Last Wednesday’s noon hour concert in the RBA was a collaboration between the Canadian Art Song Project and the UoT Faculty of Music. It was an all Canadian programme; mostly living composers and mostly in a lighter vein; hence the title Songs of Whimsy and Humour.
Three Islands is a UoT Opera show that opened at the Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre at York University on Thursday night. The show is conceived and directed by Tim Albery who has wrapped two 20th century English language one act operas in a wrapper crafted from Kaija Saariaho’s Tempest Songbook.
Ariel’s Hail from Tempest Songbook (Saariaho): Prospero – Ben Wallace, Ariel – Aemilia Moser
Lysistrata Reimagined is this year’s UoT Opera Student Composer Collective production. It’s a setting of a libretto by Michael Patrick Albano loosely inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. In fact about all of Lysistrata that remains is that it’s in Greece, there’s a sex strike to stop a war and a couple of character names are retained. But then, as the first scene tells us, nobody reads that stuff, or remembers it, anymore.
So, we are in a city. The men, up to now gainfully employed making triangular wheels, writing romance novels or teaching interpretative dance decide that “war” is a good thing and they want one. Lysistrata who is, apparently, the leader of the local womenfolk isn’t so keen and persuades the ladies to withdraw their favours until the men drop the war idea. One woman, though, Lampito (inevitably), rather likes the war idea and kits herself out for it but doesn’t really convince anyone else. With deadlock reached after three weeks Lysistrata calls on the local (female) sage for help but all she gets are “a string of proverbs and useless clichés”. But then a miracle happens. Overnight some people change gender and some realise it’s just a social construct. So now there’s nothing particularly masculine about war which persuades the boys (or whatever they are now) to drop the idea and normal relations are resumed though one suspects in greater variety.
The recording of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten made at the Salzburg Festival in 1992 is very much Sir Georg Solti’s show. The conducting is superb and the Vienna Philharmonic, of course, respond for Solti. From the opening, shattering cords through the various orchestral interludes to the final ensemble and chorus Solti is utterly convincing in his command of tempi and dynamics.
Strauss’ Salome is not for the faint hearted. It contains perversions including, but not limited to, necrophilia, paedophilia and incest. I think this makes David McVicar an obvious choice as director. In fact, by McVicar standards, this 2008 Covent Garden production is fairly restrained and straightforward. McVicar gves the work a 1930s setting which works just fine. The action evolves on a rather elegant two level set; upstairs is Herod’s banquet and downstairs is a sort of guardroom including Jokanaan’s cistern. It’s all quite elegant in light blues and greys and essentially all the action takes place downstairs. There are a few supers including a naked woman and another not far off floating around for no apparent reason except perhaps to suggest that the Judean army is not the Brigade of Guards.
operaramblings 