Ooga Chaka, written by Ethan Zuchkan, directed by Steven Hao and presented by Pucker’s at the Fringe might be described as a screwball comedy; if balls or screws had been available in the stone age. It’s fast paced and funny and surprisingly affecting.
The final concert of this year’s Toronto Bach Festival was Voices Lifted; a presentation of four of Bach’s chorale cantatas at Eastminster United. These pieces typically use the classic Lutheran chorale text sung quite simply to bookend material reworked from biblical sources into a mixture of arias, recitatives and duets. The chorale parts were sung here with two singers to each part. Accompaniment was a small period instrument ensemble anchored by Christopher Bagan on organ and conducted by John Abberger.
Diasporic Bridges, at Trinity St. Paul’s on Sunday afternoon, was the Amici Chamber Ensemble’s final concert of the season. It celebrated the way that music binds emigrant communities together and provides a link to “home”. Most, though not all, of the pieces performed were by composers of diverse styles and backgrounds living and working in Canada and the live music was preceded by an excerpt from Amici’s upcoming film on the same topic. I’ll save writing about that until I’ve seen the whole thing.
Theatre Gargantua’s production of Michael Gordon Spence’s The Wager, which opened last night at Theatre Passe Muraille takes as its starting point Alfred Russell Wallace’s (the other natural selection guy) bet with a Flat Earther to prove that the Earth is round. He does do, of course. Or at least to the satisfaction of any reasonable person but merely succeeds in provoking a storm of personal abuse and insults from the Flat Earther. All of which tends to prove the old adage that arguing with a crackpot is like wrestling with a pig. You get covered in s**t and the pig enjoys it.
Opera 5’s double bill of Ethel Smyth one acters, Suffragette, opened last night at Theatre Passe Muraille in productions by Jessica Derventzis. The second piece, The Boatswain’s Mate, was in every way the more successful of the two. It’s a straightforward enough story. Mrs. Waters is a widow and landlord of The Outlaw (renamed in deference to the production’s beer sponsor). She is being very unsuccessfully courted by retired boatswain Harry Benn. Mrs. Waters doesn’t want or need a husband but Benn decides that by enlisting a casual acquaintance, the former soldier Ned Travers, as a fake burglar from whom he can “rescue” the hapless landlady, he can impress her sufficiently. Much mayhem ensues but the upshot is that Mrs. Waters takes a shine to the hunky soldier and they, at least, live happily ever after.
Toronto Operetta Theatre’s current production is Oscar Straus’ The Chocolate Soldier in the English version. It’s based on Shaw’s Arms and the Man but, as is usually the case with musical adaptations of Shaw, it’s rather less acerbic than the original. In fact, it comes over as a somewhat farcical love story with a few gentle pot shots at the military and militarism. There are some good comic lines and the music is tuneful and well crafted.
By an odd coincidence two season announcement pressers hit my in box today; Toronto Operetta Theatre and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Toronto Operetta Theatre have four shows:
All performances are at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.
The COC’s new production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville opened last night at the Four Season’s Centre. The production is by the Catalan collective Els Comediants, the same team who did La Cenerentola a few seasons back, with direction by Joan Font and designs by Joan Guillén. It’s a riot in a good way. It’s bold, colourful and very well choreographed. There are giant props; for example a huge guitar from which Almaviva sings his serenade and a giant pink piano which serves for all kinds of shenanigans. A lot of the “sung action” is doubled by actors in a sort of on stage projection cube. Scene changes are “on the fly” and the curtain only comes down for the interval and the end. Bold, clever, slick.
Alek Shrader as Count Almaviva. Photo: Michael Cooper
The COC’s production of Madama Butterfly opened last night at the Four Seasons Centre. I’m not a huge Madama Butterfly fan and it takes a really good production and a really good performance to get me past my instinctive dislike for a libretto based on child rape and sex tourism backed by Puccini soup with an infusion of Mikado. This production, being revived for the umpty umpth time (It dates back to the Brian Dickie era) just wasn’t that. Director Brian Macdonald writes in the programme “We both (he and Dickie) had had experience at the Stratford Festival. That meant wood, simple props, no decoration that wouldn’t bespeak the essence of the play”. Throw in an Allen key and it would sound like a trip to IKEA. Which is pretty much what the designs are like; clean, functional and inoffensive. Throw in costumes and gestures straight from the Mikado and you have it. Not bad. Just meh.
It may still be 90%+ humidity and hot as hell in Toronto but the signs of things to come are piling up. I have a stack of tickets for fall events at various venues and the smaller opera groups are starting to announce their seasons.
The latest news is from Opera 5 who are launching the year with a Hollywood Glam Gala at Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu. It’s a fundraiser with an “Opera in Hollywood” theme. Performers will include Teiya Kasahara (probably not with the butch lesbian routine), Elizabeth MacDonald, Graham Thompson, and the increasingly visible Geoffrey Sirett among others. Toronto photographer, Emily Ding will be on hand for Hollywood glam photos with food and alcohol provided by Fionn MacCool’s, notorious hangout of the COC Chorus.
operaramblings 