Tag Archives: mori

SOS: Sketch Opera Singers 2

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SOS2 was at least as good as the first instalment.  Krisztina Szabó came in as replacement for Simone McIntosh who is back on the west coast and showed that she’s at least as crazy as anyone else involved in this show (even Keith Klassen and that’s saying something).  Highlights include Korin Thomas-Smith auditioning for Papageno and being asked to sing everything from Sarastro to the Queen of the Night, Krisztina as a manic photographer, the previously mentioned ABBA-nera, Teiya Kasahara breathing COVID on Keith Klassen and lots more rather dark virus humour.  All sorts of people chipped in with cameos and/or music, Michael Mori and Keith Klassen directed with Jennifer Tung and Juliane Gallant providing music direction.  Technical quality is excellent and it’s free.  It’s only 30 minutes long so there’s no excuse for not watching.  It’s available here.

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Where Do I Go?

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Where Do I Go? is the latest on-line offering from Tapestry Opera.  It’s an eight minute film followed by ten minutes or so of cast interviews.  The concept originates with the multi-talented Morgan Paige-Melbourne who wrote the music and words, plays piano, sings, speaks and dances on the film. She’s supported by dancer Natasha Poon-Woo and percussionist Adam Kaleta. Michael Mori directs.

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SOS Sketch Opera Singers

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Tapestry’s SOS Sketch Opera Singers does for the staid old world of opera what I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue did for the quiz show.  Five of Toronto’s finest artistes, in the guise of the cross-over group; Krossøver, are, in the immortal words of Humphrey Lyttleton, “given silly things to do”.

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Jacqueline

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Jacqueline is a new opera by librettist Royce Vavrek and composer Luna Pearl Woolf.  It will premiere at Tapestry next month.  It deals with the life and career of cellist Jacqueline du Pré.  Du Pré was a celebrity in her own life time.  She made her Wigmore Hall debut at age 16 in 1961 and quickly established herself as one of the all time greatest exponents of her instrument with a rather special relationship with the Elgar concerto.  Marriage to Daniel Barenboim, conversion to Judaism and “membership” in the rather remarkable circle of musical Jews in New York followed.  Her physical ability to play the cello though began to decline in 1971 and a formal diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was made in 1973.  She lived for another 14 years but never played again in public.

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TapEX:Augmented

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So finally to see a show I’ve been thinking about a lot; TapEX:Augmented.  It’s simultaneously a show about technology and about using technology in the opera house. The plot concerns the product launch of Elysium; a cloud based afterlife using machine learning to curate (and augment) the customer’s best memories and create their ideal eternity.

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Looking ahead to TapEX: Augmented Opera

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I sat down today with Michael Mori and Debi Wong; the co-directors of Tapestry’s upcoming show TapEX: Augmented Opera to talk about the show and issues around it.  The TapEX series is all about low cost, low risk experimentation.  Previous shows have combined opera with punk, turntables and Persian rapping.  This time it’s about exploring ways of using digital technology to enhance opera performance and enable the creation of new kinds of opera.  It’s also about how can technology be incorporated in an affordable way.  Conventional studio produced VR comes in around $30,000 per minute which might be OK for the Royal Shakespeare Company  but is way out of reach of an indie company.  And, of course, it can’t be about the technology itself.  It needs to be about how we create art with it.

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Pomegranate premiere

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Last night Pomegranate; music by Kye Marshall, words by Amanda Hale, opened at Buddies in Bad Times.  Inspired by the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii, it tells the story of two lesbian lovers.  Cass has broken up with Suzy in 1980s Toronto.  She visits Pompeii as a tourist and is carried back in time to meet her lover in a previous incarnation in the Temple of Isis.  There’s a whole act dealing with the Mysteries, Cassia and Suli’s burgeoning relationship and the attempt by the Roman state to suppress the religion.  Then Vesuvius erupts.  Fast forward to Act 2 in a lesbian bar in Toronto.  Suzy, an immigrant from some unspecified war zone is pressured by her family to break up with Cass.  There’s a slightly surreal byt dramatically satisfying epilogue where modern Cass reunites with Roman Sulli in the ruins of Pompeii.

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A second look at Shanawdithit

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We went back last night for a second look at Shanawdithit.  We were sitting up much closer to the stage area this time and that did bring out some things I hadn’t noticed so much before.  It also made the role of the chorus much clearer.  That said I don’t think I’d write anything much different to my original review if I were doing so again.  But there are some additional thoughts that I want to share:

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Pomegranate

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There’s been a lot of new opera in Toronto at the moment and a lot of it has had either an Indigenous or a Queer angle; likely reflecting funding bodies trying to encourage diversity of various types.  The latest one to come my way is Pomegranate which will play at Buddies in Bad Times from June 5th to 9th.  It’s a lesbian chamber opera from librettist Amanda Hale and composer Kye Marshall and it’s a first opera for both of them.

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