This year’s Canadian Children’s Opera Company main show is a new production of Alice Ho and Marjorie Chan’s The Monkiest King which the company previously performed in 2018. This time it was at Harbourfront Centre Theatre which offered some additional opportunities and some challenges with its multi level configuration but also some sight line issues.
The last concert of Soundstreams 2024/25 season took place at Hugh’s Room on Wednesday evening. Marion Newman and Angela Park gave a recital called Ancestral Voices which premiered the piano version of the Bramwell Tovey song cycle of that name. I had heard the orchestral version with Marion singing and Bramwell conducting the VSO at Roy Thomson Hall when the orchestral version was new. It’s just as powerful in piano score; maybe more so as the singer can more easily convey the nuances of the text. The selection of texts is clever; tracing an arc from an imagined Eden via environmental destruction and the Residential School system to, maybe, the seeds of Reconciliation. The setting serves the text well and Angela made a really good substitute for an orchestra!
This week the Young Artists Studio at the Canadian Children’s Opera Company gave two performances of Purcell’s classic Dido and Aeneas. The YAS is a new initiative designed to give young singers (16-19) additional opportunities to the CCOC’s usual fare and maybe provide a pathway to serious professional study.
The annual Donizetti festival in Bergamo makes a point of resurrecting less well known Donizetti operas. In 2022 Chiara e Serafina; Donizetti’s first commission for La Scala, got the treatment. It’s got some very decent music if you like early Donizetti. The Sestetto in Act 2 is particularly well constructed and it’s generally tuneful and allows the singers to strut their stuff.
Breathe is a new recital CD from Korean soprano Hera Hyesang Park. It’s a generous 79 minutes of music; most of it with orchestral accompaniment. There’s one piece for soprano and cello octet and also a few numbers where she’s joined by mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo.
It’s quite varied. There are a number of pieces by modern and contemporary composers as well as some fairly familiar 19th century fare. Most of it is lyrical rather than dramatic which suits Park’s really lovely voice.
Tuesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was a really well thought out programme by two of the prize winners from last year’s Montreal International Music Competition; soprano Meredith Wolgemuth and pianist Jinhee Park. The first set was a nicely characterised version of the quite varied Grieg Sechs Lieder op.48. Most of these are fairly sentimental German Romantic texts but Meredith and Jinhee injected lightness and humour where it was appropriate in, for instance, “Lauf der Welt”.
The Leader and other works is a new record of music by Karim Al-Zand. The most substantial piece is the one act chamber opera The Leader based on Ionesco’s 1955 play Le Maître. A reporter and two devoted fans follow the Leader wherever he goes mesmerised by his often absurd antics. A young couple is gradually drawn into the fascination.
The Leader does ridiculous things. he dances with a hedgehog. He has his trousers pressed in public. Finally it’s revealed that he no head. Instead he has “genius”. None of this shakes the loyalty of his followers. One imagines that Ionesco had the European dictators of the 1930s in mind but, of course, one can substitute whichever half absurd, half sinister populist neo-Fascist one chooses.
Transcendent is a CD from the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI). It features works by six American and Asian composers performed by Davóne Tines, Matthew Aucoin and members of the AANMI Ensemble in various combinations.
The first set is two settings of Walt Whitman by Matthew Aucoin for baritone and piano (. The poems are The Sleepers and A clear Midnight. They alternate a sparsely accompanied lyrical vocal line, beautifully sung by Tines, with much denser passages for the piano, played here by the composer. It’s interesting music and supports the text well.
The COC’s production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi directed by Amy Lane is now available to watch for free, for the next six months, at coc.ca/watch . It’s given a 1950s Italian setting but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward approach reliant on good ensemble directing and acting, which it gets. It’s livened up by video projections by Alexander Gunnarsson, which come over really very well on the film.
So back to Walter Hall at 4pm for the last of the Regen concerts featuring song. This time Renee Fajardo and Jinhee Park kicked things off with a very fine set starting with Herr Schumann’s sinister Die Soldat and Frau Schumann’s Die Lorelei. This was all smoothly and elegantly sung bar a slight tendency to push high notes. There was some very impressive pianism here too. The set concluded with Schoenberg’s Galathea; a bold and interesting choice, where Renee managed to create an almost cabaret timbre without ever sacrificing accuracy. Nicely done!
operaramblings 