Tag Archives: mozart

You think this is funny, Beauty?

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The DVD version of Michael Sturminger’s Giacomo Variations was recorded at the Ronacker Theater in Vienna in 2011.  With the exception of Florian Boesch in the baritone role it’s the same line up as the performance in Toronto that I reviewed earlier this year.  Watching the DVD didn’t change my views about the piece or the performances materially.  It still feels a bit undercooked and schematic.  I did like the quote on the DVD box about Malkovich’s singing from the Kürier “closer to Tom Waits than to Fritz Wunderlich”.  I wish I’d said that.

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Summer second thoughts

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The heat and humidity of a Toronto summer aren’t especially conducive to dealing with most of what’s in my DVD review pile right now (Wagner chiefly!) and the live music pickings are slim as, Toronto Summer Music Festival aside, music has departed for the land of moose and loon.  I thought, therefore, that I might take another look at some old favourites and see how they shape up to a second look.  I thought I’d focus on works where I have seen many subsequent productions or, perhaps, on works once seen only on DVD but which I had more recently been able to see live.

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On to Toronto

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tcherniakovThe Tcherniakov Don Giovanni that I just finished watching on Blu-ray is a Canadian Opera Company co-production so, sooner or later, it should end up in Toronto.  That will be interesting.  There’s a very conservative streak in the Toronto audience and, especially, among the critics for the major newspapers.  These are people who are disturbed by Robert Carsen and go apopleptic over Chris Alden.  It will be most interesting to see what the reaction is to something like Tcherniakov’s interpretation, even though it’s not that radical by European standards.

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Happy families

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Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni recorded at the 2010 Aix-en-Provence festival is full on Regie.  He takes the characters and story of Mozart/DaPonte and recasts them quite radically.  Zerlina is Donna Anna’s daughter.  Donna Elvira, Donna Anna’s cousin, is married to Don Giovanni.  Leporello is a family member too.  The sense is of one extended, conventional, bourgeois family in which Don Giovanni is a fatally disruptive intrusion.  Tcherniakov changes the time line too.  Instead of taking place over a 24 hour period the story plays out over many weeks.

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The Giacomo Variations

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4.snogThe Giacomo Variations is the latest collaboration between John Malkovich, Michael Sturminger, Martin Haselböck and, posthumously, W.A. Mozart.  In that respect it has much in common with The Infernal Comedy.  In other respects, not so much. It’s just wound up a six performance visit to Montreal and Toronto and last night I caught the final performance at the Elgin Theatre.

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The knot is tied – Figaro’s Wedding at The Burroughes

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figaro

Photo credit: Roger Rousseau

Figaro’s Wedding music by W.A Mozart, libretto by Joel Ivany, opened last night at The Burroughes.  A full house, many dressed as if attending a wedding as requested, saw an extremely effective realisation of another ambitious project from Against the Grain Theatre.  This isn’t just another low budget production of a well known opera. Figaro’s Wedding is a complete rework of the piece.  The music is the familiar Mozart in a very effective piano quintet arrangement by Topher Mokrzewski, albeit with cuts to suit the new libretto,  The libretto is in English, cuts the chorus (and Barbarina) and reshapes the story around a wedding in today’s Toronto.  Gone are aristocrats, servants and hangers on.  Instead we have a young couple – Susanna and Figaro, his boss and boss’ wife – Alberto and Rosina, and the various arrangers and functionaries connected with the wedding.  Oh yes, and there’s a lesbian grad student called Cherubino living in Alberto and Rosina’s basement.  The story unfolds in a way that’s close enough to da Ponte for the twists and departures to add a little extra amusement for those who know the libretto well.  It’s very smart, extremely funny and surprisingly singable.

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Smart and sexy Don Giovanni

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Last night saw the first of two performances of Don Giovanni by the students of the Glenn Gould School at Koerner Hall.  Koerner Hall isn’t the easiest venue to do fully staged opera since it is basically a concert hall with very limited lighting and stage facilities.  Ashlie Corcoran and Camellia Coo pulled off perhaps the most inventive staging I have seen there by using a giant staircase to link the part of the gallery that wraps around the stage to the stage itself.  Within this basic configuration they deployed a few bits and pieces of furniture, mostly couches. It made a very serviceable unit set for the various scenes.  The production was set in the 1960s and seemed to revolve around the basic idea of Don Giovanni as a “chick magnet”.  All the usual suspects are clearly attracted to him.  There’s no hint of coercion in the opening scene with Donna Anna and Zerlina is a very willing seductee.  The idea is reinforced in “Deh vieni” when, as Don Giovanni is serenading Donna Elvira’s maid, five or six women make their way to the staircase and down to the man himself.

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Don Giovanni at Koerner Hall

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Last night I saw the Glenn Gould School’s production of Don Giovanni at Koerner Hall.  I’ll do a proper review later but for now let’s just say that the staging is the best use of the Koerner Hall space I’ve seen and that the production is witty, sexy and well sung.  There’s only one more performance, on Friday night.  Well worth seeing if you are in the Toronto area.