Quebec based Les Violons du Roy performed on Sunday at Koerner Hall with soprano Karina Gauvin and contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. The music was all drawn from Handel’s English language oratorios and featured orchestral pieces and a number of arias and duets. These works are some of my favourites so I was a bit surprised that I didn’t enjoy the concert as much as I expected.
William Christie and Les Arts Florissants kicked off Toronto Summer Music on Thursday evening at Koerner Hall with a version of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen which is currently on a sort of world tour. This production, conceived by Christie and Paul Agnew is quite radical. Let’s look at what they have done.
I caught the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s second performance of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem at Koerner Hall on Tuesday evening. It’s a piece that’s deservedly famous but I think that this was my first time seeing it live. It’s an interesting piece. It’s not a conventional requiem but nor would I call it “operatic”. It’s far more dramatic than any other mass setting I can think of (even Britten’s War Requiem) but in its own way. Part of it is structural. Verdi keeps bringing back the “Dies Irae” text and music; even right down to. the final “Libera Me”. As his setting for the “Dies Irae” is extremely dramatic (I want to say gonzo but that doesn’t seem very ecclesiastical!) it injects a degree of drama where the core text doesn’t really call for it. FWIW the setting is very loud with choir and orchestra going full out and the timpani being almost scary. It’s particularly so first up where it segues straight into the “Tuba Mirum” with trumpets up on either side of the choir loft.
All is Love, which opened Thursday night at Koerner Hall, is a remount of the 2022 Opera Atelier show which, for various reasons, nobody much saw. It’s a staged series of quite eclectic (mosly) opera and ballet excerpts around the theme of “love”; which means pretty much anything goes.
Mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska made her Koerner Hall recital debut on Sunday afternoon just twenty-six years after first enrolling at the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was clearly an emotional occasion for her and justified the barely choked back tears in her introduction. The emotion though did not negatively affect her singing which was notable for, among other things, great control; emotionally and technically.
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.
Opera Atelier have announced the line up for their 2024/25 season. As with other recent seasons there’s one show at the Elgin Theatre and one at Koerner Hall.
The first show, October 24th – 27th, 2024, is Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Elgin. I’m not going to complain about more English language Handel! Bring it on. This show is indicative of the growing relationship between OA and Versailles with French tenor Antonin Rondepierre in the role of Acis and Blaise Rantoanina singing the role of Damon. The cast is completed by Meghan Lindsey as Galatea (yea!) and Douglas Williams as Polyphemus. Christopher Bagan conducts which is also nice to see. Continue reading
Heinrich Schütz’s 1636 work Musikalische Exequien is sometimes described as the “first German requiem”.. It was performed last night at Koerner Hall by the excellent LA Master Chorale and their conductor Grant Gershon in a staged version directed by Peter Sellars; following up on their 2020 performance of the Lagrime di San Pietro.
This year’s 21C Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say performing some of his works with the help of a few friends. It was a pretty varied evening considering all the works were by one person. The opening pieces Gezi Park 2 and Gezi Park 3 are reflections on the Gezi Park protests of 2013. The first is for solo piano and is by turns dramatic and meditative. It uses a fair amount of extended piano technique and is highly virtuosic with great rhythmic complexity. In the second piece the composer was joined by a string quartet (Scott and Lara St. John – violins, Barry Scxhiffman – viola and Winona Zelenka – cello) and mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender. This work was both expressive and dramatic building on the musical language of the first piece with the additional textures of the strings (more extended technique) and a lot of rather beautiful vocalise from Beste. It’s an impressive piece.
Sondra Radvanovsky was due to give a recital in Koerner Hall on Thursday night but she cancelled due to illness. Toronto Summer Music did extremely well to find a replacement of the calibre of American mezzo J’nai Bridges at such short notice. While many people turned their tickets in for refunds and others, it seems, just didn’t show up, those who did were treated to a performance by Ms. Bridges, accompanied by the ever reliable Rachel Kerr, that most certainly did not disappoint.
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