Tag Archives: jaroussky

Conservatory 16/17

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Adrianne-Pieczonka-4-credit-Johannes-IfkovitsThe Royal Conservatory announced the concert line up for the 2016/17 season last night.  As usual it’s a very eclectic mix with over 100 concerts in a rather staggering variety of genres.  The one loose them is the Canada Sesquicentennial with 70% or so of the line up having some CanCon.  Here are the highlights for the classical vocal music fan.

Koerner Hall will feature recitals by Deb Voigt (November 11th) and Natalie Dessay (May 2nd) plus Phillippe Jaroussky with Les Violins du Roy (April 13th).

The GGS fall opera is Viardot’s Cendrillon with Peter Tiefenbach as music director in Mazzoleni Hall (November 18th and 19th).  The big spring production, at Koerner, will be Piccini’s La Cecchina with Les Dala conducting (March 15th and 17th).  No word on directors yet.  There’s also the GGS Vocal Showcase in Mazzoleni Hall on February 4th.

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Not a mezzo in sight

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Leonardo Vinci’s Artaserse is in many ways it’s a classic opera seria. The good guy roles are written for castrati but the baddies here too go to high voices; a castrato and a tenor.  But what sets this apart is that it was written for Rome where it premiered in 1730.  At that time women were not allowed on stage in the Papal States so the two female roles were played by castrati en travesti.  In recreating it in 2012, l’opéra national de Lorraine chose to cast all five castrati roles with countertenors, producing a cast like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard.

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Monochrome Poppea

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Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea was the “shabby, little shocker” of the 17th century.  It’s about lust, obsession, murder and revenge.  So, it’s a bit surprising that all too often it comes off as elegant but deadly dull.  That’s rather the case with Pierre Luigi Pizzi’s production filmed at the Teatro Real in 2010.  Despite having Danielle di Niese, something of a specialist Roman sex kitten, in the title role it’s all rather bloodless.  It starts off OK with the gods and goddesses of the prologue being wheeled about on platforms but after that he gets rather static.  Sets and costumes are almost unrelieved grey/silver tones (including a rather fetching pair of silver lamé booty shorts for Damigella) although Nerone himself seems to be dressed as a giant black chicken in Act1 (know you of such a bird, Baldrick?).  The only real breaks in the (literal) monotony are the bright red robe Ottone borrows from Drusilla for the attempted murder and the sparkly gold outfits  that appear for Nerone and Poppea at the end.  It’s also rather dark most of the time.

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Look! No hippogriff

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Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso is based, like so many operas, on an episode in Ariosto’s work of the same name.  In this case it relates the events that take place during Orlandos stay on the enchanted island of the sorceress Alcina.  There are two love triangles, enchantments and Orlando goes mad before order is restored, the island is disenchanted and Alcina, as befits a woman who gets uppity in an eighteenth century opera, is restored to her rightful place in the Outer Darkness.  Structurally it’s pretty typical of the period with a lot of showy arias in a variety of forms plus a couple of decent choruses.

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