My review of the COC’s new Don Giovanni is now up at Bachtrack.
Photo credit: Michael Cooper
@bachtrack
Kasper Holten’s cinematic Don Giovanni shines at the COC
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Tag Archives: mozart
UoT Opera in the RBA
UoT Opera presented a show of mostly Mozart arias/scenes in a semi staged fashion directed by Mabel Wonnacott in the RBA on Wednesday. Although each scene was credited in the programme the parts weren’t specified and since I don’t know this new group of students I’m only gong to name names where I’m sure!
McVicar’s Figaro revived
Back in 2015 I reviewed a 2006 recording from the Royal Opera House of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro directed by David McVicar. It’s very good and has a super starry cast; Finley, Persson, Röschmann, Schrott, Shaham. There’s even a cameo by Philip Langridge as Basilio. So, when I saw that a new recording of the same production, made in 2022 with a young and less obviously starry cast, had been released I was in two minds whether to bother. I’m glad I did.
And so we metamorphose
This year’s Toronto Summer Music; theme “Metamorphosis”, kicked off on Thursday evening in a packed Koerner Hall. It was TSM at its best; the concept a bit odd, even a bit mad, the execution brilliant and the result exciting and very enjoyable. Basically take two seriously virtuosic pianists and as the late, lamented Humphrey Lyttleton might have said “given then silly things to do”. Well they weren’t really silly, just a bit unusual.
The (evil) life of a baritone
English baritone Roland Wood, accompanied by Simone Luti, gave a rather unusual, themed, recital n the RBA on Tuesday lunchtime. It was structured around the typical career path of a baritone and was narrated engagingly by Wood with lots of fun being had with the traditional rivalry between tenors (useless wimps who always get the girl) and baritones (evil sociopaths who never do).
March 2023
Here’s a look ahead to March.
March 3rd and 5th, Opera York are presenting Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. Details are here. Also on the 5th at 1pm Opera Revue are playing a new venue; The Aviary in the Canary District. (They are playing another new venue, Granite Brewery, on the 12th. Opera Revue your source for craft beer!) And the following night at 7.30pm it’s AtG’s Opera Pub at the Drake at 7.30pm.
From the 9th to the 12th it’s UoT Opera’s spring offering at the MacMillan Theatre. This year it’s Arthur (not George) Benjamin’s A Tale of Two Cities. Benjamin is probably the only opera composer to be shot down by Hermann Göring. I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about his music.
Les adieux – Midori Marsh and Alex Halliday
It’s that time of year when departing members of the COC Ensemble Studio give their farewell recitals in the RBA. On Tuesday it was the turn of Midori Marsh and Alex Halliday and they did it in style. The programme was interesting and the music making excellent. Although they alternated sets it’s probably easy to deal with each singer in turn.
COC season 23/24 reveal
Things are a bit sub fusc at the COC these days. The season reveal isn’t a glitzy gala with a big fight to grab the charcuterie. It isn’t even a 10am doughnuts and coffee presser in the RBA where the ghost of Robert Everett-Green could ask what happened to the promised new Canadian operas . It’s just an email arriving at the prescribed time. There isn’t even an embargoed press only version to let us get our ducks in a row before the broader public get the news. Such is life.
Creepily funny Figaro
My review of the COC’s revival of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is now up at Bachtrack.
A scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, 2023. Photo: Michael Cooper
All’s well that ends well
VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert presented Mozart’s early opera Lucio Silla yesterday at the St. Lawrence Centre. Inevitably it was in a much reduced version (the original is insanely long) coming in at around two hours and organised into two acts. Tis left the principals with maybe three arias each plus a few ensemble numbers. It was presented off book but with a very minimalist production; piano at the centre of an otherwise empty stage, some atmospheric projections, basic blocking and some sort of hybrid of costume and concert wear. It actually worked rather well. This is very much a “tell” rather than “show” opera and fancy scenic effects weren’t really required.
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