Tag Archives: coc

Don’t lose your head

Posted on by
Reply

penguinsJust spotted new discount deals on the COC website. For the three spring productions; David Alden’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des Carmélites and Atom Egoyan’s Salome, they are offering 25% off if you buy two of the three and 33% off for all three.  You get to pick your dates and tickets are available in all sections except the cheapest and most expensive.  The 33% deal brings prices down to around season subscription rates.  There are also $22 and $35 tickets available for both the under 30s who attend COC performances.

On a per dead nun basis you won’t find cheaper anywhere!

And now for something completely different

Posted on by
1

It’s March break in Toronto which means lots of children friendly activities.  Yesterday’s lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre was one of them.  It was a session/performance by soprano/educator Kyra Millan together with sidekicks baritone Jesse Clark and pianist Christina Faye.  There were lots of kids, mostly quite young, there.  Some had even brought their parents.

DSC01328

Continue reading →

Ex Alden semper aliquot novis

Posted on by
6

12-13-04-MC-D-814Last night saw the final performance of the COC’s run of La clemenza di Tito.  I had seen the Ensemble Studio performance a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it but had some questions and reservations about the production.  Last night many of those issues were resolved. It seemed more closely directed and the characterizations were more fully rehearsed.  A good example of this would be Michael Schade’s intensely neurotic Tito which was central to the concept.  Many things make sense if one sees Tito as being in love with an idea of himself.  In this context his betrayal by Sesto is particularly hurtful because it implies that his closest confidante isn’t buying it and his “clemency” is necessary to restore his faith in his own self-projection.  This Tito gives Robert Gleadow’s Publio space and reason to be more than the dutiful, rather thick plod.  He’s the one who has seen through Tito but must “play the game”.  His final, rather sharp, exchanges with Vitellia suggest a genuine capacity for malevolence.  This is, after all, an Imperial Court, where by definition life is dangerous and nothing what it seems.

Continue reading →

An anti-Valentine

Posted on by
1

selig_franz_josefToday’s lunchtime recital in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre was a recital of Schubert and Strauss songs on the theme “Love’s Dark Shore”.  The performers were German bass Franz-Josef Selig, in town singing King Marke in Tristan und Isolde, and the COC’s own Rachel Andrist at the piano.  There wasn’t much about “Love” in the pieces chosen but there was plenty of death, depression and despair.  One might think it would be a complete downer but nobody could possibly be depressed witnessing the artistry of Selig.

Those who have heard Selig in Tristan know that he has a massive voice.  It was fascinating to hear him turn it to lieder.  He is a very German lieder singer in the best possible way.  He enunciates with great clarity and gets full value out of the meaning of every phrase.  He clearly loves the texts.  He also manages his huge voice wonderfully.  Mostly he sang quite quietly with beautiful legato and perfect control but when he wanted volume it was there in abundance and without strain.  He also has a real range of tone colour and sheer beauty of tone.  Often he sounded more like a baritone than a bass but he could get almost tectonically low when he needed to.  It was very impressive.  Rachel’s accompaniment was perfectly fine too though I think most of the audience was focussed on the voice.

I did hear a few grumbles about the unrelieved darkness of the material but I felt the works suited the singer and it was, as these things are, a fairly short programme so the lack of variety didn’t really bother me.  All in all, a very worthwhile way to spend one’s lunch break.

Back to Tristan

Posted on by
3

Last night the lemur and I braved the biggest snow storm in several years to catch Tristan und Isolde at the Four Seasons Centre.  It was the same production I saw last Tuesday but with Michael Baba and Margaret Jane Wray replacing Ben Heppner and Melanie Diener in the title roles.  I was also sitting at the front of the Orchestra Ring which is a very different sight line than the back of Ring 3.  There’s no way to avoid saying this, it was hugely disappointing and especially so as it was the first time the lemur had seen the show and I had been talking it up excitedly since Tuesday.  Baba and Wray sounded underpowered and under-rehearsed.  The big Act 2 duet, O sink’ hernieder, Nacht der Liebe, that had left me literally shaking on Tuesday merely left me shaking my head.  What had been a glorious, transcendent, hypnotic wave of sound had turned to mush.  It was a relief when Franz-Josef Selig, King Marke, took over.  At last we got some Wagnerian singing of style and class.  Act 3 wasn’t much better.  To be fair, the rest of the cast was just as good as on opening night and the orchestra deservedly got the loudest and longest applause of the night.  But Tristan und Isolde needs, as Isolde points out, Tristan and Isolde.

Tristan und Isolde - 0013 - Credit Chris Hutcheson

Continue reading →

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Posted on by
5

12-13-E-04-MC-D-0071 Last night saw the COC Ensemble Studio’s annual main stage performance.  This year it was Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito in a Christopher Alden production.  It’s a somewhat quirky production that I haven’t fully digested yet and may need to wait until after seeing the main cast on the 22nd to come to a more considered view.  My initial reaction is that it has a lot of interesting ideas, maybe one or two misguided ones and that the whole thing, while interesting, isn’t completely coherent.  That said, Alden productions often seem more coherent second time around.  And whatever I might think of the production, it didn’t distract from some very fine performances.

Continue reading →

Ever wanted to be a nun or an executioner?

Posted on by
5

Then read on…

COC FILLING OVER 100 “Super” roles for spring productions

Toronto – On Saturday, February 16, 2013, the Canadian Opera Company will hold an open call to fill the 117 supernumerary roles needed for its three productions presented this spring: Lucia di Lammermoor, Salome and Dialogues des Carmélites.  Supernumeraries, a.k.a. supers, are the extras of the opera world and play a variety of non-singing roles.  They are vital to enhancing the operatic experience presented on stage.  The COC encourages adults between the ages of 18 and 65 to attend this open call, taking place from

Continue reading →

Highest, purest joy

Posted on by
12

12-13-03-MC-D-0022-21After seeing Peter Sellars on Monday night I decided that (a) I had to see Ben Heppner as Tristan and (b) I couldn’t wait until next Friday when I have tickets to see Michael Baba in the role.  So, I skipped out of the office yesterday morning and with a little help (thanks Sergey!) scored a standing room ticket for last night’s opening.  (At $12 for nearly five hours music this was a remarkable bargain!).  I’m back at my desk on five hours sleep and I’m still in shock.  This will go down in legend.

I’d only seen Tristan und Isolde once before, in a disastrous MetHD broadcast, which had been so irritating that the music left little impression.  Other times I’d attempted it on DVD I couldn’t get past the nothinghappensness of it.  Last night I finally got it.  In Sellars’ production not much happens on stage.  The singers, in non descript monochrome outfits, come and go or stand around in square light spots.  They gesture in characteristically Sellarian fashion but it’s almost classic “park and bark”.  But, and it’s a huge but, behind them there is a giant screen on which videos by Bill Viola play more or less continuously and through them he evokes time and place and we see the inner journeys of the characters.  It’s really hard to describe but it works brilliantly.  To counterpoint the long meditative sections, when there is action it often happens off stage.  The chorus sing off stage from various parts of the house and characters, too, appear on the orchestra apron or high up in the Rings.  These action moments are often accompanied by lighting that encompasses the auditorium and implicates us in the action (but not the dark inner journey of Tristan and Isolde).  It’s great.  (1)

Continue reading →