It’s that time of year when departing members of the COC Ensemble Studio give their farewell recitals in the RBA. On Tuesday it was the turn of Midori Marsh and Alex Halliday and they did it in style. The programme was interesting and the music making excellent. Although they alternated sets it’s probably easy to deal with each singer in turn.
The Canadian Art Song Project branched out last night with a ticketed concert at The Extension Room. The opening number was the latest CASP commission; The Living Spectacle by Erik Ross to words by Baudelaire translated by Roy Campbell. Like a lot of modern song the three movements were all quite piano forward and hard on the singer. The second text, The Evil Monk, certainly brought out the darker and more dramatic side of Ambur Braid’s voice while the third, The Death of Artists, was cruelly high even for someone with Ambur’s coloratura chops. She coped very well and Steven Philcox’ rendering of the piano part was suitably virtuosic.
The MetHD broadcast of Strauss’ Capriccio has been issued on Blu-ray. I enjoyed the original broadcast but found watching it again on disk rather unsatisfying. The main problem is the production. It’s a John Cox effort from 1998. The period is updated from ancien régime France to just after WW1, apparently to make the people more contemporary while allowing an opulent, old style Met “all the things” production. Peter McClintock’s direction of the revival emphasizes the most obvious comedy (the ballerina falling over with her legs in the air, for example) while doing little or nothing to bring out the sheer cleverness of this opera, about an opera, within an opera. It all seems very heavy handed, in fact the word that popped into my head several times was “vulgar”.
operaramblings 