So following Minimum I made it to Tarragon Theatre with about two minutes to spare to see You Choose; an improvised murder mystery from the Howland Company. The show is created by Ruth Goodwin and Liz Johnston. M. Thibidault, owner of a country hotel, has invited some friends for dinner but shortly before the meal commences he is found murdered. It must be one of the guests or a member of the hotel staff. So far, so Christie but here’s the schtick. The cast draw lots to determine what character they will play and we, the audience, choose the murderer. The only members of the cast who know the murderer’s identity are the killer and the concierge/facilitator who moves the action forward with a series of prompts.
Opera Revue teamed up with Opera Atelier for a show called Trills, Chills and Thrills at the Redwood Theatre on Sunday evening. The usual gang of Danie Friesen, Alex Hajek and Claire Harris were joined by tenor Ben Done and mezzo Kathryn Rose Johnston for a programme of opera arias and musical theatre numbers that (sort of) turned the plot of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (OA’s upcoming show) into a murder mystery.
Saturday evening’s Cinq à Sept
concert in the 21C Festival at the Royal Conservatory was intriguing. The first half of the programme was a new song cycle, After the Fires, with words by Liza Balkan and music by Lembit Beecher. It set seven pieces about the 2020 fires on the central California coast and their aftermath based on interviews with local residents. It’s a really interesting piece scored for piano, clarinet, soprano, mezzo-soprano and baritone. It’s very “text first”. Although the accompaniment is often intricate it never overpowers the words and there’s a real harmony between words and music. The mood varies but, given it’s about really awful events, it’s more elegiac and lyrical and even funny than angry or sad. It got a fine, nuanced performance from Henry From (piano), Zachary Gassenheimer (clarinet), Xin Wang (soprano), Andrea Ludwig (mezzo-soprano) and Korin Thomas-Smith (baritone). 
John Adams’ 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, about the development of the first atomic weapon, comes over very effectively on CD. I think this is because, in essence, it’s more oratorio than opera. There’s very little action in the stage version. So little in fact that Peter Sellars staged the original production rather the way he stages oratorios 
operaramblings 