The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening. The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut. The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand. There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.
Tag Archives: pennell
GGS Carmélites delivers
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is a very unusual opera. It breaks all the rules and yet, done well, is an immensely compelling piece of music theatre. There are no show stopper arias. The ensemble numbers are mainly drawn from Catholic liturgy. And yet it maintains a coherent and compelling narrative arc that builds steadily to an emotionally devastating conclusion. The Glenn Gould School’s current production at Koerner Hall directed by Stephen Carr gets all the elements right and makes for a memorable evening at the opera.

Tapestry x GGS
The Glenn Gould School’s Fall Chamber Opera offering this year was four short pieces from Tapestry Opera’s back catalogue. First up was Ice Time by Ka Nin Chan and Mark Brownell. It’s the story of a has been ice skater and her futile attempts to get her daughter, who wants to be a civil engineer, to follow in her footsteps (or icy equivalent). The music is in much the same vein as other works by this composer such as Dragon’s Tale. It’s a pretty light hearted piece and it got a lively and credible account from Emma Pennell as the daughter and Alexa Frankian as the mother. As with the other pieces direction was by Dana Fradkin with accompaniment by chamber ensemble conducted by Peter Tiefenbach.

