Tag Archives: coc

And so it begins again

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Today was the opening concert of the season for the free concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. As has become standard practice it was a recital by the artists of the COC Studio Ensemble. All the members sang except for Ambur Braid who was ill and Ileana Montalbetti is singing in Elektra in Rome at the moment. I have to say it was great to be listening to live, unamplified singing again after a summer of mostly DVDs. I was most interested to hear newcomer Philippe Sly who I had not heard before. He sang one of the Count’s arias from Figaro. He has a very pleasant voice with plenty of power though I think he lacks a bit of variety and drama. He’ll learn that quickly enough in the Ensemble Studio program. The other newcomer was Mireille Asselin, who I had heard before. She sang a rather weird aria from Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias. No lack of drama or humour in her performance! The other standouts for me were Adrian Kramer and Simone Osborne. Adrian sang “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” from Die tote Stadt. His diction and acting are superb and he managed an absolutely gorgeous floated pianissimo on the final “Zurück”. Simone gave us one of Norina’s arias from Don Pasquale. She just gets better. She has quite a powerful, rich voice with really strong, sweet high notes. The progress from even a year ago is obvious. She can act too. There is no question that she is one to watch on the opera scene. Fortunately, that’s exactly what I will be doing in ten days time when I shall see her role debut as Gilda in the COC’s production of Rigoletto. The season is off to a good start.

The 2010/11 Canadian Opera Company season in review

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On paper this looked like the strongest season the COC has ever staged. Every production featured a judicious balance of international stars and local talent. Most of the casting would not have looked shabby in any opera house in the world. In execution it didn’t disappoint. All seven shows were better than competent and the best were very good indeed. The critics were mostly positive though La Cenerentola was less enthusiastically received. Despite all that ticket sales don’t seem to have been all that great. There’s been a fair amount of discounting and definitely more empty seats than one expects at the Four Seasons Centre. The grapevine also tells me worrying things like that the most positive feedback came for a pretty mundane production of The Magic Flute.

So what’s up? I really don’t know but I’d love to see the full stats on ticket sales and see what demographic is growing and which shrinking. I’d hazard a guess that we are seeing a typical Toronto phenomenon; not quite daring to be first rate. The good people of Toronto love to think of themselves as “a world class city” but faced with the awful prospect that they might actually have something that is first class they get scared and, for example, elect a buffoon as mayor. It happened with straight theatre about twenty five years ago. There was a brief flurry of innovative, edgy productions of classic plays but it all sputtered out as audiences couldn’t quite engage and the major theatres were rapidly recolonised by Broadway shows for tourists and straight theatre slunk back into the ghetto of producing plays nobody had heard of in tiny scruffy theatres. Hopefully it’s just a generational thing and a new audience that appreciates what’s on offer will be created. Next season is, if anything, even more exciting than 2010/11 so we will see.

(ETA: There’s also a section of the audience I just don’t understand. More specifically I don’t understand why they are there; they cough, they snore, they whisper, they come in late, they leave the second the curtain falls etc. Why do they come? Do they not realise how rude they are? Is it an entitlement thing?)

So back to the season; the good, the bad and the controversial. Highlights for me were, unexpectedly, Tim Albery’s gritty production of Aida which opened the season. This probably generated more hate mail than any production in COC history but I thought it was bold and effective, though like most bold statements not flawless. Certainly nothing else matched it for raw emotion. Less controversial but just as satisfying was Ariadne auf Naxos. Nothing better exemplified the COC’s ability to blend international stars with local talent (though as three out of five of the international stars were Canadian the categories are not exclusive).

Robert Carsen’s Orpheo was an aesthetic masterpiece entirely in keeping with Gluck’s ideas about simplicity. Beautifully performed, it was enjoyable but in an entirely celebral way. Much the same could be said for Death in Venice; design, direction, singing all beyond criticism but somehow failing to engage at the gut level. The problem lying, I think, with the libretto and its source, rather than anything the COC did to it.

