Toronto Operetta Theatre’s last show of the season is Johan Strauss II’s A Night in Venice with the libretto lightly updated by Guillermo Silva-Marin; who also directs. It opened on Friday evening at the Jane Mallett Theatre. Loyal fans will not be disappointed. It’s a typical frothy, colourful TOT offering with chamber ensemble and singing that ranges from very decent to really rather good.
Soundstreams’ penultimate concert of the season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Thursday evening featured “love songs” from a range of (more or less) contemporary Canadian composers under the overall direction of David Fallis.
So my third Holocaust Remembrance concert was Singing Through the Darkness which played at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Wednesday night. Unlike the previous two concerts which focussed largely on music in the classical tradition with a bit of folk thrown in this time it was more jazz/musical theatre.
The programme was a very varied mix of music and poetry composed in camps and ghettoes, folk songs remembered from a fractured past, partisan songs and even a bit of Kurt Weill.; The arrangements were for various combinations of Aviva Chernick, Lenka Lichtenberg, Theresa Tova and Fern Lindzon on vocals with Fern on the piano (and melodica) and, on occasion, Lenka on guitar. There was even a cameo by Judith Lander. Ori Dagan mceed. Continue reading
Toronto Operetta Theatre’s New Year’s offering is Imre Kalman’s Czardas Princess. It’s lively and tuneful and not overly serious being basically a succession of Austro-Hungarian Empire stereotypes. To whit Prince Somebody von und zu Wherever-Etcetera is in love with a Hungarian cabaret singer with an unpronounceable name from a pig rearing village with an equally dubious moniker when he’s supposed to be marrying his countess cousin. All the usual s/he loves, s/he loves me not plus parental disapproval play out until a shocking revelation. So the Prince gets his girl and his cousin gets a Hungarian count (probably a somewhat richer pig farmer) as a consolation prize. They all live happily ever after, or at least until 1914.
Every year Soundstreams has a competition to find a young artist to curate a main stage concert. This year’s lucky winner is Brad Cherwin, who will need little introduction to readers of this blog, and the concert took place at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Saturday night.
It was, in many ways, a typical Cherwin programme. Some works were played in their entirety while others had their individual movements spread through the programme. The overall theme was “Love and Death” and the programme was divided into four cycles with somewhat enigmatic titles. Twelve instrumentalists, plus soprano Danika Lorèn and conductor Gregory Oh were used in various combinations.
This year’s New Year offering from Toronto Operetta Theatre is Imre Kálmán’s 1924 work Countess Maritza presented in Nigel Douglas’ English language version. It’s a pretty typical TOT offering. The work itself is a rather silly love story full of just about every cliché about central Europe bar vampires but it’s tuneful and the ten piece orchestra conducted by Derek Bate provides colour and volume enough for the Jane Mallett Theatre.
Thursday night at the Jane Mallett Theatre Soundstreams and Music Toronto presented a concert featuring the Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon – violin, Roman Borys – cello, Jamie Parker – piano) and others. Also two world premières.
First up was the première of Vivian Fung’s Prayer; a short piece for violin (Lara St.John) and piano. It’s a rather beautiful short piece with a melismatic beginning that gets more dramatic and then morphs to a kind of searching quality. It was followed by Amy Beach’s Invocation for violin and piano, Op. 55 of 1904. It’s a competent, melodic piece in the Romantic tradition. Pleasant enough. Continue reading
Verdi’s 1849 opera La battaglia di Legnano is loosely based on a battle that took place in 1176 between the forces of Frederick Barbarossa and those of the Lombard League; just one episode in the interminable struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines. By Verdi’s time the battle had been appropriated by Italian nationalists (at least in northern Italy) as symbolic of the Italians struggle against the Austrian occupiers and that’s pretty much where Verdi is at.
Toronto Operetta Theatre opened a run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance at the Jane Mallett Theatre last night.I think it’s got everything one could expect from a modest budget G&S production and maybe a bit more. Bill Silva-Marin’s production is energetic with a lot of stomping, marching and mincing going on which makes the small stage (even smaller than usual as the band is on stage) look lively and busy. The chorus is good and sings idiomatically. The principals also appear to understand the genre and there’s some good acting and good, at times excellent, singing.
Ivor Novello’s Perchance to Dream opened in London in April 1945. It’s fluffy, romantic and nostalgic. It has a ridiculous plot, some great tunes (A Woman’s Heart, We’ll Gather Lilacs etc) and lots of eye candy. It’s probably exactly what people needed after nearly six years of an exceptionally weary, dreary war. It ran for a thousand performances. Approached in the right frame of mind it’s still a very enjoyable, escapist way of spending a couple of hours.
operaramblings 