Tag Archives: mozart

The Hannigan show

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Last night at Roy Thomson Hall Barbara Hannigan made her North American conducting debut with the TSO.  And, of course, she sang too.  She kicked off with Luigi Nono’s Djamila Boupacha for solo voice.  It’s a short but haunting piece inspired by a woman activist from the Algerian War.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a solo, unaccompanied, voice in that hall and the effect is eerie.  It’s also a hell of a sing and to navigate it with utter precision is quite some feat.  As the last note died away (precisely on pitch) the violins came in with the opening Haydn’s Symphony no. 49 “La Passione”.  It starts off with an Adagio that’s curiously similar in mood to the Nono piece and Hannigan was conducting without score or baton.  In fact it was more like an interpretive dance than conventional conducting.  She has amazing arms and hands; the arms and hands of a ballerina in fact and as she summoned the strings to a sort of shimmering sound I couldn’t help but reminded of Swan Lake.  Corny perhaps but very real and quite disturbing.  And the orchestra, quite a small subset of the TSO, responded.  This was four movements of really lovely, chamber music like playing.

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A lunchtime of Mozart, Strauss and Dvořák

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Rachel_KrehmSo there’s another free (well almost, $5 suggested donation) lunchtime concert series.  It’s Music Mondays at The Church of the Holy Trinity in Trinity Square (A most worthwhile institution which has long taken a leading role in the fight for social justice in Toronto and, on top of that, I used to play rugby with a former incumbent).  As it happens yesterday saw the last concert of the 2015 season featuring the Canzona Chamber Players, conductor Evan Mitchell, and soprano Rachel Krehm.  The Canzonas are a pretty big band, 53 players yesterday, for a chamber group (I guess they have big chambers in Canzona) and could be very loud in the rather resonant church acoustic.

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September approaches

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Rachel-66-pinwheel2It’s almost September which means there may even be stuff to write about soon.  Here’s what’s in my calendar so far.

August 31st at 12.15 pm there’s a concert in the Music on Mondays series featuring soprano Rachel Krehm and an orchestra conducted by Evan Mitchell performing Dove sono by Mozart, selections from Strauss Op 27 and Dvorak’s 8th Symphony.  It’s at Holy Trinity Church near the Eaton Centre. PWYC suggested $5.

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Opera meet up

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AC-handbill-frontApocalypsis was actually my second show yesterday.  Earlier in the day I was at an opera “meet up” organised by Alaina Viau of LooseTEA Music Theatre.  This was held at a bar on Bloor Street (actually inside the Intercontinental Hotel) and featured a performance of Love in the Age of AutoCorrect; an adaptation by Alaina and Markus Kopp of Mozart’s Bastien et Bastienne which first saw the light at Rosemarie Umetsu’s last August.

It was an interesting experience.  Being in a bar not closed off for the event meant that people wandered in from the hotel not expecting to be caught up in an opera performance (and they did look like typical weekend denizens of a luxury hotel).  It also meant that the performances were not exactly listened to with Mahlerian dedication.  There was a fair amount of chatter and it can’t have been easy for the trio of Greg Finney, Keenan Viau and the ridiculously cute Whitney Mather.  The acoustic wasn’t great either but these three were very funny and sang rather well and the piece is more fun Mozart’s original!

It’s a pretty cool idea really and I enjoyed it.  I wonder if it would work in a pub with decent beer rather than a bar with overpriced cocktails and crap wine?

Hands on Figaro

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In the booklet accompanying David McVicar’s production of Le nozze di Figaro, recorded at the Royal Opera house in 2006, there’s an essay by the director in which he raises all kinds of questions about the rise of the bourgeoisie, the nature of revolution and romantic conceptions of love.  He even appears to draw a parallel between Joseph II and Tony Blair. Then he declines to explain how he has embodied all these ideas on the stage and challenges us to “Watch, listen, participate”.  Well I did and I’m none the wiser.  What I see here is an essentially traditional approach; transferred cosmetically to 1830s France but so what?  It’s darker than some Figaro’s but not nearly as dark as, say, Guth.  Curiously, the main “extra” on the disks “Stage directions encoded in the music” tees this up much more clearly than the essay.

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Fatal attraction

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Kasper Holten’s Royal Opera House production of Don Giovanni, seen in cinemas, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.  It’s a visually and dramatically complex production so it’s probably as well that there’s plenty of explanatory material on the disks and in the booklet.  Es Devlin’s set is a two storey structure that rotates and serves as a screen for a heavy use of video projections by Luke Halls.  These start wth the 2065 names of the women Don Giovanni has seduced and seem to be mostly about what’s going on in Don Giovanni’s head.  The sequence during Fin ch’han dal vino calda la testa is particularly spectacular.

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Calgary Opera announces 2015/16 season

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calgaryCalgary once again offers three main stage performances.  The season opens with Delibes’ Lakmé.  It’s a Tom Diamond production so probably not very Regie.  Aline Kutan, seen as Queen of the Night in Toronto not so long ago, sings the title role with Andrea Hill as her sidekick Mallika.  Lakmé’s paramour, the handsome British officer Frederic, is sung by Canadian opera’s current answer to Rudolph Valentino, Cam McPhail.  Gordon Gerrard conducts.  There are three performances on November 21st, 25th and 27th.

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Puzzling Così

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The 2013 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte from Madrid’s Teatro Real is one of German film director Michael Haneke’s comparatively rare forays into opera.  Naturally I was expecting a highly conceptual interpretation but, although his vision is far from conventional, Konzept found I not.  What I saw was a collection of ideas that didn’t quite cohere for me.  Costume and sets are a mix of 18th century modern.  We are in Don Alfonso’s inconsistently modernised mansion.  There are enormous 18th century paintings and chandeliers but also leatherette banquettes and the Giant Fridge of Booze.  The boys and girls wear contemporary party attire, including a rather fetching red dress for Fiordiligi, but Don Alfonso is in full 18th century gard and Despina seems to be dressed as Pierrot.  Perhaps it’s some sort of party where some of the guests have decided to do the costume thing and some haven’t?  When the boys go off to the army they do so in some sort of distant past opera version of military uniform; wigs and swords.

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So wondrous sweet and fair!

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On a bright, sunny winter’s day there are few more inviting places to be than the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre positively glowing in the sunlight.  When one’s reason for being there is a recital by Jane Archibald with the redoubtable Liz Upchurch at the piano one feels doubly blessed.  It was one of the best performances of the many I have attended in that space. KLP150210-_DSC2882 Continue reading →

More thoughts on Don Giovanni

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So, back at the Four Seasons centre last night for a second look at Tcherniakov’s production of Don Giovanni, this time from the Third Ring.  I’ve also been thinking and talking a lot about this production both with people who love it and people who don’t.  There’s not a lot of middle ground.

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Photo Credit: Chris Hutcheson

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