UoT Opera’s annual Student Composer Collective production was presented on Sunday afternoon at CanStage Berkeley Street. This year Michael Patrick Albano’s libretto took three stories from antiquity and presented each twice; essentially in the original and then with a modern twist. The three stories were Antigone, Medea and Helen and five composers were involved in creating the music. Sandra Horst conducted with a seven piece ensemble on stage to one side.
Woking Phoenix is a play developed and performed by Silk Bath Collective. It opened at Theatre Passe Muraille on Thursday night. It deals with that perennial Canadian issue; the immigrant experience. In this case it’s essentially a single Chinese mother with three children running a Chinese restaurant in small town Ontario. So one has the usual dynamics of kids growing up coupled with being “different” in a very homogenous community. It’s a co-creation of Aaron Jan and Gloria Mok , who also co-directed, and Besse Cheng who appears in the play as the elder daughter.
In 1986 a French diplomat was sentenced to six years in prison for spying for China. It began with an affair with a Chinese opera singer who the diplomat claimed to believe to be a woman. Mr. Shi and his Lover is a piece exploring the relationship and the inner thoughts of the two characters. It was developed by Macau Experimental Theatre between 2013 and 2015 and got its North American premier in Toronto last night as part of SummerWorks.
operaramblings 