Tag Archives: rba

Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder

Posted on by
2

Today’s free lunchtime concert in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre was given by Canadian bass, Robert Pomakov and the Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon – violin, Roman Borys – cello, Jamie Parker – piano).

First up we got Parker and Pomakov performing Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.  Pomakov has a big voice as I knew from having heard his Monterone twice this month at the Four Seasons Centre.  I was impressed by how well he could scale back his volume and even more impressed by the wide and appropriate range of tone colours he deployed.  He doesn’t sound entirely secure at ppp but for a voice of his type he was pretty good!  Next the Gryphons gave us the Elegia from Arensky’s piano trio.  I don’t know this work at all but they sounded very accomplished and musical.  The finale was Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death in Gary Kulesha’s arrangement for voice and piano trio.  This time Pomakov could let rip with all his considerable power accompanied with equal fervour by the Gryphons.  The whole thing was very impressive and very loud!

The scary thing is that Pomakov has only just turned thirty and already has this huge sound.  Apparently he’s had it for a while because he’s sung in twenty COC productions going back ten seasons. I did check out Youtube to see if I could find Pomakov and there is one clip of him singing the Russian National Anthem at the World Cup of Hockey in 2004. Here it is.

And so it begins again

Posted on by
2

Today was the opening concert of the season for the free concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. As has become standard practice it was a recital by the artists of the COC Studio Ensemble. All the members sang except for Ambur Braid who was ill and Ileana Montalbetti is singing in Elektra in Rome at the moment. I have to say it was great to be listening to live, unamplified singing again after a summer of mostly DVDs. I was most interested to hear newcomer Philippe Sly who I had not heard before. He sang one of the Count’s arias from Figaro. He has a very pleasant voice with plenty of power though I think he lacks a bit of variety and drama. He’ll learn that quickly enough in the Ensemble Studio program. The other newcomer was Mireille Asselin, who I had heard before. She sang a rather weird aria from Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias. No lack of drama or humour in her performance! The other standouts for me were Adrian Kramer and Simone Osborne. Adrian sang “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” from Die tote Stadt. His diction and acting are superb and he managed an absolutely gorgeous floated pianissimo on the final “Zurück”. Simone gave us one of Norina’s arias from Don Pasquale. She just gets better. She has quite a powerful, rich voice with really strong, sweet high notes. The progress from even a year ago is obvious. She can act too. There is no question that she is one to watch on the opera scene. Fortunately, that’s exactly what I will be doing in ten days time when I shall see her role debut as Gilda in the COC’s production of Rigoletto. The season is off to a good start.

Les adieux

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre was the farewell recital for three departing COC Ensemble Studio members; Michael Uloth (bass), Wallis Giunta (mezzo) and Anne Larlee (piano).

Michael started the show with Brahms’ Vier Ernste Gesänge, accompanied by Liz Upchurch. The piece is a bit of a downer but it was nicely, expressively sung. A bit of an odd choice for this sort of recital though I thought. Wallis picked a fairly eclectic mix of songsranging from Gretchen am Spinnrade to Send in the Clowns via some rather odd Spanish pieces but all very stylishly sung.

Perhaps surprisingly, the two of them had managed to find a couple of duets for mezzo and bass; As-tu souffert? from Thomas’ Mignon and Iradier’s El Arreglito, which apparently, was what gave Bizet the idea and most of the music for the Habañera in Carmen. Both pieces were really good though it has to be said that Wallis acted Michael (admittedly suffering from a bad neck) off the stage.

Michael is off to the young artists programme at Seattle Opera and Wallis is joining the Lindemann Young Artists program at the Met in New York. I expect Wallis to do really well. She has a more than adequate voice, can act, is good looking and has tremendous stage presence; in short, the modern opera package.

News is that their replacements will be soprano Mireille Asselin and baritone Philippe Sly.