La Cenerentola got a lukewarm reception from the critics who didn’t like the production or the conducting much though all praised the singing. I thought they were harsh. It’s not my favourite opera but I liked the production. The much criticised mice were rather fetching, the production design was a caricature but then so is the work, and the singing was splendid. It would have been a great one to have taken kids to as their introduction to opera.

Nixon in China compared very well with the Met’s version, directed by Sellars and conducted by the composer, which is perhaps all we need to say about it.

That leaves The Magic Flute, apparently the vox populi favourite of the season. Well colour me “blah”. It was OK, even rather good. The production was OK if lacking any real imagination. The singing was extremely stylish but lacked gut punch. Maybe I’d have felt different if it was my first Flute rather than my umpteenth. All in all, I enjoyed the Ensemble Studio performance better. What it lacked in polish it more than made up for in spontaneity.

So, a very high standard over all with a raft of star singers and conductors. Why wasn’t the company playing to packed houses? It’s a mystery.

Next season; more Adrienne Pieczonka, Jane Archibald, Robert Carsen and Sir Andrew Davis plus appearances by Susan Graham, Russell Braun, Christopher Alden, John Relyea, Catherine Malfitano and Alan Held among others.

Ariadne auf Naxos

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Last night’s Ariadne auf Naxos at the Four Seasons Centre was a delight. It’s a peculiar opera and clearly a section of the audience hadn’t done their homework and were rather confused. It’s in two parts. In the prologue arrangements are being made for two pieces to be performed at a big party at the home of “The richest man in Vienna”. The first is an opera seria; Ariadne in fact written by a young earnest composer and to be performed by a stereotypically haughty diva and tenor. The second is a buffo piece to be performed by the dancer Zerbinetta and her troop of Harlequins. There is much huffing and puffing by the serious opera crowd, especially the composer, about having to perform in such undignified company but the boss is the boss and money talks. The final indignity is when the Major Domo announces his master’s decision that both pieces must be presented simultaneously. Last night this was played out in modern dress on a set that faithfully, at least as I remember it, recreated the rather drab back stage areas of the Four Seasons Centre. I have no idea how many people got the joke but I thought it was funny. Alice Coote, as the composer, and Richard Stilwell, as his mentor, the music master, were excellent and everyone else contributed as needed to make for a very funny first half. It was almost, but not quite, enough to distract attention from some truly gorgeous orchestral playing by the COC Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis.

The opera proper is a classical myth based story about Ariadne being abandoned by Theseus and wishing to die on her desert island where she is accompanied only by three nymphs who comment on her condition. Ariadne’s big aria, “Es gibt ein Reich”, is all about longing for solace in death. Adrienne Pieczonka sang gorgeously and was well supported by the three nymphs; Simone Osborne, Teiya Kasahara, Lauren Segal. The orchestral playing just kept hitting the spot. All this was played out in front of a very drab backdrop with holes torn in it through which Zerbinetta and her boys were observing the action. This is where it gets weird again as first the Harlequins appear and try to cheer Ariadne up with a bit of comic singing and dancing. She is unmoved. The boys having failed, Zerbinetta herself appears and explains her views on their shared plight as women and her rather cynical philosophy of love. This happens in a coloratura aria of truly fiendish length and difficulty (“Großmächtige Prinzessin”). Jane Archibald brought it off with aplomb and brought the house down. Then it all gets serious again. Bacchus arrives (raving about having been bewitched by Circe, or not). Bacchus and Ariadne sing at each other heroically and rather at cross purposes until they realise that they have redeemed, transformed or something each other through love. Zerbinetta briefly reappears to remind everyone that “a new God always comes”. Ariadne and Bacchus get even more ecstatic, all sorts of starry things start to appear projected on the stage and backdrops, the orchestra goes nuts, and the curtain falls. It shouldn’t work. It’s Strauss and Hofmannsthal perhaps being too clever for their own good but, miraculously, it does work and the music is fabulous. When the performances are as good as last night it’s all really rather wonderful.

The audience reaction was interesting. A non trivial number of seats were empty after the interval and one couple left rather abruptly half way through the opera proper. Those who stayed were very enthusiastic. Makes me wonder what’s happening with the COC audience. Thoughts on that will form part of a season round up post I think.

