Cherubini’s Medea, in the 1909 Italian version being used by the COC, got there by a fairly circuitous route. Euripides 5th century BCE tragedy and Seneca’s 1st century CE play inspired a French verse version of 1635 by Thomas Corneille which was turned into an opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in 1693. In 1797 a version with music by Cherubini to a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman; retaining much of Corneille’s version as spoken dialogue, premiered in Paris. In 1909, for the Italian premiere at La Scala an Italian translation with added recitatives was used and that became, more or less, the standard version for its rare 20th century revivals (most notably in the 1950s with Maria Callas) and that’s the version being given at the COC with Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role. Understandable really. It’s hard enough to find a cast that can do justice to the music. To expect them also to be expert at declaiming Alexandrines en français is probably expecting a bit too much.
Donizetti’s three “Tudor Queen” operas; Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (of which, despite the title, the real star is Elizabeth I) are often seen as a sort of trilogy and have occasionally been performed as such with a single soprano starring in all three. It’s a feat Sondra Radvanovsky managed at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2015/16 season. It’s not particularly surprising then that she should have been sought after by Lyric Opera of Chicago to star in a show featuring the final scenes of each opera which was recorded live at the Lyric in December 2019. 
So the International Resource Centre for Performing Artists (
So it looks like January is finally over and that means we can look ahead to next month. Things are definitely winding down. There’s the last Opera Pub of the season on the 3rd at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club. The Vancouver Symphony is appearing with Bramwell Tovey at Roy Thomson Hall on the 26th with the highlight being Marion Newman singing Ancestral Voices; a piece Tovey wrote for her. Also that evening the Canadian Children’s Opera opens a two performance run of Alice Ping Yee Ho’s new piece The Monkiest King. That’s at the Toronto Centre for the Arts.
Here’s a preview of things to see/listen to next week. It’s Met in HD season again and the next two Saturdays have broadcasts. On the 7th it’s Bellini’s Norma with Sondra Radvanovsky and Joyce DiDonato. It’s a David McVicar production and no prizes for guessing what happens when you cross McVicar and druids. On the 14th it’s Die Zauberflöte with the Resident Groundhog conducting. It’s the Julie Taymor production but given in full in German rather than the abridged ‘for kids” version. The best thing about the cast is René Pape’s Sarastro.
operaramblings 