Blind Dates is an hour long one woman show written and performed by Vivian Chong and directed by Marjorie Chan. It’s a kind of odyssey in which Chong explores aspects of living with blindness via her experiences with dating and dating apps.
Wednesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was given by Ensemble Studio graduates Samuel Chan and Rachael Kerr, reuniting for the first time since ES days. Nowadays Sam is Fest at Theater Kiel and the recital was built around his attempt to probe his identity as a Chinese-Canadian performing Western opera for (mostly) Germans. Sam is a pretty deep, thoughtful kind of guy so it wasn’t surprising that this was an unusual and carefully curated recital. It was also quite wonderfully performed.
The Canadian Opera Company opened it’s “new to Toronto” production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Friday night. It’s a production that’s been around for a while having premiered in Houston in 2010. It’s almost entirely traditional. The one concession to critics of Puccini’s rather sordid tale is that Butterfly’s age is raised from fifteen to eighteen. The original concept was Michael Grandage’s but it’s revival directed here by Jordan Lee Braun.
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A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney by Lucas Hnath opened last night at the Young Centre in a production by Outside the March and Soulpepper. It’s one of those pieces that is perhaps easier to admire than enjoy. Technically, everything about it is excellent but sitting through ninety minutes of egotistical bullying is not a whole lot of fun.
Tuesday’s free lunchtime concert in the RBA came courtesy of the German Consulate who had flown in baritone Samuel Chan and pianist Constanze Beckmann from Kiel to perform a recital of songs by Walter Braunfels and Hanns Eisler; both composers driven from public life in Germany by the Nazis.
Chinatown; music by Alice Ho, words by Madeleine Thien and Paul Yee, is a multilingual opera about the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia. It ws commissioned by Vancouver City Opera where it played in 2022. It’s now been recorded for CD by the original cast.
Like some of Alice Ho’s previous work (The Monkiest King, The Lesson of Da JI) Chinatown is cross cultural in many ways. It combines Western and Chinese instruments, musical styles and vocal styles and in this case it uses three languages; Hoisan dialect, Cantonese and English. Unlike the previous two operas though this one isn’t based in myth and legend. Rather, it’s a gritty and moving story that doesn’t shy away from confronting the brutal institutional racism that Chinese people faced in BC well into the 20th century. Continue reading
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh and directed by Marjorie Chan opened at Crow’s Theatre on Friday. It’s a presentation of Studio 180 Theatre and features Rosie Simon and John Ng. It’s playing in the very intimate Studio Theatre at Crow’s.
Confluence Concerts’ show last night at Heliconian Hall was titled A Woman’s Voice. It was, after a fashion, a CD release concert in two halves. The first half featured music by Alice Ping Yee Ho from the album A Woman’s Voice and featuring the same performers; Vania Chan, Katy Clark, Alex Hetherington, Maeve Palmer and Jialiang Zhu. I’ve already reviewed the album and I don’t think last night changed my opinion much so I’ll not do a detailed rundown. What I can say is that last night it was mostly opera excerpts; Lesson of Da Ji, Chinatown, The Imp of the Perverse, and a live concert gave an opportunity for a bit of staging which was definitely an enhancement, especially in The Imp of the Perverse scene. “Café Chit Chat” and “Black” also benefitted from visual interaction between the singers. I like the CD a lot. Getting a chance to see some of the music live was great. Continue reading
A Woman’s Voice is a record with 84 minutes of music for female voices and piano by Alice Ping Yee Ho. It’s a mixture of songs and excerpts from operas and a plkay. All but one track feature Toronto based artists who include no less than three Norcop prize winners. Overall, I found the songs more fun to listen to than the opera excerpts though they were interesting in their own way too and I’m seriously intrigued by a couple of them that I haven’t seen but now want to.
operaramblings 