All is Love, which opened Thursday night at Koerner Hall, is a remount of the 2022 Opera Atelier show which, for various reasons, nobody much saw. It’s a staged series of quite eclectic (mosly) opera and ballet excerpts around the theme of “love”; which means pretty much anything goes.
Opera Atelier have announced the line up for their 2024/25 season. As with other recent seasons there’s one show at the Elgin Theatre and one at Koerner Hall.
The first show, October 24th – 27th, 2024, is Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Elgin. I’m not going to complain about more English language Handel! Bring it on. This show is indicative of the growing relationship between OA and Versailles with French tenor Antonin Rondepierre in the role of Acis and Blaise Rantoanina singing the role of Damon. The cast is completed by Meghan Lindsey as Galatea (yea!) and Douglas Williams as Polyphemus. Christopher Bagan conducts which is also nice to see. Continue reading
Soundstreams’ concert on Friday evening in the new TD Music Hall at Massey Hall was inspired by the Rothko Chapel in Houstion, Texas. It featured two works; Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, commissioned for the opening of the chapel, and Cecilia Livingston’s mark, commissioned for Friday’s concert. Both featured chorus (Soundstreams Choir 21), viola (Steven Dann), celesta (Gregory Oh) and percussion (Ryan Scott). mark also featured baritone Alex Samaras). Both were staged by Tim Albery with lighting by Siobhán Sleath and projections by Cameron Davis.
There’s quite a lot to like in Opera Atelier’s current production of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice currently running at the Elgin Theatre. It’s elegant and refined with some pretty good singing but maybe it’s a bit too refined. It’s at its best in things like “The Dance of the Blessed Spirits” where there’s an effective pas de deux danced in pointe shoes though I’m not sure it was really necessary to use enough “smoke” to fill the entire auditorium! Unfortunately, the production doesn’t make much of the potentially more dramatic moments. Orphée’s confrontation with the Guardians of Hell is pretty low key. The demons are just dancers in slightly stripey body stockings and there’s no sense of menace. It’s all a bit Robert Wilson. Until the ending, which suddenly switches aesthetic with glitter and streamers and dancers with a Scrabble set.
Centrediscs have recently released a CD of music by Toronto composer Colin Eatock. It’s a mix of choral and orchestral works; most of the former for unaccompanied voices. There are ten works on the disc making a generous 67 minutes or so of music.
The first piece is Ashes of Soldiers for soprano, clarinet, harp and strings. It’s a Walt Whitman setting and almost certainly the first piece of Colin’s music I ever heard. It’s still I think my favourite. It’s both elegant and elegiac and has a really interesting clarinet part (played here by Kornel Wolak. The soprano part is nicely sung by Lynn Isnar and it’s lovely to hear her again.
Dragon’s Tale; music by Chan Ka Nin, text by Mark Brownell, premiered at Harbourfront last night. It’s a rather clever mash up of two stories which, taken together, address how we face the future without abandoning the past or, alternatively, getting stuck in it. The first story concerns a young Chinese Canadian woman in Toronto, Xiao Lian, whose widowed father is dying. She is torn between her desire to “get a life” and his obsessive insistence that the “old ways”, meaning essentially here looking after him, come first.
Ahead of Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s The Resurrection (La resurrezione) at Koerner Hall next week (6th to 9th April) there was a lunchtime preview in the RBA on Tuesday. Later that day I sat down with director Marshall Pynkoski to find out more about the work, OA’s relationship to it and its rather tortuous journey to the Koerner Hall stage.
Voicebox: Opera in Concert’s most recent production is Joseph Bologne, Chévalier de St, Georges’ 1780 opéra comique, L’amant anonyme. It was given in OiC’s usual style; i.e concert dress but some blocking, a few props and no music stands. The dialogue was given in English with the musical numbers in French with surtitles. Accompaniment was a 10 piece chamber reduction of the original score by Stephen Hargreaves. David Fallis conducted.
Sunday, at Grace Church on the Hill, Soundstreams presented Celebrating R. Murray Schafer. It felt like a cross between a concert and a memorial service. There were no prayers but there were eulogies and Eleanor James drew the parallel between Schafer’s sources of inspiration and Pentecost; that feast of the Church having been chosen deliberately for the event.
There was lots of music of course. The afternoon was bookended by two of Schafer’s ceremonial wilderness pieces for voice and trumpet. Meghan Lindsay and Michael Fedyshyn welcomed us with the Aubade for Two Voices and bid us farewell with Departure. Both were made the more haunting from the performers being out of sight. Choir 21 with conductor David Fallis sang two sets. First came the three hymns from The Fall into Light which appropriately set texts drawn from the Manichaean tradition. There was some wonderfully precise singing here. The second set was perhaps more light hearted with Epitaph for Moonlight which was written for amateur performance and the playful Fire which, besides singing, involves banging rocks together.
Soundstreams’ on-line concert, Lovesongs, recorded in Koerner Hall and streamed (access codes are PWYC, min $7) features three works; two by and one “in homage” to Claude Vivier with an intro by Lawrence Cherney and David Fallis who conducts on the first and third pieces.
operaramblings 