Tag Archives: debus

Jessye Norman’s Glenn Gould Prize

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Last night the main stage of the Four Seasons Centre was the setting for celebrating the award of the twelth Glenn Gould prize to the great Jessye Norman.  There were speeches, of course, celebrating Ms. Norman’s life as a singer rising to the top of the profession from unpromising origins as well as her lifetime of educational and philanthropic endeavours.  They were decently short and to the point allowing us to get onto to the music, though not before we had heard Ms. Norman’s heartfelt and very touching acceptance speech.

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Much to like

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There’s much to like in this year’s unfussy TSO Messiah.  It’s not bloated.  For most of the piece conductor Johannes Debus deploys around thirty strings, chamber organ, harpsichord, oboes and bassoon.  Trumpets and timpani are added for the grand moments later in the piece.  He even manages to get quite a delicate sound out of the largish (100+) Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.  The delicacy is a recurrent thread.  That and a really bouncy sense of rhythm.  One could dance to Debus’ Handel.

Allyson McHardy, Claire De Sévigné (@Jag Gundu)

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Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian

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I finally got to see Rufus Wainwright’s new opera Hadrian, to a libretto by Daniel Macivor, at the Four Seasons Centre last night.  There’s been a lot of hype around it and I was interested; the few bits of music from it that I had heard intrigued me but I’m no fan of his earlier work Prima Donna.  One thing was certain.  The piece does not lack ambition. There are four acts totalling something like 160 minutes.  There’s a large cast, a large orchestra, a large chorus and an epic storyline.  It’s clearly an attempt to produce a “grand opera” for our times.  Does it succeed?

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The Nightingale sang

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The COC’s revival of Robert Lepage’s 2009 production of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables, revived by Marilyn Gronsdal, is a delightful mix of witty and clever stagecraft coupled with some fine music making.  It’s very much a work of two contrasting halves.  The first is a carefully constructed program of shorter Stravinsky vocal and instrumental works; all from the period 1911-1919 and all with a sound world reminiscent of The Firebird or Petrouchka rather than The Rite of Spring or the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto.  The full line up was:

  • Ragtime
  • Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet No.1
  • Pribaoutki
  • Berceuses du chat
  • Two Poems of Konstantin Balmont
  • Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet No.2
  • Four Russian Peasant Songs
  • Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet No.3
  • The Fox

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Last night at the Four Seasons Centre

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For the last few years the COC has had a fairly glitzy evening at which the next season is announced and there are interviews, a few performances etc.  This year, for whatever reason, the two elements were divorced.  The season was announced in a press release in January with no fanfare; not even a press conference.  The glitzy bit happened last night with a cocktail reception and a stage event hosted by Brent Bambury.

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Into the back half of February and beyond

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eded64_558606377878465db0281238f5aa4ea9Here is what’s coming up.  Valentine’s day sees two vocal recitals.  At noon in the RBA there’s Clare de Sévigné and Rachel Andrist with The Truth about Love; the story of a young woman’s love gone awry.  At 8pm Ian Bostridge has an all Schubert program at Koerner Hall.  Thursday is also busy with members of the Ensemble Studio in a Russian program in the RBA at noon, a Johannes Debus masterclass at UoT at 2pm and Opera Trivia at the Four Seasons Centre at 7pm.  Then on Friday at 7.30pm in Walter Hall there’s a free concert; Vocalini, from the undergrads of the UoT Opera.  Also Thursday and Friday MYOpera have a couple of opportunities to see emerging artists.  There’s a public masterclass with Philip Morehead at 6pm Thursday at the Edward Jackman Centre and a concert at 7.30pm Friday at the Vandenberg House.

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The Ballad of East and West?

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Wajdi Mouawad’s production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, originally seen in Lyon, opened last night at the COC with Valérie Négre as revival director.  The piece has been somewhat restructured and the spoken dialogue changed to explode the idea that the piece is “about” some kind of crude juxtaposition of the “West”; Enlightened, civilized etc, and the “East”; obscurantist, cruel, barbarian etc.  To this end Mouawad has inserted a prologue before the overture where Belmonte’s father is holding a party to celebrate the return of his son and the others where he makes the above comparison in extremely crude terms and then invites his guests to play la tête du Turc, a game that involves hitting a Turk’s head with a sledgehammer.  The guests wade in with drunken abandon, except for Konstanze and Blonde who are clearly revolted by the idea.  This leads to a conversation around who changed and how while they were in captivity and so to telling the whole story in flashback.

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The actual, for real, COC 2018/19 season

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chemistexplaThis just in:

The fall season will open with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in the Carsen production as predicted yesterday.  The (pleasant) surprise is that Gordon Bintner will sing the title role.  Joyce El-Khoury sings Tatiana and Joseph Kaiser is Lensky.  Johannes Debus conducts.

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Centre Stage

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So last night was this year’s iteration of the COC’s glitzy competition with cash and places in the Ensemble Studio at stake.  It’s a bit of a weird thing to write about because the public, and this year the media, only see a fraction of what the judges are judging.  We saw each singer do one aria.  There had been a closed round earlier in the day to which, unlike in previous years, the media were not invited.  Then there’s what the judges have seen in rehearsal, reputation etc.  All in all what happens on the night influences the outcome about as much as at an Olympic figure skating event.  So, in many ways it’s surprising that my picks were as close to the judges as they were.

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And so, Mr. Riel…

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So here is the promised review of last night at the Four Seasons Centre.  I have to phrase it that way because it was more than Somers’ opera Louis Riel though that of course was the major event.  The evening kicked off with a performance in the RBA by the Git Hayetsk Dance Group.  This is a west coast group and I’m not going to try and get into the complexities of nation, lineage and clan involved but it was a moving performance of traditional songs and dance with a brilliantly witty piece involving the trickster raven and a lot of stolen handbags. This was also the beginning of the public conversation about the use of the Nsga’a mourning song in Louis Riel.  That conversation continued when the same group made a brief appearance on the main stage immediately before the opera performance.  I understand that the intent is for the leader of the dancers to report back to the matriarch of the clan that owns the song on what happened and for the conversation to continue from there.

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