Of all the groups I’ve seen explore the boundaries of “classical music” in Toronto, none goes further than Slow Rise Music and this was especially true of their concert Collide-o-Scope which played at the Tranzac on Saturday and Sunday.
Octet, by Dave Malloy, opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday evening. I guess it’s Crow’s big musical this year; a kind of follow up to Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet, but it’s actually a very different kind of show. One major difference is musical. All the singing is a capella which puts extra demands on the singers (and isn’t unpleasantly loud). The whole cast; eight of course, are really rather good singers and pull off the solo and ensemble numbers extremely well. They can also act and they are backed up by a really effective lighting plot Imogen Wilson) and video (Nathan Bruce) that pretty much replace the set, which is pretty basic.
The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening. The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut. The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand. There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.
operaramblings 