Orfeo ed Euridice

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Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice was written in reaction to what the composer saw as the excesses of contemporary opera seria. Out went the glitzy display numbers for star singers and extraneous ballets. In came the idea of telling a strong story simply through words and music. This “stripping down” is emphasised by Robert Carsen’s very spare production, originally created for Lyric Opera of Chicago and currently playing at the Canadian Opera Company.

Carsen gives us a slightly raked stage covered in rubble with the only “feature” being Euridice’s grave. There are no dancers. The three principals and the chorus are dressed in modern black suits or dresses with, where appropriate, white shrouds. In a few scenes pots of fire are used on stage but that’s as near as we get to colour until the very final moment. Despite the lack of dancers there’s plenty of work for the chorus who weave intricate patterns around the principals. Most of this is lit (if anything so dark can be said to be lit) so as to project shadows onto the back of the stage. It’s simple and effective. Only at the very end, as Euridice is redeemed for the second time do we get light. It’s really effective. The stage glows and the houselights come up briefly effectively including us, the audience, in the redemption through love.

Countertenor Lawrence Zazzo sings Orfeo. It’s the crucial role. He’s on stage for virtually the whole 90 minutes and has pretty much all of the famous solos. He was very good last night. He is the ‘modern’ kind of countertenor, sounding more soprano like than say James Bowman or Alfred Deller. That worked very well for this role (though not as well for Oberon two seasons ago when a bit more “otherwordly” would have been welcome). He was very well backed up by Isabel Bayrakdarian as Euridice. It was lovely to hear her sing a role that really suits her current voice; darker and more mature than it was just a few years ago. Amore was sung by Ambur Braid. I think this role suits her voice far better than the Queen of the Night, which is what I last heard her sing on this stage. I think it was quite an inspired bit of casting because, besides the vocal suitability, Ambur is perfect as the gender fluid Amore that Carsen gives us. She looks equally good and equally convincing in a suit as in a dress. So, terrific singing and acting all round.

The chorus is crucial in this piece and didn’t disappoint. It’s a really good chorus and once again did its thing admirably, as did the orchestra The whole thing was musically held together by Harry Bicket in the pit. It’s another excellent choice for this work responds well to his cool, classical style.

So, no histrionics or emotional manipulation here, just an hour and a half of very beautiful and satisfying music theatre that had most of the audience members on their feet for the extended curtain calls. There are three more performances next week and decent tickets still available (surprisingly given the universally stellar reviews). Failing that, Mr. Carsen is back next year to direct Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride with Susan Graham and Russell Braun.

La Cenerentola

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Last night we saw Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Four Seasons Centre. It’s not my favourite opera by a long shot and reviews had been pretty mixed so expectations weren’t particularly high. Those expectations were, however, exceeded.

Cenerentola is a version of the Cinderella story and was cobbled together in a hurry for its first performance. It has all the emotional depth of a Disney Princess movie but it does have some reasonable comedy and some very singable music. The director, Joan Font, and designer, Joan Guillén, have taken the work at face value, created sets and costumes that look like something out of a children’s colouring book and upped the comedy, most notably by the introduction of six (non-singing) mice who provide a sort of physical commentary on the action while doubling as handy prop movers. The colour palette is very bright and reinforced by the lighting plot.

Photo gallery

Critics have criticised this approach as lacking emotional depth and character development but, really, is there any to be found in this piece? I rather doubt it. Within the parameters that have been set the blocking and physical acting is remarkably good. There are a couple of places where characters seem to stranded uncomfortably far upstage for too long leading to some audibility problems but nothing grave. The ugly sisters (Rihab Chaieb and Ileana Montalbetti) camped it up better than I might have expected and veteran comedians like Brett Polegato and Donato di Stefano had a field day.

The singing was fine, sometimes very fine. Lawrence Brownlee as Don Ramiro and Elizabeth DeShong in the title role were quite excellent. Both sang beautifully and accurately as befits bel canto. Larry tossed off high notes with ease and Elizabeth’s coloratura was most assured. All the others were well up to their roles. The all male chorus was as good as ever. Anne Larlee accompanied the recitatives on the fortepiano and was her usual sympathetic self. Leonardo Vordoni in the pit took some sections perhaps more slowly than some others but at least that provided a bit of light and shade. There’s enough “breathless Rossini” in this score to sink a battleship.

