This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School was a double bill of short chamber operas. It played at Mazzoleni Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings with Liza Balkan directing and Jennifer Tung conducting.
GGS double bill
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Minimalist Magic Flute with a Japanese twist
The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening. The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut. The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand. There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.
Double bill from the Glenn Gould School
Friday night the Glenn Gould School presented a pair of French chamber operas in Mazzoleni Hall. The pieces were Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Debussy’s Prodigal Son with a new English language libretto by Ashley Pearson. Pearson’s libretto concerns a gay man estranged from his family so director Mabel Wannacott’s linking idea is that the principal character in both is the same person as a child and twenty years later.
Rebanks fellows in the RBA
Luxury! Two operatic concerts on consecutive lunchtimes in the RBA. On Thursday it was the turn of the Glenn Gould School’s Rebanks fellows with mentor Paul Groves to present a series of staged opera excerpts directed by Anna Theodosakis. Stéphane Mayer provided the excellent piano accompaniment throughout.
GGS Carmélites delivers
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is a very unusual opera. It breaks all the rules and yet, done well, is an immensely compelling piece of music theatre. There are no show stopper arias. The ensemble numbers are mainly drawn from Catholic liturgy. And yet it maintains a coherent and compelling narrative arc that builds steadily to an emotionally devastating conclusion. The Glenn Gould School’s current production at Koerner Hall directed by Stephen Carr gets all the elements right and makes for a memorable evening at the opera.
Looking ahead to March
First some additional February shows
- On the 23rd at Harbourfront Centre Art of Time Ensemble are presenting Music from the Weimar Republic.
- On the 25th VOICEBOX have a concert performance of Verdi’s Ernani at the St. Lawrence Centre.
Opera
- Opera York are presenting Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts on March 1st and 3rd.
- March 14th to 17th UoT Opera are doing Massenet’s Cendrillon at a to be determined location.
- March 20th and 22nd at Koerner Hall, the Glenn Gould School spring opera is Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites. That one has me excited!
Tapestry x GGS
The Glenn Gould School’s Fall Chamber Opera offering this year was four short pieces from Tapestry Opera’s back catalogue. First up was Ice Time by Ka Nin Chan and Mark Brownell. It’s the story of a has been ice skater and her futile attempts to get her daughter, who wants to be a civil engineer, to follow in her footsteps (or icy equivalent). The music is in much the same vein as other works by this composer such as Dragon’s Tale. It’s a pretty light hearted piece and it got a lively and credible account from Emma Pennell as the daughter and Alexa Frankian as the mother. As with the other pieces direction was by Dana Fradkin with accompaniment by chamber ensemble conducted by Peter Tiefenbach.
November gigs
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
- The reprise of Tapestry’s Rocking Horse Winner at Crow’s Theatre. That’s November 1st to 12th.
- The Glenn Gould School’s fall opera offering. It’s a presentation of five of Tapestry’s short operas from the 2000s. November 3rd and 4th in Mazzoleni Hall.
- Voicebox are doing Verdi’s Un giorno di regno at the St. Lawrence Centre on the 5th.
March 2023
Here’s a look ahead to March.
March 3rd and 5th, Opera York are presenting Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. Details are here. Also on the 5th at 1pm Opera Revue are playing a new venue; The Aviary in the Canary District. (They are playing another new venue, Granite Brewery, on the 12th. Opera Revue your source for craft beer!) And the following night at 7.30pm it’s AtG’s Opera Pub at the Drake at 7.30pm.
From the 9th to the 12th it’s UoT Opera’s spring offering at the MacMillan Theatre. This year it’s Arthur (not George) Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities. Benjamin is probably the only opera composer to be shot down by Hermann Göring. I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about his music.
Hymns to Night
The 21C Afterhours concert in Temerty Theatre last night featured a candle lit performance by a varied ensemble of conservatory students conducted by Brian Current. Brian did a great job of introducing the music; contextualizing it and suggesting what the audience might listen for. That could maybe be done more often with complex contemporary music.
The first piece was Bekah Simms’ Foreverdark. It’s a ten minute concertino for amplified cello, ensemble and electronics playing homage to heavy metal. It’s scored for a quite a large group including strings, brass, woodwinds and lots of percussion including a drum kit. It starts out very abrasively then becomes somewhat more lyrical and the then the texture lightens up but it’s still pretty complex. David Liam Roberts was the soloist and did an excellent job.
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