The tenth season at the Four Seasons Centre opened with the, by now traditional, lunchtime concert by the COC’s Ensemble Studio. Six of the eight singers and one of the two pianists are new recruits which is unusual and more of a chance to level set than see how anyone has developed.
The lunchtime concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre kicks off on Tuesday with the traditional opener; a concert by the members of the COC Ensemble Studio. It’s always a good opportunity to level set for the season ahead. Noon in the RBA. Then on Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm the TSO are doing Mahler 3 with Jamie Barton as soloist. I was tremendously impressed with Jamie’s Koerner Hall recital and am quite excited to see what she can do singing with an orchestra.
A bunch of announcements today; most of them from Against the Grain Theatre. The big one I suppose is the announcement of a formal arrangement with the COC which sees a two year “company in residence” arrangement whereby AtG will be based at the COC’s Front Street offices and where COC execs will mentor their AtG equivalents. The relationship has been going on for a while so it’s not terribly surprising that they have decided to shack up together.
The COC has just released the line up for the free lunchtime concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. It’s the usual rich and eclectic mix of vocal, chamber and piano music with world music, jazz and dance thrown in for good measure. Here are the highlights from my point of view:
A co-production between the COC and Opéra de Lyon has just opened in France. It’s Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail with rewritten dialogues by Lebanese-Canadian-French playwright Wajdi Mouawad, who also directs. It can be watched online here. It’s geoblocked but you can use something like Tunnel Bear to watch it. There’s a very complete analysis of the production by Lydia Perovic over on her blog.
The crazy late April/early May rush seems to be pretty much over. This coming week there are only a few performances of note. On Tuesday in the RBA at noon Aviva Fortunata and Iain MacNeil perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel. Thursday sees the opening of Against the Grain’s A Little Too Cozy at the CBC’s Studio 42. Then on Friday 13th, the TSO are doing, appropriately enough, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony which sets Yevtushenko poems about the Babi Yar massacres.
Carmen and Maometto II continue at the COC, as does Against Nature at The Citadel.
Just back from a second look at the COC’s production of Rossini’s Maometto II. This time I was sitting on the orchestra level and a bit closer which helps with this production. Basic impressions remain the same as opening night; great singing, visually spectacular, but I did have some additional, and related, thoughts about both the libretto and the production.
The very busy spring season continues for another couple or three weeks before we head into the summer lull. This afternoon sees the final Songmasters concert of the season at the Royal Conservatory with the Hungarian-Finnish connection. Soprano Leslie Ann Bradley, bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus, pianists Rachel Andrist and Robert Kortgaard and violinist Erika Raum will perform Kaija Saariaho’s Changing Light as well as works by Liszt, Bartók, Sibelius, and others. That’s at 2pm in Mazzoleni Hall.
Rossini’s rarely performed opera seria Maometto II opened at the Four Seasons Centre last night in a production by David Alden and with substantially the same cast as when it played in Santa Fe on 2012. This is the restored Maometto in the edition prepared by Hans Schellevis in an attempt to get as close to Rossini’s initial Naples score as possible. So, no happy ending and all the complexity of Rossini’s original design.
We were back at the COC last night for the first performance of Carmen by the alternative cast. (First cast review) As so often seems to be the case with these double cast shows it felt almost like a different production. The biggest differences are produced by the new Don José, David Pomeroy, and the new Carmen, Clémentine Margaine. Pomeroy is a very decent singer but he doesn’t have the ease, power and bloom of Russell Thomas. What he does have is vastly superior acting chops. His Don José is a believably complex human being. We can see his decline from rather boring and provincially stuck up into despair(1). It’s palpable. Margaine’s Carmen is a similar story. Her voice isn’t as big or dark as Anita Rashvelishvili(2) but she’s much more physical on stage. Further, Pomeroy and Margaine are much more credible as a couple. The net result is the drama that was rather missing in the first two acts on Sunday. The price is not hearing two absolutely incredibly beautiful voices.
