Tag Archives: genge

Confluence’s Purcell

Posted on by
3

Last night Confluence Concerts streamed their latest offering; a tribute to Henry Purcell, preceded by a pre-show interview between Larry Beckwith and Andrew Parrott.  There was beautifully played instrumental music from Victoria Baroque, songs from Lawrence Williford and Lucas Harris recorded at the Elora Festival and a couple of interesting takes on If Music Be the Food of Love plus Two Daughters of this Aged Stream featuring Daniel Taylor, Rebecca Genge and Sinéad White plus instrumentalists from the UoT Faculty of Music Historical Performance Department.  I was less taken with Duo Serenissima (Elizabeth Hetherington, soprano and David Mackor, theorbo).  I can’t tell whether it was the recording acoustic or a diction issue but the words were pretty much unintelligible which is a big problem with Purcell!.

freeplay

Continue reading →

Dido and Belinda

Posted on by
1

Dido and Belinda is the first show from Opera Q and Cor Unum Ensemble.  It’s a reimagining of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas from Belinda’s perspective and with a decidedly gender fluid twist.  Nathum Tate’s libretto is extended by spoken passages which give Belinda’s take on the story and make it very much  a story of the two sisters.  The back story is Dido’s flight from Tyre rather than Aeneas’ flight from Troy.  The future is about Belinda as Queen of Carthage not Aeneas’ “promised Empire”.  It works pretty well though I have reservations about interpolating text in the final scene.  I think Belinda’s accession as Dido’s successor could have been conveyed without interrupting some of the most sublime music ever composed.  That’s a minor quibble though in a story concept that works.

Dido_1

Continue reading →

Not Sam

Posted on by
2

Off I went to the Four Seasons Centre to see Samuel Chan and Stéphane Mayer perform some Schubert.  Sadly Sam was indisposed so what we got was a hastily, but very well, constructed program featuring some of the other singers in the Ensemble Studio.

Things kicked off with the increasingly impressive Anne-Sophie Neher in an accomplished rendering of Mozart’s “show off” piece Exsultate jubilate, in which she showed very decent control in the rather fiendish runs.  She was back later with “The Presentation of the Rose” from Der Rosenkavalier which sounded suitably Straussian and sufficiently girlish at the same time.  Nicely done. She made a third appearance with one of Adèles’s arias from Le comte Ory.  This didn’t quite do it for me but it was fun to hear Stéphane playing around with the very Rossiniesque accompaniment.

COC-FCS-20Feb2019-1758

Continue reading →

Golden Age of Opera

Posted on by
Reply

Such was the title of yesterday’s performance by the UoT Opera ‘s performance in the RBA.  Now personally I don’t subscribe to the notion of the 19th century (ugh!) as a “golden age” of anything but yesterday suggested that the UoT program, if not quite in golden age territory is going through a bit of a purple patch.  This was, I think, the best student performance overall that I have heard in the last two or three years.

Continue reading →