Tag Archives: coc

Coming up

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pandtThere are a couple of opera openings next week.  Pyramus and Thisbe; the Barbara Monk Feldman, Monteverdi, Chris Alden creation, opens at the COC on Tuesday 20th for a run of seven shows and Opera Atelier are opening a run of six shows of Lully’s Armide at the Elgin starting on Thursday evening.  Both shows are very much a case of Canadian talent on display with no big international names.  La Traviata continues at the COC in tandem with Pyramus and Thisbe.

darknetThere’s one interesting new announcement for the following week.  Amanda Smith and Alaina Viau are collaborating on a show called Toronto Darknet Market.  It’s inspired by those parts of the internet that even I don’t know about and will run as a sequence of three performances on the 29th starting at 8pm.  It’s at 8-11 which is at 233 Spadina (south of Dundas).  It’s a PWYC fundraiser for a chamber production of Médée by Marc-Antoine Charpentier next year.  Toronto needs more staged baroque opera that’s not Opera Atelier so this initiative deserves support.  There will be good young singers on display with music by Purcell, Berg and Cage among others.

Line up for Centre Stage announced

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centrestageSo we now know who will be singing at Centre Stage, the COC’s gala competition for aspiring young singers with both cash prizes and places in the Ensemble Studio up for grabs.  There are, I think, only two that I’m at all familiar with; soprano Eliza Johnson who was a finalist last year and baritone Zachary Read who was a rather good Sid in UoT Opera’s Albert Herring a couple of years ago.  The other six are mezzo-sopranos Emily D’Angelo, Lauren Eberwein, Marjorie Maltais and Pascale Spinney, soprano Samantha Pickett and baritone Bruno Roy.  Wow! Four mezzos so the mezzo mafia will likely be ecstatic.  No tenors but with four already in the Ensemble Studio that’s probably a good thing.  Centre Stage is on November 3rd at 5.30pm at the Four Seasons Centre with a cocktails (well wine mostly) and rather good snacks before the competition itself.  Tickets are $100 from the COC box office or coc.ca.

Suirina, Castronovo and Kelsey rock Traviata

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There’s a lot to like in the COC’s production of Verdi’s La Traviata that opened at The Four Seasons Centre last night.  Arin Arbus’ production; a co-production with Chicago Lyric Opera and Houston Grand Opera avoids the cloying sentimentality of many productions of this piece and, without being in any way gratuitous, deals very directly with the world Verdi wanted us to see; a world of hypocrisy, sex for sale and early, pointless death.

0097 – (in foreground) Roberto Gleadow as Dr. Grenvil and Ekaterina Siurina as Violetta in the COC’s production of La Traviata, 2015. Conductor Marco Guidarini, director Arin Arbus, set designer Riccardo Hernandez, costume designer Cait O’Connor, and lighting designer Marcus Doshi. Photo: Michael Cooper Michael Cooper Photographic Office- 416-466-4474 Mobile- 416-938-7558 66 Coleridge Ave. Toronto, ON M4C 4H5

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Next week

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DSC_6619-704x1024There are a couple of biggies coming up next week.  On October 7th and 8th the amazingly talented and apparently fearless Barbara Hannigan is singing with and conducting the TSO.  For all I know she’ll be tap dancing and doing hand stands as well.  It’s her conducting debut with this orchestra. The programme features works by Nono, Haydn, Mozart, Ligeti and Stravinsky.  8pm Roy Thomson Hall.

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Pyramus and Thisbe

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The COC’s first main stage production of a contemporary Canadian work in over fifteen years; Barbara Monk Feldman’s Pyramus and Thisbe, is now in the early stages of rehearsal and, yesterday, some of us got a bit of a preview by way of a working rehearsal.  What seems to be happening here is that the COC is creating a show of a kind that has not previously been seen on the Four Seasons stage and will shake up a lot of preconceptions of what a company like COC can offer.

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Met vs COC – the numbers

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Inspired by this post at Likely Impossibilities on the Met’s 2015/16 season I thought I’d take a look at how the COC compared.  Now, one season at COC wouldn’t provide much in the way of stats so I’ve looked at the eight seasons from 2008/9 to 2015/16.  (In all the numbers each work in a double bill has been counted as 0.5).

Productions by composer

composerVerdi unsurprisingly tops the COC list with 15% (Met 17%) closely followed by Puccini (10%) and Mozart (13%) but Puccini is nowhere near as heavily represented as at the Met (21%) and Donizetti only scores 5% versus a whopping 21% in New York.  Throw in Rossini and the “big 4” Italians account for 68% of productions in New York versus 36% in Toronto.  I didn’t do a full analysis of the percentage of performances because I didn’t have all the data but Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Mozart tend to get more performances per production so, as in New York, production percentages somewhat understate their position. Continue reading →

Opera for the young and young at heart

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bremenTwo listings in in the last 24 hours.  COC is staging a couple of “family friendly” events.  On Saturday, November 14th, they are presenting Dean Burry’s The Bremen Town Musicians (11am) and interactive opera Operation Superpower (1.30pm). Starring the young artists of the COC Ensemble Studio, both operas are written specifically for young people aged 3 to 12. Each opera is 45 minutes in length, followed by a 15-minute Q&A with the cast and crew. Both performances take place at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre at 227 Front St. E., Toronto, Ontario.  There’s the opportunity to take part in “hands-on activities” related to the operas an hour before each show.  Tickets to each opera are $15 for adults, and $10 for children.  More info at coc.ca. Continue reading →

A new program from the COC

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MAO_0790aThis just in from frequent Operaramblings commenter and COC Adult Education Programs Manager Gianmarco Segato.  The COC is launching Opera Insights, a series of free adult education events linked to the productions of the 2015/16 season.  It’s a pretty broad range of programming ranging from scholarly discussions on reconstructing the score of Maometto II and the history of the ball gown to Traviata singalongs and Carmen themed dance lessons.  Participants include composers Barbara Monk-Feldman and Norbert Palej, conductors Johannes Debus, Harry Bicket and Sandra Horst and singers like Christine Goerke plus, inevitably, lots of academics (we love them really we do).  Looks like a lot of fun.  The events are all free but are ticketed.  Full details can be found here.

Lunchtime concerts

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2015-03-26-COC-NightsDreams-070The Canadian Opera Company has just announced the 2015/16 season line up for the free lunchtime concert series in Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  Now under the curatorship of Claire Morley there’s the usual incredible array of chamber music, dance, piano, jazz and world music as as well as, of course, the vocal series.

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