Tag Archives: methd

Ticket giveaway

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porgyticketsIf anybody in Canada is interested in seeing the HD broadcast of the Met production of  Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess I may be able to help.  I can’t do anything about this upcoming weekend’s live broadcast but I do have, courtesy of Touchwood PR, a couple of tickets to give away for the encore presentations.  It’s a Canada only deal and you could pick any showing between Saturday, March 28th and Sunday, April 5th at the movie theatre of your choice.  This link should serve to figure out when it’s on where.  Comment with an email address and I’ll sort out logistics with the lucky winner.  First come first served.

Into 2020

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newyearSo what do the first couple of weeks of 2020 hold.  First up Toronto Operetta Theatre their traditional Mew Year run.  his year it’s Johann Strauss’ The Gypsy Baron and there are five shows between December 28th and January 5th. The cast includes Michael Barrett, Meghan Lindsey and Beste Kalender.  It plays at the St. Lawrence Centre.

If you can even contemplate the thought of another late night drinking Against the Grain’s Opera Pub is on at 9pm on January 2nd at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club.  The following night tenor Zach Rioux has a free recital of mostly Italian rep in Mazzoleni Hall at 7.30pm (ETA CANCELLED).

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Straightforward Otello from the Met

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In 2015 the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new production of Verdi’s Otello directed by Bartlett Sher.  It was broadcast in the Met in HD series and subsequently released on Blu-ray and DVD.  It’s a bit hard to judge the production on video because of the video direction.  I don’t think there are any big ideas but it’s decorative enough with arrangements and rearrangements of plexiglass wall/rooms and some effective video projections for things like the storm scene.  Only Act 4 breaks the mould with a sparse stage with just a bed and a few chairs.  I strongly suspect though from the occasional wide angle shot that there was a lot more going on visually than one sees on the video.  Costumes are 19th centuryish and quite decorative.

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An offer you can’t refuse?

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trollsSo this header was in my mailbox today:

Cineplex’s The Met: Live in HD features Franco Zefferelli’s Tosca on January 27 and Bartlett Sher’s production of L’Elisir d’Amore on February 10th

My first thought was that I would rather be suspended upside down in a vat of ordure and flogged by drug crazed trolls and then I realised that unless I was somewhere in the the multiverse where the Met still had Robert Carsen’s Eugene Onegin this couldn’t be right.  The body text clarified.  It’s actually the, by now scarcely distinguishable from the Zeff, Caledonian knight Sir David MacVicar “Rivaling the splendor of Franco Zeffirelli’s Napoleonic-era sets and costumes”.

I’ll stick with the demented trolls.

Magic Flute for kids

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The Met’s abridged version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, in English, got an HD broadcast in 2006 and a subsequent DVD release.  It’s Julie Taymor’s production and it’s visually spectacular with giant sets, loads of very effective puppets and very good dancers (I wish every opera company used dance as effectively as the Met.  Too expensive I guess).  It’s more something one might expect to see at Bregenz than at the Four Seasons Centre.  Costuming is sometimes a bit weird.  The Three Ladies have removable heads and the chorus of priests look like origami angels but it’s never less than interesting visually. There’s nothing about the cuts (it comes in at about an hour and threequarters) that changes the plot in any way that makes it obviously kid friendly beyond being shorter and there’s no attempt to make it anything other than a pretty fairy tale.  If one wants a Flute with deep meaning this isn’t it.

1.taminopapageno

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Winter draws on

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Moving into winter what does the Toronto opera/concert calendar have to offer?  This coming week there’s an interesting looking concert in the RBA at noon on Tuesday.  The Haven Trio (soprano Lindsay Kesselman, clarinetist Kimberly Cole Luevano, and pianist Midori Koga) will perform the world premiere of Toronto-based composer Kieren MacMillan’s Three Portraits, a dramatic setting of poems by Dana Gioia, the current Poet Laureate of California.

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Next week…

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440x360_normaHere’s a preview of things to see/listen to next week.  It’s Met in HD season again and the next two Saturdays have broadcasts.  On the 7th it’s Bellini’s Norma with Sondra Radvanovsky and Joyce DiDonato.  It’s a David McVicar production and no prizes for guessing what happens when you cross McVicar and druids.  On the 14th it’s Die Zauberflöte with the Resident Groundhog conducting.  It’s the Julie Taymor production but given in full in German rather than the abridged ‘for kids” version.  The best thing about the cast is René Pape’s Sarastro.

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No sex please, we’re the Met

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For some reason the Metropolitan opera decided, in 2014, to give an HD broadcast to Otto Schenk’s 1993 version of Dvorák’s Rusalka with revival direction by Laurie Feldman.  This production must have seriously old fashioned even then and actually looks and feels like it was created fifty years before the opera was written.  It’s not just the dark, dreary, over detailed Arthur Rackham like sets and costumes or even the the stock acting and the lame choreography.  The biggest problem is that it completely ignores that Rusalka is essentially about sex and its pathologies.  Does Schenk think that Rusalka wants to hold hands with the Prince at the cinema or take the Foreign Princess to the ball instead of Rusalka?  You would think so from this Disneyfied version.  Has the man even heard of Freud (let’s be clear Dvorák had)?  The result then is stultifyingly dull and actually just rather silly.  I’ve seen panto with more psychological depth.

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