Tag Archives: coc

The rest of April

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tapestrybcMarch was a curiously quiet month.  April starts to look busier, at least once we get past Easter.  Tonight, Against the Grain have their monthly pub night at The Amsterdam Bicycle Club.  Snow is forecast so you should all stay away and then maybe I’ll be able to get in.  On Saturday at 4pm there’s a free (or PWYC) recital in Ernest Baumer Studio featuring soprano Stephanie Nakagawa and pianist Peemanat Kittimontreechai.  They will be performing arias from contemporary Canadian operas.  On Thursday 13th Philippe Jaroussky and Les Violins du Roy will be appearing at Koerner Hall.  It’s at 8pm and features mainly fairly obscure Handel material.

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Looking forward to Riel

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(left to right) Russell Braun as Louis Riel, Jani Lauzon as the Prison Guard, Allyson McHardy as Julie Riel and director Peter Hinton rehearsing Act III, scene v – Photo by Tanner Davies for the COC

Harry Somers’ Louis Riel was written to “celebrate” Canada’s 100th birthday and was performed at the COC in 1967 and 1968 and was given a studio TV broadcast treatment on the CBC in 1969.  Eventually that broadcast made it onto DVD and I reviewed it about four years ago.  The COC is now reviving it for Canada’s 150th in a new production by Peter Hinton, a director noted for his stage work with native artists and native themes.  Yesterday I spent an hour at the COC watching a working rehearsal of one of the scenes and this morning I took another look at the DVD.

I had hoped to be able to offer some real insights into what one might expect to see when this production opens on April 20th but, to be perfectly honest, the deeper I dig the less certain I become about anything to do with it.  I know that Hinton and the COC are taking enormous pains to recreate the work in a way that’s sensitive to 2017 and the different way that, we hope or aspire to, treat Canada’s original peoples (some of us do anyway).  But what a challenge it seems to be.  Let me try and explore some themes though you will find few conclusions.

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The Ensemble Studio do Mozart, Bellini and Handel

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Last night saw the Ensemble Studio’s big main stage performance.  Rather than perform one of the COC’s current productions (hard to imagine how they could cast one from the current line up) we got scenes from three operas; two of them from the COC’s current season.  They were performed with the orchestra on stage in front of the backdrop to the opening scene from the current Die Zauberflöte and in concert dress rather than costume (more or less, there were some nods to the roles in question) and with some blocking as far as limiting movement to the front of the stage permitted.

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Magic Flute – the other cast

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Last night I saw the alternate cast of the COC’s Magic Flute.  Owen McCausland swaps First Armed Man for Tamino with Andrew Haji, Kirsten MacKinnon comes in as Pamina, Phillip Addis is Papageno and Matt Boehler is Sarastro.  The changes don’t really affect things much at all.  All the new faces are very good.  MacKinnon is a very perky Pamina which works well with Addis who has maybe a bit more of the “cheeky chappy” than Hopkins.  Fans of Owen McCausland and Andrew Haji will see exactly the differences in timbre and vocal technique one would expect but the interpretation is pretty much the same.  Overall, I would say that someone not very familiar with these singers would scarcely notice any differences.  What I did notice is how much better this production looks from Ring 3 than from the Orchestra.  Getting something of a “plan view” makes the antics during the overture look less cluttered and frantic and the trials scene is much more effective.  And the sound is better too.

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Twilight

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Last night the COC began its run of Götterdämmerung, the last and longest opera in Wagner’s epic tetralogy at The Four Seasons Centre.  It’s very different from Die Walküre and Siegfried.  The visual elements that tied them together; tottering Valhalla, disintegrating world ash, gantries, dancers, heaps of corpses are mostly gone.  In Tim Albery’s production the visuals are spare almost to abstraction.  The Gibichung Hall is a CEO suite with computer monitors and red couches, both Brünnhilde’s rock and the Rhinemaidens’ hang out look improvised, almost like squatters’ camps.  Costuming, apart from an occasional flashback, as in Waltraute’s scene, is severely modern business; grey suits, black dresses.  Only Siegfried himself in tee shirt and leather jacket stands out from the corporate crowd.  Dancing flames are replaced by red lights.  Everything that can be understated is and the world ends not with an overflowing Rhine and collapsing Valhalla but a stately pas de quatre between Brünnhilde and the Rhinemaidens.

