Student recitals are another great opportunity to hear great music for free. On Sunday I attended soprano Leandra Dahm’s recital at Mazzoleni Hall. It was a caredfully curated programme lasting just over an hour and it was really good.
Coming up… music etc
The 21C concert of music by Osvaldo Golijov, postponed on account of the January blizzard, finally got presented at Mazzoleni Hall on Sunday afternoon. There was a varied line up of professional musicians, GGS students and members of the taylor Academy on display fro the various numbers; all of which were contextualized historically and musically by Barry Shiffman.
The Glenn Gould’s Spring Opera, which opened on Wednesday night, is an intriguing double bill. It pairs Rossini’s first, and rarely performed, opera; La cambiale di matrimonio with Puccini’s much better known Gianni Schicchi.
La cambiale di matrimonio (The Wedding Contract) is a one act screwball comedy (technically a farsa). It has all the plot elements that see will see over and over in later Rossini comedies; cunning servants, an old man trying to make money out of a marriage, young lovers facing obstacles etc. The plot elements are mirrored by the music; patter songs, breakneck ensembles and an impossibly florid soprano aria, inter alia. In this case they are used in the service of a plot that features a cash strapped English merchant who is trying to marry his daughter off to a rich Canadian who is seeking a suitable bride but she’s in love with a far less wealthy young man. Everyone seems to want to kill the Canadian but he’s fundamentally a nice chap (of course) and he engineers a happy ending
This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School was a double bill of short chamber operas. It played at Mazzoleni Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings with Liza Balkan directing and Jennifer Tung conducting.
operaramblings 