Good heavens it’s March already! There’s lots coming up in the Toronto vocal music scene. This Saturday sees George Benjamin’s Written on Skin in concert performance with the TSO at Roy Thomson Hall. Chris Purves and Barbara Hannigan from the original cast are singing with Bernhard Landauer coming in for Bejun Mehta as the Boy. The composer conducts.
There are a couple of Essential Opera shows scheduled for the KW area in June. On June 7th at 2pm they are presenting a double bill of Haydn’s L’isola disabitata and Donizetti’s Il campanello at the New Hamburg Festival of the Arts. Singers include Maureen Batt, Erin Bardua,Stefan Fehr and Giovanni Spanu. Tickets are $20 (free for students) and available here.
Not sure how this managed to fly under the radar but Essential Opera have a show of three Canadian premieres at Heliconian Hall on April 5th. The works are:
Etiquette
Composed by Monica Pearce, libretto by John Terauds
Pitting politeness and perfection against the harsher facts of life, through the eyes of Dorothy Parker, Emily Post and Nancy Astor.
Learn more about Monica and her music on her website: http://www.monicapearce.com
Regina
Composed by Elisha Denburg, libretto by Maya Rabinovitch
The story of Regina Jonas, the first woman to be ordained a rabbi – in 1935 Berlin – and the young student who discovers her truth.
Learn more about Elisha and his music on his website: http://www.elishadenburg.com
Heather (Cindy + Mindy = BFs 4EVER)
Composed by Christopher Thornborrow, libretto by Julie Tepperman
A hard-hitting introduction to the vicious reality of online bullying between girls and young women.
Learn more about Chris and his music on his website: http://christhornborrow.com/
A “first draft” of part of the last was featured at a Tapestry Shorts show not so long ago.
The performance team is:
MUSICAL TEAM:
Music director: Cheryl Duvall
Conductor: David Passmore
CAST:
Erin Bardua, soprano
Maureen Batt, soprano
Julia Morgan, mezzo
Keith O’Brien, baritone
Jesse Clark, baritone
There’s a crowd funding project and more details at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/new-canadian-premieres-with-essential-opera
Three shows that might be worth a look are coming up in the GTA. Essential Opera are doing a show called Two Weddings and a Funeral which pairs Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with Donizetti’s Il campanello. It’s at Heliconian Hall on March 15th at 7.30pm. It will be semi-staged with piano accompaniment. Soup Can Theatre are also presenting a double bill of Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Sartre’s No Exit (in English translation). The former will be accompanied by a 14 piece band and the latter, no doubt, by wailing and gnashing of teeth. The show runs March 28th to 30th at the Tapestry Opera Studio in the Distillery district. Finally, Opera Hamilton are presenting Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles at the Dofasco Theatre in Hamilton. This is a fully staged show with full orchestra and features Virginia Hatfield and Brett Polegato. There are four shows from March 9th to 16th. At time of writing no sopranos had been injured by falling scenery.
Last night I went to see Essential Opera’s cheap and cheerful production of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. It was a semi staged production in the relatively small Heliconian Hall. Semi-staged in this case meant sung in costume from music stands with very basic blocking. Accompaniment was by Cathy Nosaty on piano and accordion which actually suited the music pretty well.
The singing was good, sometimes very good. Probably the stand out was Laura McAlpine’s Jenny. Of all the singers on display she was the one who seemed most immersed in the sound world of the piece and could vary style and technique appropriately. Erin Bardua’s Lucy Brown was really quite idiomatic too. The others were more consistently operatic which sounded a bit odd in places but worked surprisingly well in, for example David Roth and Heather Jewson’s rather refined refined and bourgeois Peachums. Obviously this approach also worked for the character who are usually sung operatically; Macheath, Brown and Polly for example. The ensembles were all also very effective.
The leaves have turned and the Canadian Opera Company Season is underway so winter can’t be far away. I’ve now seen both the COC fall productions so I need to find alternative fare between now and February when things kick off again. So far I’ve found two live shows of interest in town. At the end of October Opera Atelier is putting on Weber’s Der Freischütz. This is a departure for OA who have previously (bar once) not put on anything later than Mozart and that in a rather idiosyncratic style. I think it’s an interesting move and I hope it stimulates the creative juices at OA and sparks some of the innovation that made OA such an exciting company ten or twenty years ago. If it turns into an exercise in persuading us that 19th century Romanticism is really just an extension of the Baroque I shall probably be feeling like the guy in the picture. The other live show is Essential Opera’s The Threepenny Opera being presented in concert at Heliconian Hall on November 7th. Essential Opera I suppose is a semi-pro outfit operating on very small budgets and The Threepenny Opera seems like a good fit. I felt that last year’s attempt at something grander was rather a case of biting off more than they could chew. Continue reading
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