Astor Piazzolla’a opera-tango María de Buenos Aires has been recorded, perhaps surprisingly, many times. The latest version comes from the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria and conductor Filippo Arlia with Ce Suarez Pas as María.
It’s a strange piece full of the sort of weird imagery one associates with South American magical realism and then some. The plot concerns a poor young girl in a very gritty Buenos Aires. She becomes a singer then a prostitute, Then she dies and her ghost wonders the city until she forced to give birth ti a daughter, also María, and so ending her role in the eternal cycle (“Forgotten are you among all women”) that will be carried on by her daughter. Her journeys and her resurrection are directed in some strange way by a spoken word character El Duende (The Goblin). Along the way she meets all kinds of strange people and others; a sparrow, a thief, a psychoanalyst, noodle kneaders, wizard bricklayers and much more. It’s really creepy. Continue reading
The final programme of Confluence Concerts season took place at Heliconian Hall on Wednesday night. It was billed as The Confluence Songbook and, if there was a theme, it was about doing live versions of music that had been streamed during the Plague. But really by the time we saw it it had outgrown that. For, in addition to the full line up of Confluence artistic associates there was a raft of guests which resulted in a fairly lengthy and very eclectic programme. 
Tuesday night at Heliconian Hall was the time and place for a concert curated by, and largely performed by, Confluence Concerts’ young associate artists; the KöNG duo. KöNG consists of two Toronto-Hong Kong percussionists; Bevis Ng and Hoi Tong Keung, pursuing doctoral studies in Toronto. They were supported on some numbers by Ryan Davis (viola) and Ben Finley (double bass).
operaramblings 