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Getting busier

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We are moving into busy season for the next two or three weeks.  Next week, Tuesday sees a lunchtime recital in the RBA by Phillip Addis with song cycles by Maurice Ravel and Erik Ross.  Wednesday sees a concert staging of Salvatore Sciarrino’s The Killing Flower (Luci mie traditrici).  It tells the story of Carlos Gesualdo’s murder of his wife and lover.  Performers include Shannon Mercer, Geoffrey Sirett, Scott Belluz and Keith Klassen.  It’s at Walter Hall at 7.30pm with a pre-show with the composer at 6.30pm.  Sciarrino is involved in other events connected with the New Music Festival all week.  Thursday is opening night for the COC’s Götterdämmerung at the Four Seasons Centre with an early kick off time of 6pm.  Alternatively the TSO are doing the Fauré Requiem with Karina Gauvin and Russell Braun on both Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

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Music Theatre Wales’s touring production of The Killing Flower at Buxton Festival. Photograph: Clive Barda

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Next week (mostly) in the RBA

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Things are still a bit quiet on the vocal music front (the lull before the storm judging by my agenda) but there are a couple of free concerts of interest at noon in the RBA next week.  On Tuesday, bass Goran Jurić, currently singing Sarastro at the COC, is teaming up with Anne Larlee in an all Russian program featuring works by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Spiridov.  Then on Thursday there’s a concert in the chamber music series featuring the members of the COC orchestra academy.  But once again, the chamber series deceives because half of the program (at least) features soprano Jaqueline Woodley in a series of Handel arias.  Later, at 7pm at The Fifth Pubhouse, the COC is hosting Opera Trivia Night with trivia master Russell Harder.  It’s free but ticketed.  Tisckets from coc.ca or the Four Seasons box office.  The COC’s Magic Flute continues with the first chance to see the alternative cast on Sunday afternoon (29th) at the Four Seasons Centre, which is pretty close to sold out.  No doubt the matinee show will be a lot of kids’ first opera.

Magic Flute revived at COC

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Last night saw the first performance of this season’s run of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the COC.  It’s a revival of the Diane Paulus 2011 production with Ashlie Corcoran as revival director.  It has a “theatre within a theatre” overlay in Act 1; it’s supposed to be an aristocratic birthday party for Pamina where the guests perform the opera, which mysteriously disappears in Act 2 though it makes an odd reprise right at the end where all the characters appear to perform a country dance.  Strip that element out and it’s a workmanlike Flute with nothing much to say but some pretty visuals.  The animals are cute and the trials scene is rather well done.  There is one notable change from 2011.  Pamina’s lurid pink Disney princess outfit is gone, replaced by something Regencyish and far less jarring.

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COC 2017/18

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Last night the Canadian Opera Company announced the line up for the 2017/18 season.  It was all pretty much as predicted.  My predictions post got five out of six right and Dylan was right on the money down to timing.  So what do we get?

The fall season features, finally, Tim Albery’s production of Strauss’ Arabella first seen at Santa Fe.  Erin Wall, as expected, takes the title role while Jane Archibald, in one of three season appearances, sings Zdenka.  The Mandryka will be one of the few high profile imports, Tomasz Konieczny.  There are welcome appearances for David Pomery as Matteo and Claire de Sevigné as Flakermilli.  It’s a season full of Ensemble Studio graduates.  Patrick Lange conducts.  Partnering Arabella is Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in a production by James Robinson adapted to set the piece in pre WW1 Niagara on the Lake.  Simone Osborne and Andrew Haji play Adina and Nemorino with Gordon Bintner as Belcore.  This is, I think, the first time I’ve seen husband and wife as soloists at the COC though the Pomeroys have been seen on stage together quite a few times.  Brit Andrew Shore rounds things out as Dulcemara.  Yves Abel makes his COC debut in the pit.

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Haruspication

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The usual haruspication ahead of the COC 2017/18 season announcement has been taking place at the Kitten Kondo.  Frankly the giblets are downright confusing this year.  There are some hot rumours and a lot of much less hot stuff leading to much speculation based on the shape of the season and past patterns.  Here’s some of the more probable stuff.  It’s well known that the COC picked up the Carsen Eugene Onegin when the Met was about to bin it so presumably they intend to actually mount it some time.  It’s got to the point where names have been associated with it in multiple places.  Braun, Radvanovsky and El-Khoury have all been mentioned.  Now, having been at the Dima concert at Koerner where the Russian chapter of Hell’s Grannies just about tore the place apart I reckon it should sell like hot blinis so a longish double cast run seems highly plausible.

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