Overall I rate this cycle very highly. Andreas Homoki’s production is unusual in that it’s really not conceptual and is often very literal. That’s rare in Wagner productions in major European houses. But it’s also not cluttered up with superfluous 19th century “stuff”. When a thing is essential, it’s there as described. If it’s not essential more often than not it’s omitted.
And so to the final instalment… We open with the Rock but now the background room; while still the same 18th/19th century mansion, looks a bit the worse for wear with peeling and cracked paint. The Norns, predictably, are all in white. It’s all pretty conventional but done well.
Last Wednesday’s lunchtime recital was given by soprano Lauren Fagan; currently appearing as Tatyana in the COC’s Eugene Onegin, and pianist Rachael Kerr. Things kicked off with a selection of three songs from Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder. What struck me here, apart from some really nice expressive singing, was Lauren’s ability too spin a line out coherently.
This review first appeared in the print edition of Opera Canada.
Leslie Fagan and Lorin Shalanko’s new CD, Thread of Winter, is billed as the first CD in the Canadian Art Song Series(not, emphatically not, to be confused with the Canadian Art Song Project). The material it contains is said by the performers to have been selected for “accessibility” and as a resource for students who apparently find it hard to find recordings of Canadian repertoire.
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