On Wednesday evening I went back to the Four Seasons Centre for another look at the COC’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck. I was really impressed with the show on opening night (my review on bachtrack.com) and was interested to see whether a second look would give some insights into a production that is visually fascinating almost to the point of overload.
Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Wozzeck and Anthony Robin Schneider as the Doctor
The story of Salome and John the Baptist may be the most twisted tale in the Western canon. Oscar Wilde’s take on the story, with music by Richard Strauss added, didn’t make it any less twisted. Nor did Atom Egoyan’s production of the opera for the COC and its several remounts. How, one might ask, could one ramp the twistedness up a notch? The answer, and a very successful one, is to have Egoyan make a film based around his production. And so, Seven Veils, which had its avant-premier, ahead of TIFF, at the Four Seasons Centre last night.
Ambur Braid as Salome (top left), Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Jochanaan (below), and Frédéric Antoun as Narraboth (top right) in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Salome, 2023. Photo: Michael Cooper
The new season starts to ramp up in September. My month will start at Factory Theatre on the 7th with Mary Beath Badian’s The Waltz; a coming of age drama set in Saskatchewan. That runs until the 17th. The following night there’s a screening at the Four Seasons Centre of Atom Egoyan’s new film Seven Veils that was created in conjunction with last season’s production of Salome. A young woman is tasked with remounting her former mentor’s production of Salome. It stars Amanda Seyfried, Ambur Braid, Michael Schade and Michael Kupfer-Radecky. It’s a chance to see the film ahead of the official premier at TIFF. More details and tickets here.
It’s probably not ideal to begin the review of a new Ring cycle with Götterdämmerung but in the case of the cycle directed by Valentin Schwarz that premiered at Bayreuth in 2022 Götterdämmerung is the first to be released on video. Fortunately the generous two Blu-ray disk package includes a narrated summary (in English and German) of the whole cycle as seen by the director so it’s possible to put Götterdämmerung in context
Violanta is one of those works which seem oddly out of place, among other things. It’s a one act opera by the eighteen year old Erich Korngold which premiered in Munich and Vienna in 1916. It hardly needs saying that most eighteen year olds in Europe in 1916 were engaged otherwise than in composing rather overwrought operas about seduction and death in 15th century Venice but there you go.
operaramblings 