Soprano and Conservatory student Alannah Beauparlant gave a recital in Mazzoleni Hall on Sunday that showed considerable versatility as well as a nicely developing voice. She sang in six languages and covered all the bases from art song to opera to musical theatre with some Bernstein that lay somewhere in the middle!
ETA 6th December 2019:
Rewatching Le Grand Macabre after four years has rather changed my opinion. It still seems weird and sometimes hard to watch but I think I see a certain logic in it now that completely escaped me before. So the End of the World is approaching and all the Powers that Be can do is squabble, exchange scatological insults and get very, very drunk while the one sane (if rather weird) character (Gepopo) can’t find a language to communicate the enormity of what’s happening to them. Sound vaguely familiar? (Coincidentally, I’m writing this on the day that Andrew Scheer said that the Federal Government should give more heroin to the addicts in Alberta because otherwise they’ll get in a snit). Of course, in Ligeti’s version Death gets so drunk that he screws up terminating the space-time continuum but we probably won’t be so lucky. So yes the fart jokes and the raccoon on bins orchestra is still there but it now seems to me in service of something rather more profound than I previously gave it credit for. Also, Hannigan is not just brilliant vocally. It’s also, even by her standards, an amazing physical performance. (Original review under the cut).
operaramblings 