This year’s offering from the Artists’ Studio of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company was Judith Weir’s The Black Spider. One doesn’t get many opportunities to see a Weir opera, let alone one composed for young performers, so this was very welcome. That it’s a very funny mash up of several gothic/horror tropes is a definite bonus. Throw in a lively production with whole hearted and skilful performances and it makes for a great show.
So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. There are eleven sketches involving four composers, three librettists, three singers plus Keith Klassen who does all three. Also two pianists and two directors.
This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main show is a new production of Alice Ho and Marjorie Chan’s The Monkiest King which the company previously performed in 2018. This time it was at Harbourfront Centre Theatre which offered some additional opportunities and some challenges with its multi level configuration but also some sight line issues.
The Canadian Children’s Opera Company is reviving Dean Burry’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit on its twentieth anniversary. The first performance was on Friday evening at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre. It’s really quite an achievement to condense a 320pp novel into an 80 minute opera respecting the constraints of writing mostly for young voices. It’s clever. It’s structured as twelve discrete scenes and most of the singing is choral. Groups of performers; essentially sorted by age cohort, represent the various “tribes” of Middle Earth; hobbits, humans, elves, dwarves etc. There are a limited number of solo roles and dialogue is used rather than recitative so exposed solo singing is kept to a minimum. This all provides meaningful roles for lots of performers without creating “impossible to cast” ones.
Threepenny Submarine is a nine episode puppet animation series of videos on Youtube inspired by the idea that most of us got at least some of our exposure to classical music as kids from Looney Tunes and other cartoons. It’s produced by Opera 5 and Gazelle Automations and concerns an underwater journey by the submarine Threepenny Submarine investigating a mysterious sound coming from the equally mysterious Salieri Sector. The sub is commanded by a cockatiel called Iona (voiced by Lindsay Lee and sung by Caitlin Wood) assisted by a fox called Lydian (voiced and sung by Rachel Krehm). They befriend a “sea monster” called Flute, represented, appropriately enough, by Amelia Lyon on flute. Various adventures take place punctuated by well known arias using new text by Rachel Krehm. For example, the first episode features “Una voce poca fa” and “Dich, teure Halle” in arrangements for string quartet. There are also classical instrumentals used as incidental music. It’s all arranged by Trevor Wager and directed by Evan Mitchell.
Almost exactly four years after Kye Marshall and Amanda Hale’s Pomegranate played at Buddies in Bad Times in a production by Michael Mori it reappeared at the COC in expanded form in a production by Jennifer Tarver. The basic plot hasn’t changed much so I’m not going to repeat what I wrote about that in 2019. The other changes are, though, quite extensive and I’m not convinced they are improvements.
The libretto of Massenet’s Cendrillon is much more ambiguous than Rossini’s straightforward La Cenerentola and given that we all “know” the Cinderella story exploiting those ambiguities is likely to prove attractive to a director. Fiona Shaw, whose Glyndebourne production was revived in 2019 under the revival direction of Fiona Dunn, finds rather more than. most.
This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main stage performance is The Monkiest King. It’s from the team of Marjorie Chan and Alice Ping Yee Ho who collaborated most successfully to create another highly successful Western/Chinese fusion piece; The Lesson Of Da Jee. The inspiration for this one is the antics of Sun Wukong, the mischievous and arrogant Monkey King in the Chinese classic Journey to the West.
I’m usually a bit leery of watching older recordings of 19th century Italian opera. The aesthetic is rarely my thing. But, when I came across a recording of Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco directed by Werner Herzog I had to take a look. It was a pretty weird experience. It would hardly have been odder if Klaus Kinski had sung the title role. It’s a production from the Teatro Communale di Bologna and it was recorded in 1990.
Wednesday evening saw the last Whose Opera is it Anyway? of the year in the new digs at Bad Dog Comedy Club. Last month’s line up of singers; Rachel Krehm, Michael York, Gillian Grossman and Amanda Kogan, were joined by Adanya Dunn and an elf. Natasha Fransblow was at the keyboard again. Greg Finney; the thinking man’s Don Cherry, MC’d. The format was as ever; a line up of improv games with audience input. Highlights included the Three Minute Messiah, Adanya giving her mum a dildo and the deep, dark depths of Keith Lam’s Instagram account. And beer. And Greg’s suit.
The news is that LooseTEA now has a regular slot for WOIIA. In the new year you will be able to catch them at Bad Dog on the third Sunday of the month at 9.30pm. It’s a better venue than the old place and it’s a fun way to spend an hour and a half or so.
operaramblings 