Ensemble Studio – end of season concert

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday lunchtime was the last opportunity to see all the members of the COC Ensemble Studio before the season ends and some of them move on. It’s always interesting to see the Ensemble members as they are growing as singers so fast and, invariably, one hears a new and interesting side of someone that one hadn’t heard before. The programme material ranged from the 16th to the 20th century but it was all Italian and predominantly art song rather than opera. For me, the highlights were Ambur Braid singing a madrigal by Giulio Caccini; I think she’s so much better when she’s being lyrical rather than bravura, and, real eye opener, Rihab Chaieb singing Rossini’s Anzoleta avanti la regata with beautiful control, real feeling and rich, dark mezzo tone. I’ll be seeing Rihab tonight as one of the ugly step sisters in La Cenerentola and Ambur as Amore in Orfeo ed Eurydice next week.

Margisons, père et fille, at the RBA

Posted on by
1

We went to a lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre. It was an interesting mix. The local tenor Richard Margison performed with his 19 year old daughter, Lauren, and pianist Christopher Mokrzewski. Margison is an opera singer of international stature currently singing The Tenor/Bacchus in the COCs production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Lauren, at 19, is already a well established performer and recording artist in a more popular vein. They both do crossover. Richard sang in a rock band and in folk clubs for ten years. Lauren was the youngest child ever to sing in the Canadian Opera Children’s Chorus and is currently enrolled in the Classical Vocal Performance programme at University of Toronto.

In the first half of the programme Richard powered through art songs by Scarlatti, Duparc and Beethoven and Lauren did a pretty good job with a couple of Schubert songs. She’s musical and accurate but a little tentative and underpowered, but then at her age one wouldn’t expect anything else. Then they switched to more popular rep. Richard sang a Gordon Lightfoot song, Moon River and You’ll Never Walk Alone, the latter sounding rather odd to one who used to live across the road from Anfield! There was a definite element of a battleship navigating a kayak slalom course but he did sound a bit less operatic than many singers would have done. Lauren also did a couple of similar songs plus a duet with her dad. She sounds utterly comfortable and mature way beyond her years in this rep.

In the intro to the concert we had been told that Lauren had chosen to sing Nessun Dorma at her audition for the Children’s Chorus way back so it was no surprise that Richard picked that as an encore. Calaf is one of his signature roles. He practically blew the roof off the Richard Bradshaw Auditorium. All in all, another fun, free concert.

Musical plans for the immediate future include an Ensemble Studio concert in the RBA tomorrow lunchtime, La Cenerentola at the Four Seasons Centre on Friday night and the MetHD broadcast of Die Walküre on Saturday.

Multiple short operas at the RBA

Posted on by
Reply

This was a fun concert. Six members of the COC Studio Ensemble presented, more or less fully staged, three very short operas to piano accompaniment. First up was Ana Sokolovic’s Dring, Dring which was performed by Ileana Montalbetti, Rihab Chaleb, Neil Craighead and Chris Emms. It consisted of the singers weaving intricate patterns while making telephone noises and short “wrong number” type conversations in multiple languages. I quite enjoyed it. It’s the first thing by Sokolovic I’ve heard and i was interested as I’m planning on attending the premiere of her new opera in June. Next, the same cast did Barber’s A Hand of Bridge. It’s a melodic little piece about repressed middle class fantasies. I was a bit distracted by the stage direction which appeared to have been done by someone who had never seen, let alone played bridge but then I’m fussy that way. The highlight was definitely Neil Craighead’s recitation of his character’s fairly bizarre sexual fantasies. Finally, Adrian Kramer and Jacqueline Woodley performed Menotti’s The Telephone; a piece about a man who can’t propose to his girlfriend because she is always on the telephone. Performed by the Ensemble’s two best comedians this was predictably funny and very well sung. Liz Upchurch, as ever, was a first class accompanist on the piano.

Singing style

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday’s free “concert” at the Four Seasons Centre was a bit different. It was an illustrated talk entitled 110 Years of Singing on Record: An Introduction to the Evolution of Style. It was illustrated with a number of recordings played over the speaker system in the RBA and two records played on a 1914 Victor VI acoustic gramophone; an instrument that produced surprisingly good sound.

