In their excellent introductions Michal and Alona enumerated three waves or generations of composers:
- Those who were trained in Europe in the early 20th century who left Germany (or parts adjacent) for obvious reasons after 1933 such as David Zehavi and Paul Ben-Haim.
- Those who emigrated later; often as children, whose musical formation was in the new state like Yehezkel Braun.
- Those who were born and/or educated in Israel somewhat later represented here by Stella Lerner and Aharon Harlap.
To round out this mini survey of the early discography of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas I’m going to fast forward a bit to the 1995 recording by Tafelmusik. The most striking thing about this version is the very small instrumental ensemble; two violins, viola, violincello and harpsichord led by Jeanne Lamon. One quickly gets the feel for how they are going to perform with a very fast and rhythmically sprung overture.
Il cappello di paglia di Firenze is a farce by Nino Rota, probably better known as a composer of film music particularly associated with Fellini. It’s playing right now at UoT Opera in a production directed by Jennifer Tarver. It’s an ambitious show. There’s a clever two level set, designed by Michelle Tracey,; indoors on an upper level and outdoors at stage level, and clearly a lot of thought and work has gone into both sets and costumes. The direction and choreography (Anna Theodosakis) is involved and makes use of the full space of the MacMillan Theatre with comings and goings all over the place energetically executed by quite a large cast. 
operaramblings 