The spring production from UoT Opera is Mozart’s Così fan tutte and it’s playing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre. Anna Theodosakios directs with some conceptual input from Michael Patrick Albano. The production is interesting and I think there are three layers to unpack. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward 18th century setting with uniforms, wigs, elaborate dresses and so on but with a rather striking colour scheme; pinks and lilacs.
Opera Atelier has announced its 2025/26 season and while it’s not especially surprising it is intriguing. As usual it’s two shows. The first show is pretty conventional. It’s a revival of OA’s production of The Magic Flute at the Elgin Theatre on October 15th, 16th, 18th and 19th 2025. Nice cast though with Colin Ainsworth as Tamino, Meghan Lindsey as Pamina, Douglas Williams as Papageno, Karine White as Papagena and Stephen Hegedus as Sarastro.
Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto is definitely one of his less often performed works even though it’s astonishingly accomplished for a fourteen year old composer. One can see why. It adheres very faithfully to the opera seria model. Far more so than, say, La clemenza di Tito. The libretto is based on a play by Racine which, frankly, lacks dramatic interest and has a contrived ending. The opera wraps all the loose ends up in about three minutes. Structurally da capo aria follows recitative follows da capo aria with little variation and the arias all adhere pretty rigidly to the formal range of baroque emotions. That said there is some spectacular vocal writing; both lyrical and dramatic, which allows the singers to fully display their skills.
Today’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United Church featured soprano McKenzie Warriner and pianist Christine Bae. Ellita Gagner was also scheduled to sing but, unfortunately, she was not able to do so due to illness. So we got a hastily reorganised programme.
The Happenstancers ended their 2023/24 season last night at 918 Bathurst with a concert called Babes in Toyland. It consisted of mainly late 20th and 21st century chamber works with one unusual Mozart piece (K617 for glass harmonica (Kevin Ahfat), viola (Hee-Soo Yoon( ,cello (Peter Eom), oboe (Aleh Remezau) and flute (Tristan Durie) to spice things up.
The main interest for me was that there was plenty of vocal music featuring soprano Reilly Nelson who not only sang some highly technical music but played bells, scattered playing cards and carried a boom box. The first substantial vocal work was Unsuk Chin’s acrostic-wordplay which is in seven movements with texts created from fragments from Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. (Chin seems to have a bit of an Alice fixation). It’s a complex piece for soprano and a fairly large chamber ensemble with no clear musical structure. The textures vary from spooky and ethereal to aggressively loud and dissonant. Great work here from Reilly and the ensemble conducted by Simon Rivard. Continue reading
Martin Kušej’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Salzburg in 2023 came 20 years after he had last directed a Mozart opera at Salzburg. My reviews (and follow up pieces) of his productions of Don Giovanni (2002, revived 2006) and La clemenza di Tito (2002) are probably two of the most commented on on this blog. So I’m interested to see where this goes.
The first video disk review in Opera Canada in a while is now up on that site. It’s a review by me of a production by L’Opéra Royale de Versailles of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. There’s plenty of Cancon with Robert Gleadow as the Don, Florie Valiquette as Donna Anna and both Marshal Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg involved.
Monday night in Walter Hall Toronto Summer Music continued with a concert by the new Orford Quartet (Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan – violins, Sharon Wei – viola, Brian Manker – cello). I was there primarily to hear the première of Ian Cusson’s Dreams which was bookended on the programme by “Death and the Maiden” themed quartets in D minor by Mozart and Schubert.
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?
Thursday lunchtime in Walter Hall saw the 2024 edition of the annual recital by the winners of the Norcop Prize in Song and the Koldofsky Prize in Accompanying. This year’s winners are mezzo-soprano Nicole Percifield and pianist Minira Najafzade.
operaramblings 