Tag Archives: monteverdi

Looking ahead to June

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Orfeo-Website-ImageJune is kind of quiet but first there’s yet another show to mention for the busy last weekend of May.  David Fallis is conducting his last performances as Music Director of the Toronto Consort.  It’s Monteverdi’s Orfeo and it’s at Trinity St. Pauls at 8pm on the 25th and 26th and 3.30pm on the 27th.  Besides David it features Charles Daniels in the title role, Kevin Skelton as Apollo, Laura Pudwell as Messagiera with Jeanne Lamon on first violin plus Montreal’s premier cornetto and sackbut ensemble La Rose des Vents.

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Assorted news and signal boosts

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genderneutralHere’s the news that’s arrived in my inbox this week.

Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts announced that from 2019 the DORA awards will be gender neutral.  In categories where there has traditionally been “Best Performance by a Male” and “Best Performance by a Female” there will now be a single “Best Performance” award.

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Like the 504 streetcar

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Season announcements, it seems, are like the King Street streetcar(1).  You wait for ages then three come along at once.  This time it’s Opera Atelier announcing the 2017/18 season.  As ever there are two productions.  A remount of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro runs October 26th to November 4th. The cast icludes Douglas Williams, making his Opera Atelier debut, in the title role, with Mireille Asselin (Susanna), Stephen Hegedus (Count Almaviva), Peggy Kriha Dye (Countess Almaviva), Mireille Lebel (Cherubino), Laura Pudwell (Marcellina), Gustav Andreassen (Bartolo), Christopher Enns (Basilio/Don Curzio), Olivier Laquerre (Antonio), and Grace Lee (Barbarina).  This one will be sung in English.

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Patrick Jang, Carla Huhtanen and Phillip Addis in “The Marriage of Figaro” (2010).  Photo by Bruce Zinger.

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In War and Peace

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in-war-and-peaceJoyce DiDonato’s latest CD In War and Peace is a compilation of baroque arias on the theme of war and peace, apparently prompted by the terrorist attacks in Paris.  The arias are divided, apparently, into the two categories and while I get that Handel’s Scenes of Sorrow, Scenes of Woe from Jeptha is “war” I’m not at all sure how Purcell’s Dido’s Lament finds itself on that side of the balance sheet.  No matter there’s lots of Handel; very well done, and quite a bit of Purcell, some of it quite little known; even better, with some Leo, Jommelli and Monteverdi along the way.

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What’s black and white and red all over?

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The 2010 Oslo recording of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea is one of the strangest opera videos I have ever seen.  Besides having an almost complete set of the characteristics that critics pejoratively assign to Regietheatre it also has a very unusual video treatment that goes well beyond quirky camera angles and overly intrusive close-ups.  So the box is being entirely accurate when it states “Based on a performance directed by Ole Anders Tandberg.  Adapted and filmed by Anja Stabell and Stein-Roger Bull”.

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Pyramus and Thisbe – Beyond time and space

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Back last night for a second look at Pyramus and Thisbe at the COC.  I’ve been involved in a huge amount of discussion, mostly with Katja, about this show since we saw it on Tuesday and there were many things about the Monk Feldman piece and its staging that I wanted to think about again.  Lots of thoughts and, perhaps, a slightly different perspective since I was watching from two levels higher in the house this time.

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Pyramus and Thisbe – a world premiere

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The new COC creation Pyramus and Thisbe with music by Monteverdi and Barbara Monk Feldman opened last night at the Four Seasons Centre.  I was expecting abstract and cerebral, which it is, but I was rather expecting that I might admire it more than enjoy it.  As it turned out it was a remarkably satisfying show on many levels.

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Coming up

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pandtThere are a couple of opera openings next week.  Pyramus and Thisbe; the Barbara Monk Feldman, Monteverdi, Chris Alden creation, opens at the COC on Tuesday 20th for a run of seven shows and Opera Atelier are opening a run of six shows of Lully’s Armide at the Elgin starting on Thursday evening.  Both shows are very much a case of Canadian talent on display with no big international names.  La Traviata continues at the COC in tandem with Pyramus and Thisbe.

darknetThere’s one interesting new announcement for the following week.  Amanda Smith and Alaina Viau are collaborating on a show called Toronto Darknet Market.  It’s inspired by those parts of the internet that even I don’t know about and will run as a sequence of three performances on the 29th starting at 8pm.  It’s at 8-11 which is at 233 Spadina (south of Dundas).  It’s a PWYC fundraiser for a chamber production of Médée by Marc-Antoine Charpentier next year.  Toronto needs more staged baroque opera that’s not Opera Atelier so this initiative deserves support.  There will be good young singers on display with music by Purcell, Berg and Cage among others.

Poppea; stylised but stylish

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Klaus Michael Grüber’s production of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, recorded at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2000, is both stylish and stylised.  The stage and costume designs, by Gilles Aillaud and Rudy Sabounghi, are extremely elegant and, at times, very beautiful.  The Seneca scenes at the beginning of Act 2, set in a sort of lemon grove, are especially effective as ai the use of painterly backdrops looking like Greek vase paintings reinterpreted by a fauviste.  The director complements the designs with a somewhat formalised acting style that fits rather well. He also makes some changes to the narrative to tighten up the drama, dispensing with Ottavia’s nurse and ending with Pur tí miro, rather than Poppea’s coronation.  Coupled with excellent acting performances it’s a straightforward but effective way to tell the story.

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Monochrome Poppea

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Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea was the “shabby, little shocker” of the 17th century.  It’s about lust, obsession, murder and revenge.  So, it’s a bit surprising that all too often it comes off as elegant but deadly dull.  That’s rather the case with Pierre Luigi Pizzi’s production filmed at the Teatro Real in 2010.  Despite having Danielle di Niese, something of a specialist Roman sex kitten, in the title role it’s all rather bloodless.  It starts off OK with the gods and goddesses of the prologue being wheeled about on platforms but after that he gets rather static.  Sets and costumes are almost unrelieved grey/silver tones (including a rather fetching pair of silver lamé booty shorts for Damigella) although Nerone himself seems to be dressed as a giant black chicken in Act1 (know you of such a bird, Baldrick?).  The only real breaks in the (literal) monotony are the bright red robe Ottone borrows from Drusilla for the attempted murder and the sparkly gold outfits  that appear for Nerone and Poppea at the end.  It’s also rather dark most of the time.

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