Tag Archives: coc

Opera for Toronto

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Last night at the COC there was a special performance of Puccini’s La Bohème.  The cast was made up, for the most part, of current and past Ensemble Studio members and tickets had been made available free to a variety of community groups.  It was billed as “Opera for Toronto”.  There had also been a small number of tickets available on line on a first come basis and, by the looks of things , a fair number of comps for the cast.

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Afarin Mansouri giving an introductory talk in Farsi – Credit: Gaetz Photography

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May listings

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Mayday-1So May Day greetings and hello again.  And here are some things you might care to see this month during your eight hours for “what you will”. It’s a bit belated for reasons previously announced but it’s here and I’m back.

Tonight at Lula Lounge at 7pm Tongue in Cheek productions have Democracy in Action.  Several noted singers (Krisztina Szabo, Julie Nesrallah, Natalya Gennadi, Teiya Kasahara, Asitha Tennekoon, Romulo Delgado, Alexander Hajek and Stephen Hegedus) will perform pieces based on audience voting.

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COC to relocate to Frankfurt

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Following a decade of declining ticket sales and revenue the Canadian Opera Company has decided that the logical step is to go in search of a new audience.  As General Director Alexander Neef puts it “We’ve tried everything in the playbook to build a new audience in Toronto; discounts for seniors, discounts for under 30s, community outreach, the lot and nothing has really worked so the board decided that if the audience won’t come to us, we must go to the audience.  So we are moving lock, stock and barrel to Frankfurt.  There’s a great audience there, as well as most of our singers.  Besides it’s not like we will no longer be accessible to our existing audience.  Air Canada has three direct flights per day from Pearson to our new home.”

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April shows

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butterfly-square… plus a late March addition…

March 29th and 30th Tapestry are doing the Songbook thing again.  This is the show where an established singer; Jacqueline Woodley this time, works with emerging artists and a pianist (Andrea Grant) plus director Michael Mori to create a show based on Tapestry’s back catalogue.  There are three shows at the Ernest Balmer Studio in the Distillery; Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 4pm and again at 8pm.

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Egoyan’s Così – brunette edition

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The COC season continued last night with Atom Egoyan’s production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, first seen in January 2014.  There are some changes from the previous outing but most of what I had to say about the production holds good still.  This time there have been cuts.  The show now runs as two ninety minute acts plus an interval and it feels tighter and doesn’t drag so much in the second act.  In the process some of the heavy handed symbolism has been discarded; fewer pinned butterflies.  I think the physical comedy may have ratcheted up just a touch but maybe that’s me misremembering.  And the girls are brunettes, rather than redheads, but still well matched enough to look like sisters.  Musically, I think it’s been lightened up somewhat.  Bernard Labadie, something of a period specialist, conducts and Michael Shannon accompanies the recits on a fortepiano.  But, still, fundamentally the same show.

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New members of the Ensemble Studio

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No big surprises in the announcement of new members of the COC Ensemble Studio.  It’s the three prize winners from last year’s Centre Stage; tenor Matthew Cairns, bass-baritone Vartan Gabrielian and mezzo-soprano Jamie Groote.  Also joining is pianist and intern coach Alex Soloway.  Cairns and Groote are UoT grads and are well known to many Toronto opera goers through their appearances in UoT productions and elsewhere.  Gabrielian is a Toronto native but studied at the Curtis so is not so well known.  It will be interesting to get to know him.

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New COC Ensemble Studio members (l – r): tenor Matthew Cairns, bass-baritone Vartan Gabrielian, mezzo-soprano Jamie Groote, pianist and intern coach Alex Soloway

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COC 19/20 revealed

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The COC 2019/20 season was revealed last night at the Four Seasons Centre.  I liked the set up this time.  A brief introduction from Alexander Neef, an overture and then a well scripted narrative, read by William Webster, describing the works in turn  within the theme of “Once Upon A Time”, with a performance of one number from each opera.  And so, what do we get:

Turandot 5513Puccini – Turandot – September 28th to October 27th 2019 – 9 performances.

This is the Robert Wilson production from Madrid.  Tamara Wilson and Marjorie Owens share the title role with Sergey Skorokhodov and Kamen Chanev as Calaf and Joyce El-Khoury/Vanessa Vasquez as Liu.  Carlo Rizzi conducts.  I’m not a huge fan of Wilson’s elegant but static productions but I could see it working for Turandot.  I’m told the usual Alfano completion will be used.

Lauren Margison gave us Liu’s aria. Continue reading →

Predictions for COC 2019/20

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soothsayer_traits_advisingIt’s that time when I go through the ultimately pointless exercise of trying to predict what the COC season for 2019/20 will be.  In some ways it’s an interesting intellectual enterprise not unlike what an Intelligence Officer would do.  What do past patterns reveal?  What can we glean from published sources?  What have prisoners told us?  (No I don’t really interrogate captured opera singers tempting as it might be).

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February

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nlightsHere are a few more February items of interest in addition to those mentioned here.  Tapestry’s new piece Hook Up opens on January 30th at Theatre Passe Muraille and runs for most of February.  Then on Sunday 3rd February at 2.30 pm VOICEBOX have a performance of Schubert’s rather rare opera Fierrebras.  Kevin Mallon conducts the Aradia Ensemble for this one.  Also there’s Opera Pub as usual on Thursday 7th February.

On February 16th at Gallery 345 at 8pm there will be an Against the Grain presentation of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine.  The “twist” here is that Elle becomes Lui and will be sung by tenor Jacques Arsenault.  Topher Mokrzewski at the piano.  Aria Umezawa directs the first in what is planned as a series of “twisted” concerts.

In free concert news there’s the Quilico Prize competition on February 11th at 5.30pm in the RBA.  Once again the members of theEnsemble Studio compete for cash.  At the nnon hour there’s Susan Bullock and Liz Upchurch on the 19th with a programme of Wagner, Strauss and Duparc and on the 20th there’s Samuel Chan and Stéphane Mayer with an all Schubert programme.  Then on the 21st there’s Lauren Eberwein and Rachel Kerr with a Messiaen and Ravel show.  Given that it’s the Jessye Norman Gala on the 20th as well I think I’ll just schlep my sleeping bag over to the Four Seasons Centre.

Also at the COC of course Elektra continues until February 22nd with Così fan tutte opening on February 5th and running until the 23rd.