Tim Albery’s show; Garden of Vanished Pleasures, about Derek Jarman and his Kent coast garden was supposed to figure in Soundstreams 2020/21 season and we know what happened to that! So, it was reengineered as a film and streamed in September of 2021. I reviewed it at some length for Opera Canada. Now director Tim Albery has recreated it as a live show at the Berkeley Street Theatre.
The eighth iteration of Soundstreams’ Electric Messiah opened last night at Theatre Passe Muraille. Like last year at Crow’s it’s staged fairly conventionally with the players facing the audience though some use was made of the galleries at TPM. I do kind of miss the club atmosphere of the earliest versions but it still has lots to offer.
I was at a bit of a loose end yesterday so I made a very last minute decision to catch countertenor Daniel Cabena and pianist Stephen Runge in recital in the Great Hall at Hart House. It was a free concert and I hadn’t seen a program listing so I was pleasantly surprised to find a rather varied mix of early 20th century Canadian and English art song as well as piano pieces by York Bowen. I guess I was expecting baroque and earlier material since that’s what countertenors do!
operaramblings 