So, all in all, an enjoyable production of a work that I think is rather over-rated. I don’t care whether I ever see Cenerentola again but I’m glad I went last night.

Should you go see it? Well tickets for the last three shows go as low as $20 (use discount code “RBA”) but the same is true for Ariadne auf Naxos which is also currently in repertoire and is a much more interesting opera. The Ariadne cast is stellar and Sir Andrew Davies is conducting. Hell, for $20 per show you can see both.

Today it’s off to the cinema to see the Met’s Die Walküre followed by sabotabby’s birthday bash at Vegan Valhalla.

Ensemble Studio – end of season concert

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Yesterday lunchtime was the last opportunity to see all the members of the COC Ensemble Studio before the season ends and some of them move on. It’s always interesting to see the Ensemble members as they are growing as singers so fast and, invariably, one hears a new and interesting side of someone that one hadn’t heard before. The programme material ranged from the 16th to the 20th century but it was all Italian and predominantly art song rather than opera. For me, the highlights were Ambur Braid singing a madrigal by Giulio Caccini; I think she’s so much better when she’s being lyrical rather than bravura, and, real eye opener, Rihab Chaieb singing Rossini’s Anzoleta avanti la regata with beautiful control, real feeling and rich, dark mezzo tone. I’ll be seeing Rihab tonight as one of the ugly step sisters in La Cenerentola and Ambur as Amore in Orfeo ed Eurydice next week.

Multiple short operas at the RBA

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This was a fun concert. Six members of the COC Studio Ensemble presented, more or less fully staged, three very short operas to piano accompaniment. First up was Ana Sokolovic’s Dring, Dring which was performed by Ileana Montalbetti, Rihab Chaleb, Neil Craighead and Chris Emms. It consisted of the singers weaving intricate patterns while making telephone noises and short “wrong number” type conversations in multiple languages. I quite enjoyed it. It’s the first thing by Sokolovic I’ve heard and i was interested as I’m planning on attending the premiere of her new opera in June. Next, the same cast did Barber’s A Hand of Bridge. It’s a melodic little piece about repressed middle class fantasies. I was a bit distracted by the stage direction which appeared to have been done by someone who had never seen, let alone played bridge but then I’m fussy that way. The highlight was definitely Neil Craighead’s recitation of his character’s fairly bizarre sexual fantasies. Finally, Adrian Kramer and Jacqueline Woodley performed Menotti’s The Telephone; a piece about a man who can’t propose to his girlfriend because she is always on the telephone. Performed by the Ensemble’s two best comedians this was predictably funny and very well sung. Liz Upchurch, as ever, was a first class accompanist on the piano.

Quilico Awards

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Last night we went to the Quilico Awards competition. The prize was set up in honour of Canadian baritone Louis Quilico to support various aspects of vocal competition and performance and it has been competed for and awarded in different ways over the years. This year it was a vocal competition featuring the ten young singers of the COC Ensemble Studio. It was held in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons centre and Alexander Neef (COC), David Spears (Opera Hamilton) and John Hess (Queen of Puddings Music Theatre) were the judges. It was a free gig but held at 5.30pm with minimal publicity on a week day so it perhaps wasn’t surprising that the audience was a bit thin. The format was that each singer prepared three arias. S/he sang one of his/her choice then the jury selected one of the other two. The third was held in reserve in case of a tie (which didn’t happen). Liz Upchurch was the accompanist throughout which was rather impressive in itself.

The standard was really very high. I’ve heard all these singers before, either in recital and/or on stage at the Four Seasons Centre. They are all good and getting better. Repertoire was quite varied. There was lots of Mozart (unsurprising since the Ensemble Studio’s last two productions have been Idomeneo and Die Zauberflöte) but we also got Barber, Purcell, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Handel, Verdi, Wagner, Floyd, Smetana, Korngold, Britten and Barber. Quite a variety really.

