Toronto Operetta Theatre opened the concluding show of their 2024/25 season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Friday evening. It’s Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers directed and choreographed by Guillermo Silva-Marin. It’s pretty decent and, besides, TOT is about the only chance to see G&S in Toronto; whatever one thinks of their approach. For those who have seen TOT’s G&S before it’s fair to say this is a very typical TOT G&S production.
UoT Opera’s spring production; Massenet’s 1899 opera Cendrillon, has been transferred to the Elgin Theatre with the MacMillan currently out of commission. They have made some sensible accommodations to the rather unfriendly Elgin acoustic. The orchestra is reduced to about thirty players and placed at floor level in front of the stage. Almost all the stage action takes place right at the front which helped significantly with voice projection.
Pandolfe & Servants
Il cappello di paglia di Firenze is a farce by Nino Rota, probably better known as a composer of film music particularly associated with Fellini. It’s playing right now at UoT Opera in a production directed by Jennifer Tarver. It’s an ambitious show. There’s a clever two level set, designed by Michelle Tracey,; indoors on an upper level and outdoors at stage level, and clearly a lot of thought and work has gone into both sets and costumes. The direction and choreography (Anna Theodosakis) is involved and makes use of the full space of the MacMillan Theatre with comings and goings all over the place energetically executed by quite a large cast. Continue reading
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