Diapente, with guest Felix Deak on viola da gamba presented a concert of music by John Dowland and some of his contemporaries at St. Thomas’s Anglican on Tuesday evening. It was a generous selection of pieces arranged for various combinations of the musicians available; Jane Fingler (soprano), Peter Koniers (countertenor), Jonathan Stuchberry (tenor and lute), Alexander Capellazzo (tenor), Martin Gomes (bass) and, of course, Felix Deak (viola da gamba).
Being distinctly impressed by Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee’s performance at Koerner Hall last month, I got my hands on the CD on which the tour is based. It’s much the same material but with orchestra which really changes things up a bit. It’s a different order too. They begin with six numbers in French starting with comic duets from La fille du régiment and Le comte Ory. It’s very playful but backed up by exquisite technique. There’s no sense of strain despite some serious high notes and some exacting coloratura passages for Morley. The orchestra; the Múncher Rundfunkorchester conducted by Ivan Repušić sounds great too.
It’s not often that one attends a recital that is so stunning that one struggles to find words to describe it but The Golden Age recital given by soprano Erin Morley, tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Malcolm Martineau at a packed Koerner Hall on Thursday evening, as part of Toronto Summer Music, was in that class. Most of the rep was drawn from the Golden Age album released last year with a few change ups. It’s basically all highly virtuosic material in the bel canto style (plus a couple of piano pieces).
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. Continue reading
The Met HD in cinemas line up has been announced for 2024/25 so here’s my take on it. The first thing to notice is that there are only eight shows. There have been ten per season since 2012/13 and twelve before that. This is likely a reflection of the problems with audience numbers that all North American opera companies have been having. In the same time period the COC has cut back from 65-70 main stage performances per year to 42 and the Met’s “in house” audience problem has been well publicised. So what does that leave us with?
Rose in Bloom is a new recital CD from coloratura soprano Erin Morley accompanied by Gerald Martin Moor. It’s a bit of a mixed bag. There’s some really nice singing and playing but some of the music choices leave me a bit cold.
Saint-Saëns “La libellule” is a good start. It’s quite dramatic with opportunties for Morley to show off her considerable coloratura chops. It’s followed by Rimsky-Korsakoff’s “The Rose Enslaves the Nightingale” which is quite exotic with oriental touches and allows Morley to display a more lyrical side. Berg’s “Die Nachtigall” shows she can sing classic German Lieder with style and feeling and then there’s a bit of a chance to show off with Saint Saëns four minute long vocalise “Le Rossignol et la Rose”.
The new recording of Handel’s Alcina from Marc Minkowski, Les musiciens du Louvre and a rather starry line up of soloists is very good and quite interesting. It’s very complete. As far as I can tell all the ballet/dance music is included and so are all the Oberto scenes and all his arias. In all the staged performances I’ve seen (live or video) one or both are usually heavily truncated and I have seen versions where Oberto doesn’t feature at all.
There was one thing that puzzled me a bit. The relatively large (40 or so) orchestra includes trumpets and bassoons but not horns. I think this is unusual but maybe someone more knowledgeable might comment? In any event there’s some really good playing, quite often at very fast tempi in the instrumental sections. Minkowski also gets a really wide range of colours from the orchestra. A good example is the low strings in “È gelosia”. Continue reading
Intellectual and Germanic
Observers of the Toronto opera scene will have noted the creeping influence of facial hair in the industry locally. Perhaps it didn’t start with COC General Director Alexander Neef’s intellectually Germanic goatee but who could deny that it had a profound impact. Earlier this week the four tenors of the Ensemble Studio appeared together sporting face rugs in varying stages of development and the scene is replete with other notable beardies. Geoff Sirett, Robert Gleadow, Greg Finney and Alexander Dobson come to mind. It’s almost compulsory, it seems, for baritones. Continue reading
Mozart’s La finta giardiniera is pretty thin stuff. The libretto is dreadful. The fits of madness start before the opera gets going when Count Belfiore tries to murder his fiancée Marchioness Violante. She runs off and becomes a gardener aided by her man-servant Roberto. There’s another gardener, Sarpetta, who is being wooed by Roberto (alias Nardo) and Violante’s (now Sandrina) boss the mayor has a niece, Arminda, who now plans to marry Belfiore to the dismay of her former lover Ramiro. And along the way the mayor, Don Anchise, gets the hots for Sandrina. Throw in a whole lot of confusion about Sandrina/Violante’s identity (because she keeps claiming that she’s not Violante or is just pretending to be Violante depending who she is talking to) and it’s no wonder that everyone goes mad at least once. Frankly the audience has every right to as well. And there’s three hours of this. The music is OK. It’s Mozart at 18 and he’s writing to a formula most of the time. So we get workmanlike but predictable arias and ensembles that only occasionally hint at what is to come in the later operas.