One of my top picks would have been Met bound Wallis Giunta (mezzo) who sang “Parto, parto” from La Clemenza di Tito which I’ve heard her do before and the very different “Nobles seigneurs, salut!” from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Wallis’ musicality (as well as technical ability) was very evident in the way she tackled the tricky rhythmic flexibility of the piece. (You can check out what I mean about tricky rhythms here).

The other would have been baritone Adrian Kramer who goes from strength to strength. He gave us “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and what has rather become his party piece, Sid’s aria “Tickling a trout” from Britten’s Albert Herring. Watch out for this guy. He has a very good voice and wicked comic timing but showed he also has a lyrical side in the Korngold.

Had I been a judge I would have found picking a third winner close to impossible. There was so much to like. So what did the judges decide?

In third place they had tenor Chris Enns (a fine Tamino earlier this season). Last night he gave us Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin and “Here I Stand” from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. I particularly liked the Tchaikovsky which showed off a nicely developing lyrical tenor voice very well.

Second was dramatic soprano Ilieana Montalbetti. Ileana is a bit of an anomaly. The other girls in the programme are your modern lyric, look the part, sort of modern soprano/mezzos (one of them moonlights as a fashion model). Ileana is the one truly dramatic voice and can we say she looks a bit more like the popular image of a dramatic soprano (actually she’s not really that big but…). She gave us “Come in quest’ora bruna” from Simon Boccanegra and “Einsam in trüben Tagen” from Lohengrin. The RBA is not a huge space and it was piano accompaniment so I don’t think she was close to maximum power (I’ve heard her sing much louder!) but the impression of lots of gas in the tank was definitely there along with a good deal of control and attractive tone colour.

The winner was Adrian Kramer. No surprise there.

Fortunately for us we will get to see most of these singers next month on stage in various roles. Ambur Braid is singing Amore in Orfeo ed Euridice, where Simone Osborne is understudying Isabel Bayrakdarian’s Euridice. Rihab Chaleb will sing Tisbe and Ileana will sing Clorinda in La Cenerentola. Ariadne auf Naxos has a slew of Ensemble Studio members in the cast. Simone Osborne sings Naiad, Adrian Kramer is the Wigmaker, Chris Enns is Scaramuchio and Michael Uloth is Truffaldino and it seems like everyone is understudying something!

There are good things in Toronto. How many places can you see ten first rate singers perform for two hours in a beautiful, acoustically excellent setting, for free?

Nature or nurture?

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The Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio; its young artists training programme, has an exchange with the equivalent in Montreal. This week the Montrealers are in town and there was a lunch time concert featuring four singers from each programme. Being a big fan of the Ensemble Studio I went along to see how the products of the two programmes compared. I don’t know whether the Toronto programme is harder to get into or provides a more rigorous experience or, likely, both, but in terms of musicianship, stage presence and generally readiness to meet the world, the Toronto singers outclassed the Montrealers. I don’t want to write negatively about young singers who are working really hard so I’m only going to talk positives. The best of the Montrealers was soprano Chantale Nurse. She has a dramatic voice with a pronounced vibrato that was heard to good effect in a Massenet aria; “Il est doux, il est bon” from Herodiade and she was fine in the Mozart ensemble pieces. If her voice continues to develop and gain power she could do very well. I just can’t see the other three progressing to major professional careers. Of the Toronto based perfomers, one of the stand outs, unsurprisingly, was mezzo Wallis Giunta, who is heading for the Met next season. She will likely be a great success in mezzo trouser roles and today did very well with some of Dorabella’s music from Cosi as well as as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito. The other star was Adrian Kramer who continues to develop as a baritone with a leaning to comedy. He’s making a name for himself as Sid in Albert Herring in various locations and the excerpt he sang today shows why; excellent comic timing and presence coupled to a voice that is getting bigger. I’ve heard him sing Papageno from Ring 5 at the Four Seasons Centre so I know the power is there! Locals Neil Craighead and Jacqueline Woodley did fine in more Mozart excerpts and it rather sums things up to say that Jacqueline, as Zerlina, rather outsung her Montreal Don Giovanni.