Tag Archives: chan

Traditional Butterfly at the COC

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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. Continue reading →

Walt vs. the lemmings

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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.

Death of Walt Disney 2. Katherine Cullen, Diego Matamoros, Tony Ofori and Anand Rajaram. Lighting by Nick Blais. Set by Anahita Dehbonehie. Costumes by Niloufar Ziaee. Photo credit Dahlia Katz

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Chinatown

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chinatownChinatown; 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 →

November gigs

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november24Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.

  • The reprise of Tapestry’s Rocking Horse Winner at Crow’s Theatre.  That’s November 1st to 12th.
  • The Glenn Gould School’s fall opera offering.  It’s a presentation of five of Tapestry’s short operas from the 2000s.  November 3rd and 4th in Mazzoleni Hall.
  • Voicebox are doing Verdi’s Un giorno di regno at the St. Lawrence Centre on the 5th.

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A Woman’s Voice

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A Woman's VoiceConfluence 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

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A Woman's VoiceA 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.

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Rebanks fellows

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Last night at Mazzoleni Hall we were entertained by the Royal Conservatory’s Rebanks fellows.  The programme was, to say the least, varied and very enjoyable.  It began with a movement from Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor played by Isobel Howard – violin, Caleb Georges – viola, Joanne Yesol Choi – cello and Sejin Yoon – piano.  It was a pleasant, if conventional, start to the evening.  There were rather more fireworks in the “Allegro ma non troppo” from Strauss’ Violin Sonata in E flat major.  There was some seriously virtuosic playing here from Aaaron Chan – violin and Ben Smith – piano.

1. Group Photo

from L to R: Michael Bridge, accordion; Caleb Georges, viola; Isobel Howard, violin; Sejin Yoon, piano; Hannah Crawford, soprano; Daniel Hamin Go, cello; Tim Beattie, guitar; Jonelle Sills, soprano; Aaron Chan, violin.

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Trilogy

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This year’s fall offering from UoT Opera is three short comic operas presented at the MacMillan Theatre in productions by Michael Patrick Albano.  The first is Paul Hindemith’s Hin und Züruck; a twelve minute musical joke which manages to send up a lot of operatic conventions in a very short time.  It’s a musical and dramatic palindrome.  A man discovers his wife has a lover and shoots her.  The paramedics arrive and attempt to revive her.  In this staging this includes a giant syringe and no prizes for guessing where that goes. The remorseful husband shoots himself.  An angel (Ben Done) appears and explains that the usual laws of physics don’t apply in opera and the entire plot and score is replayed backwards.  It was played effectively deadpan by Cassandra Amorim and Lyndon Ladeur while Jordana Goddard, as the elderly deaf aunt, sat through the whole thing entirely oblivious.  Good fun.

1.angel

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