It’s that time of year when we reflect on the intersection of Truth and Reconciliation with opera. So yesterday I attended a lecture/recital by young Métis singer and scholar Camryn Dewar in the RBA at lunchtime. The title was The Evolution of Indigenous Female Representation 1879-Present and the domaine was Canadian opera; so no room for La fanciulla del West or Doctor Atomic. In fact, truth to tell, there Wasn’t much Indigenous female presence in Canadian opera until quite recently. There’s the really awful colonialist Canada’s Welcome by Dixon and Clappé which was dealt with. Somers’ Louis Riel which got a brief mention but doesn’t have much in the way of female characters. Victor Davies’ The Ecstasy of Rita Joe which didn’t get (or deserve) a mention. Perhaps Jani Lauzon’s I Call myself Princess might have deserved a mention even if it’s about opera rather than being an opera.
One of the strangest records of Kurt Weill’s music that I have ever listened to has just come my way. There are two pieces involved; Propheten and Four Walt Whitman Songs. Propheten has its roots in Weill’s six hour long, Old Testament inspired, opera The Eternal Road which premiered at the Manhattan Opera House in 1937 with a cast of 245 and which ran for 153 performances before, perhaps unsurprisingly, disappearing for a long,long time. Propheten is a 1998 adaptation of the last act by David Drew using the original German text by Franz Werfel plus biblical quotations and additional orchestration by Noam Sheriff. It basically deals with the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and comes in at a more digestible 45 minutes.
I don’t review a lot of full length audio only recordings of mainstream operas. Generally I think video makes more sense but sometimes something comes along that attracts my attention. The recent recording of Handel’s Serse by the English Concert with Harry Bicket was one such. This time it’s the cast that caught my attention. There’s Emily d’Angelo (are we allowed to call her “young” or “emerging” any more?) in the title role but also such fine Handel singers as Lucy Crowe as Romilda and Mary Bevan as Atalanta. As it turns out there’s not a weak link in the cast and while these three turn in fine performances so do Daniela Mack (Amastre), Paula Murrihy (Arsamene), Neal Davies (Ariodata) and William Dazeley (Elviro). 
Peter Eötvös’ 1998 opera Tri sestry is based on the Chekhov play and was recorded live at Oper Frankfurt in 2018. It takes fragments of the original Russian play and recombines them in a non-linear way to create a prologue and three “Sequences” from the points of view of Irina, Andrei and Mascha repectively. The recombination is complex enough for the accompanying booklet to contain a table mapping Chekhov’s scene order to Eötvös’. There’s no libretto in the CD package so even flipping between the (fairly detailed) synopsis and the track listing it’s hard to figure out who is singing or about what. No doubt this was much clearer when watching the stage production.
Not much sign of spring as we move into the second half of the month but there are some things musical to enjoy while we await the return of the sun. On March 18th at 2pm in Mazzoleni Hall there is You’re Welcome Rossini with the glamorous duo of Allyson McHardy and, the not seen often enough in Toronto, Lucia Cesaroni. This one is officially sold out but there may be rushes. Ten bucks says they do the Cat duet.
