Last Friday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was given by the France-Canada Academy of Vocal Arts at the University of Toronto. That mouthful is the moniker of a collaboration between the Faculty of Music and the Académie Francis Poulenc. So this last week members of the AFP had been in Toronto working with students and faculty here on French chansons and canadian art song. Fridays concert showcased six singer/pianist teams singing French song rep from both sides of the Canadian Channel.
Last night the final eight aria contestants performed. Canadian mezzo Marie-Andrée Mathieu was up first. Meyerbeer’s Nobles seigneurs, salut! showed genuine mezzo colours, good control and some dramatic flair. Parto! Parto! was pleasant but not as dramatic as one might expect. Certainly the range of emotion on display was markedly less than Emily D’Angelo the day before. Amour, viens rendre mon âme from Gluck’s Orphée showed she could handle long runs. So it was a solid performance but maybe not at the level needed against this field.
This concert at Koerner Hall was the second in this summer’s Twenty-First Century Music Festival. It advertised works by Christos Hatzis, Brian Current, R. Murray Schafer and Louis Andriessen. In fact we kicked off with a short bonus selected from Youtube entries to make up 21 premieres for the C21. Unfortunately I didn’t catch composer or title and it lasted less than two minutes. Continue reading
operaramblings 