Tag Archives: hoffman

A bit of an oddball

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Once in a while I go out on a limb with recordings.  Sometimes it’s great.  I’m not as a rule particularly fond of “cross-over” material but I loved Emily D’Angelo’s freezing for example.  So I took a listen to Schubert Beatles from the New York Festival of Song.  Broadly speaking, it pairs Schubert Lieder with Beatles’ songs on a similar theme; Yesterday and Im Frühling for example.  The Schubert is mostly presented pretty straight (except for guitar accompaniment on Du bist die Ruh).  The Beatles songs are arranged, by Steven Beier, for various combinations of piano, violin, bass and guitar.  The principal singer is baritone Theo Hoffman with tenor Andrew Owens and soprano Julia Bullock joining on some tracks. Continue reading →

Sneak preview of Die Fledermaus

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Female chorus member – Sketch: Constance Hoffman

There’s an event on in Toronto this weekend called “CultureDays”.  The COC’s contribution last night was an open orchestra dress rehearsal of Christopher Alden’s new production of Die Fledermaus preceded by a talk in the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium by set designer Allen Moyer and costume designer Constance Hoffman moderated by the CBC’s Brent Bambury.  The event was “first come, first served” and restricted to 500 tickets so we decided to be early.  Doors opened at 1815 for a 1830 talk so the plan was to meet the lemur at the opera house at 1700, grab a bite to eat and then join the line-up.  I got there early as I was through at work and preferred to sit in the sunshine at the Four Seasons Centre rather than at my desk so I got there around 1615.  There was already a line up!  By the time the lemur showed up just before 1700 there was quite a line up so we changed plan and the lemur went off to fetch burritos to eat in the line.  Just as well as they ended up turning people away.  Continue reading →