Yesterday saw the first free lunchtime concert of 2013 at the Four Seasons Centre. Five singers from the COC’s Ensemble Studio gave us a programme of works by Mozart and Salieri, mostly comparative rarities. I enjoy hearing the singers of the Ensemble Studio because it’s not just a chance to hear some good singing but also to see how voices are developing and make some guesses about whether one is seeing a future star.
The COC today announced six new singers will join the Ensemble Studio for the 2013/14 season. If you read my review of the Ensemble Studio competition in November you’ll not be surprised. The three prize winners; bass-baritone Gordon Bintner, tenor Andrew Haji and mezzo Charlotte Burrage are among the six as is my pick, dramatic soprano Aviva Fortunata. The remaining two are baritone Clarence Frazer and mezzo Danielle MacMillan who were also quite impressive in the competition.
The Ensemble Studio is losing Mireille Asselin, Neil Craighead, Rihab Chaieb, Chris Enns and Ambur Braid as well as both pianists; Timothy Cheung and Jenna Douglas, at the end of this season though all of them can be seen in some capacity in La Clemenza di Tito next month. Rihab is also appearing in Dialogues of the Carmelites in the spring. There’s no word on new non-singing talent for Ensemble. I’m going to be really interested to see what’s next for these guys. We’ve had some good times together.
With a month or so to go before the Canadian Opera Company officially announces its 2013/14 season it’s surely time for some uninformed speculation.
There are three big anniversaries in 2013; the bicentenaries of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Benjamin Britten. One would think all would be represented but maybe not. We know Verdi will be. Gerald Finley announced at the Rubies that he would make his role debut in the title role in Falstaff at COC in 2013/14 so we can ink that one in. Britten seems probable. There’s a Houston/COC co-pro of Peter Grimes, directed by Neil Armfield that is due to to come to Toronto. I think we can pencil that one in. No idea on casting but I would love to see Stuart Skelton myself. Wagner, I’m not so sure. Maybe February’s run of Tristan und Isolde will be COC’s sole nod to Wagner. Certainly the next most likely candidate; the Lyon/Met/COC Parsifal is, apparently, not expected before 2015.
The COC announced a bunch of line up changes for the upcoming winter and spring runs this morning.
No reasons were given for the withdrawals of Fritz and Juon.
Dean Burry’s opera for children The Brothers Grimm had its 500th performance last night at the shiny new Ada Slaight Hall at the Daniels Spectrum in the revitalised Regent’s Park neighbourhood. It’s a work that premiered in 2001 and has been a staple of the COC Ensemble Studio School Tour ever since. It’s played an important role in developing young Canadian singers as performers as evidenced by the fact that the original cast brothers were Joseph Kaiser and David Pomeroy. 500 performances!
Rihab Chaieb and Mireille Asselin
In February I attended a brilliant lunchtime concert of vocal music by Kaija Saariaho sung by three singers from the COC Ensemble Studio. I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. The composer was so taken with the standard of performance that she has arranged for them to perform a slightly different selection of her works in Washington DC in February.
If you aren’t from Toronto or Montreal (or perhaps Paris, Lyon, Dublin or Belgrade) you probably haven’t heard much about Mireille Asselin, Rihab Chaieb or Jacqueline Woodley (except maybe on this blog) but you will! Strongly recommended both for the music and the singers.
Photo Credit – Kira Perov 2005
Word on the street is that there are only “a few hundred” tickets left for the COC’s February run of the Peter Sellars/Bill Viola Tristan und Isolde. It’s a fair bet that most of the available tickets will be for nights when Burkhard Fritz is singing rather than Ben Heppner. If you want to see Heppner I’d plan on buying now rather than expecting something last minute to turn up. I’d expect there to be horrific line-ups for the same-day nosebleeds and standing room tickets (and I don’t have the stamina to stand through Tristan!).
Christopher Alden’s production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito apparently isn’t selling so well, despite a stellar cast and a production that got very good reviews in Chicago. This makes me a sad panda. Unfashionably, perhaps, I regard Clemenza as one of Mozart’s best operas, perhaps his very best, so the chance to see it with a wonderful cast is one I would not miss. My current plans call for me to see it twice; with the principal cast and with the Ensemble Studio, but I shall be sorely tempted to get in for an extra look earlier in the run than my current tickets!
Earlier this week I fired up iTunes in search of the latest Melvin Bragg “In Our Time” episode and noticed that two podcasts were downloading. The other one turned out to be a new episode of Charles Reid’s “This Opera Life”. Now, Charles’ podcast had been on hiatus for months and I really missed it so I was delighted at this turn of events. I didn’t get a chance to listen to it until I was heading to the market at stupid o’clock this morning. Anyway, to cut to the chase, after an explanation of the hiatus, Charles goes on to say nice things about this blog and the Big COC Podcast. Which is awfully kind of him. Charles’ podcasts are mostly interviews with the ordinary working stiffs of the opera world. Occasionally he hooks a “big name” but mostly not and it’s all the more interesting because of it. I think his archive now has 59 episodes, curiously numbered two to sixty! The latest features director Jonathon Loy. I recommend it highly.
You can find Charles Reid’s podcasts at http://thisoperalife.charles-reid.com/ or on iTunes.
Last night I was in a very full Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre for the second annual COC Studio Ensemble competition. Ten singers, selected down from 146 in auditions across Canada and in New York were competing for cash prizes and an opportunity to join the COC Ensemble Studio. COC General Director Alexander Neef chaired the panel of judges which included soprano and teacher Wendy Nielsen as well as assorted COC brass. Chorus Master Sandra Horst MC’d in her own inimitable fashion. The format was typical of such events. Each singer offered five arias. They got to sing one of their choice and then the judges requested a second from the remaining four. Piano accompaniment alternated between the equally excellent Rachel Andrist and Steven Philcox.
The latest episode of the Big COC Podcast is up on iTunes. This one features Gianmarco Segato of the COC plus three bloggers; myself, Lydia Perovic of Definitely the Opera and Leslie Barcza of barczablog. We talked about Henze and European modernism segging into the differences between modern opera in Europe and America. And that led to a discussion of Adès’ The Tempest, American conservatism, the Met and it’s audience, parties at Christopher Alden’s place and much more. Then it was on to Lydia’s new novel, Incidental Music(go buy it). There was also an interview with Nina Draganić about the free concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. When we came back it was for a discussion about the difference about men and women, action and feeling in opera and, ultimately, why the soprano always gets a raw deal! I really enjoyed recording this one. It really felt like a conversation between good friends (which it was) and it’s not been edited down too much. I think there may have been a segment on the Opera Atelier Der Freischütz that got chopped.
operaramblings 