And now, as they say, for something completely different. Swedish band Louisa Lyne & di Yiddishe Kapelye are touring their show Leonard Cohen in Yiddish and it made its Toronto stop at Lula Lounge on Tuesday evening as part of the Ashkenaz Festival. It makes sense right? Cohen’s roots were in the Yiddish speaking community in Latvia and somehow Yiddish seems apt for his typical subject matter.
Uncharted is a new CD from countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and pianist John Churchwell. It appears to be the first time a countertenor has recorded a disc of classic German Lieder which is interestig and perhaps surprising. There are three sets on the record. It starts with Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds Op. 14; four songs I was previously unfamiliar with but I’m glad to have heard them. The second set alternates mostly well known songs by Brahms and Clara Schumann and the last set is Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39 with, appropriately, his “Der Nussbaum” to wrap things up. Continue reading
Liz Appel’s play Wights was premiered at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night in a production directed by Chris Abraham. It’s a complex satire on Academia and academic relationships with a touch of comedy/horror; Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf with just a smidgeon of Shawn of the Dead. And it takes place in the immediate run up to the 2024 US Presidential Election. with all the hopes and fears for the future packed into that.
Quebec based Les Violons du Roy performed on Sunday at Koerner Hall with soprano Karina Gauvin and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. The music was all drawn from Handel’s English language oratorios and featured orchestral pieces and a number of arias and duets. These works are some of my favourites so I was a bit surprised that I didn’t enjoy the concert as much as I expected.
Infinite Life, by Annie Baker, in a production directed by Jackie Maxwell, opened at Coal Mine Theatre last night. It’s a play that has garnered acclaim in both London and New York. It’s not hard to see why. It’s the sort of play that perhaps appeals to theatre people (including critics) more than it does to the general public, though it’s not without wider appeal. It requires great skill and precision to bring off precisely because nothing really happens. There’s no narrative thread for a general audience to grasp. That said it is remarkably effective on its own terms.
Handel’s Theodora is probably performed more nowadays as a staged opera than as an oratorio. The same is true for several of his other English language oratorios; notably Semele. It was in that format I was introduced to Theodora by Peter Sellar’s famous production at Glyndebourne, which I loved, but I had never sat down and listened to the piece until getting my hands on a recent recording on the Alpha label. Bottom line, I think it’s some of Handel’s best music. Maybe the second part isn’t as inspired as the first and third but it abounds in truly great airs and the libretto is really tight; dramatic and carefully constructed.
Two years ago Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music was presented in workshop form (more or less) at Luminato. It felt incomplete and rather muddled then and I didn’t write about it. I saw the latest version yesterday at Hart House Theatre and it feels like a finished piece; indeed a rather accomplished one.
It’s a genre defying work. Perhaps it’s closer to musical theatre than anything else but it’s not miked and there are some “operatic” moments worked into the plot. Indeed there are some very funny musical moments and much cleverness in Aleš Březina’s score and Alon Nasman’s libretto.
Sometimes it takes some time away from home to be able to see things clearly again. That’s rather how I felt about last night’s Messiah performed by Tafelmusik at Koerner Hall. In the last few years I’ve seen choreographed and fully staged versions, the Andrew Davis version with sleigh bells and whoopee cushions and Soundstreams eclectic Electric Messiah, all of which helped bring a conventional small scale performance with period instruments into focus.
Last 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.
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.
operaramblings 