Tag Archives: coc

Summer in the city

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toronto-summer-ferryThis year’s Toronto Summer Music Festival reported a 28% increase in attendance over the previous year with the under 35 segment up 11%.  Obviously this is a good thing but I’m also interested because it tends to reinforce my view that the assumption that there’s no market for classical music in the summer months is based on a very outdated view of behaviour.  Most of us don’t decamp to the cottage for the summer.  The  model of the non-working wife taking the children to the cottage for the summer where father joins them on the weekend is right up there with the idea that schools should close for the summer because the kids are needed on the farm.

I think there’s a real opportunity for a summer opera venture in Toronto.  Maybe it’s where we could slot in our (missing) equivalent of Chicago Opera Theatre that does more obscure and/or edgier stuff than the big kids at the COC?  One can hope, I guess.

Summer second thoughts

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The heat and humidity of a Toronto summer aren’t especially conducive to dealing with most of what’s in my DVD review pile right now (Wagner chiefly!) and the live music pickings are slim as, Toronto Summer Music Festival aside, music has departed for the land of moose and loon.  I thought, therefore, that I might take another look at some old favourites and see how they shape up to a second look.  I thought I’d focus on works where I have seen many subsequent productions or, perhaps, on works once seen only on DVD but which I had more recently been able to see live.

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On to Toronto

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tcherniakovThe Tcherniakov Don Giovanni that I just finished watching on Blu-ray is a Canadian Opera Company co-production so, sooner or later, it should end up in Toronto.  That will be interesting.  There’s a very conservative streak in the Toronto audience and, especially, among the critics for the major newspapers.  These are people who are disturbed by Robert Carsen and go apopleptic over Chris Alden.  It will be most interesting to see what the reaction is to something like Tcherniakov’s interpretation, even though it’s not that radical by European standards.

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COC ticket sales and revenue

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denial_catThe Canadian Opera Company released information on sales for the 2012/13 season today.  Ticket sales totalled 109,297, down from 125,328 in 2011/12 and well below the 137,000 of the 2009/10 season.  Ticket revenue was also off at $9.9 million versus $11 million in 2011/12 and $13.4 million in 2009/10.  A reduction in the number of performances (and one hopes, costs) meant that capacity utilization only dropped to 90% compared with 91% in the previous season and 98% in 2009/10.  At least revenue per seat sold rose to $94.26 compared with $87.76 the previous year though still below 2009/10’s $97.97. Part of this must have been due to the premium prices charged for Tristan und Isolde but one hopes it might also reflect slightly less frenetic discounting.

Overall I think this is pretty worrying.  Three consecutive years of significant revenue decline is not good.  The economy is tough everywhere but Toronto has probably suffered less than most major opera centres so it’s hard to blame the economy for all of the decline.  A 26% drop in ticket revenue in four years is pretty extreme.  I’m a big fan of the product that the COC is putting on the stage but I just don’t see the current situation as sustainable and, as yet, I don’t see any sort of remedial action (or even any admission that there is a problem).  Still one lives in hope.

Herheim and Egoyan

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This Sunday afternoon (in Toronto) and evening (in Oslo) Brent Bambury of the CBC will interview Atom Egoyan (in Toronto) and Stefan Herheim (in Oslo) about their respective approaches to Richard Strauss’ Salome.  The Egoyan version is just finishing up a run at COC (my impressions here) while Herheim’s version, previously seen in Salzburg, opens at Den Norske Opera & Ballett on Saturday.  There will be live audiences in both cities connected by videolink.  Details for Toronto are under the cut.

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Another look at Carmélites

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It’s becoming a habit.  For the fifth time this season I went back to take a second look at a COC production.  This time it was Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.  We were in our usual seats at the front of the Orchestra Ring rather than at the back of Ring 3 where I was on opening night.  I still didn’t notice any real issues of orchestra/singer balance, which had been complained of by some reviewers.  Maybe it was an issue towards the front of the Orchestra where the press tend to be?

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Quilico Awards 2013

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Last night, for the second time (the first was in 2011) the singers of the COC Ensemble Studio competed for the Christina and Louis Quilico Awards; a prize competition created by Christina in memory of her husband, baritone Louis.  It was the usual competition format; the singers offer three arias, they sing one and then the judges choose which of the remaining two they will sing.  It being the Ensemble Studio on show the standard was extremely high.  Nine singers and eighteen arias is too much to report in detail so I’ll concentrate on the winners.

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Alan Walker of the Ontario Arts Foundation, Christina Quilico and the Ensemble Studio

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Searing Carmélites from COC

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Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is a strange and compelling piece.  Dramatically it is very “slow burn” with a narrative arc that builds over almost two hours to a final scene of searing intensity.  Without that final scene the piece would have no reason but it justifies all and only one “fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils” could possibly leave the theatre unmoved.  It’s not just moving, done well it’s emotionally devastating.  And that’s the state I left the Four Seasons Centre in last night after a near perfect performance of Robert Carsen’s extraordinary production.

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Photo Credit: Michael Cooper

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