The title was overly ambitious. We didn’t get any sense of evolution and, since the most recent recording was from 1983, the “110 years” bit was something of a misnomer. The basic premise seemed to be that there was a distinct shift in singing style between the first and third quarters of the twentieth century; which I think is probably true. Demonstrating using a pretty wide variety of voices and repertoire was rather less than convincing though. Still more peculiar was the (implicit) idea that nothing has changed since the 1970s. To give one example, sure one can demonstrate that Renata Scotto used a great deal more vibrato than Nellie Melba but what singer today would use as much vibrato as Scotto? In a slightly different vein, to argue that Peter Pears phrasing a song more dramatically than Karl Erb is purely a matter of singing style when Ben Britten is at the piano is rather missing the point of that particular partnership.

The Victor gramophone was truly a thing of beauty though.

That horn is laminated mahogany and all the fittings are gold plated.

Nature or nurture?

Posted on by
Reply

The Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio; its young artists training programme, has an exchange with the equivalent in Montreal. This week the Montrealers are in town and there was a lunch time concert featuring four singers from each programme. Being a big fan of the Ensemble Studio I went along to see how the products of the two programmes compared. I don’t know whether the Toronto programme is harder to get into or provides a more rigorous experience or, likely, both, but in terms of musicianship, stage presence and generally readiness to meet the world, the Toronto singers outclassed the Montrealers. I don’t want to write negatively about young singers who are working really hard so I’m only going to talk positives. The best of the Montrealers was soprano Chantale Nurse. She has a dramatic voice with a pronounced vibrato that was heard to good effect in a Massenet aria; “Il est doux, il est bon” from Herodiade and she was fine in the Mozart ensemble pieces. If her voice continues to develop and gain power she could do very well. I just can’t see the other three progressing to major professional careers. Of the Toronto based perfomers, one of the stand outs, unsurprisingly, was mezzo Wallis Giunta, who is heading for the Met next season. She will likely be a great success in mezzo trouser roles and today did very well with some of Dorabella’s music from Cosi as well as as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito. The other star was Adrian Kramer who continues to develop as a baritone with a leaning to comedy. He’s making a name for himself as Sid in Albert Herring in various locations and the excerpt he sang today shows why; excellent comic timing and presence coupled to a voice that is getting bigger. I’ve heard him sing Papageno from Ring 5 at the Four Seasons Centre so I know the power is there! Locals Neil Craighead and Jacqueline Woodley did fine in more Mozart excerpts and it rather sums things up to say that Jacqueline, as Zerlina, rather outsung her Montreal Don Giovanni.

Adams in Toronto

Posted on by
Reply

John Adams is in Toronto for the TSO’s New Creations Festival. Today he MC’d a free concert of extracts from his operas at the Four Seasons Centre. I feel really privileged to have been able to attend. Adams’ introductions for each piece were thoughtful, informative and deeply human. We had arias from A Flowering Tree, Nixon in China, Dr. Atomic and The Death of Klinghoffer performed by Peter McGillivray (baritone) and Betty Waynne Allison (soprano) with Anne Larlee at the piano. They both did very well with McGillivray being particularly effective, especially in Nixon’s “Mister Premier, distinguished guests”. To be fair to Ms. Allison, Adams’ writing for soprano is fiendish and throttling back a big voice in a fairly small space can’t have been easy.

I’m starting to feel a bit more at home with Adams’ music and to understand better why I like what I do like. Adams’ music seems to work best when it is fairly up tempo and has real rhythmic drive to it. Adams said that very little of his non operatic music is as slow as much of his operatic music and I think that’s significant. He doesn’t do relaxed and/or lyrical as well as the more driven stuff. So Nixon in China works pretty well because it is driven along at a pretty relentless pace and even the set piece arias are mostly fairly brisk. Dr. Atomic drags, has slow passages that lack any other real interest and is correspondingly less effective.

Another lunchtime concert

Posted on by
Reply

Another excellent lunchtime concert at the Four Seasons Centre. This time it was more of the Ensemble Studio with an all Mozart programme. It was consistently very good indeed.

First up Ileana Montalbetti sang the virtuoso concert aria Bella mia famma, addio!. Ileana has an amazingly powerful voice for a young singer and as I was sitting about ten feet away from her I practically got blown away. Lovely work! I really look forward to seeing how her voice matures.

Next Jacqueline Woodley sang two movements from the Exsultate, Jubilate. She is a very winning singer with an infectious enthusiasm and a great sense of comic timing that was better displayed in Batti, batti, o bel Masetto and especially in the duet La ci darem la mano which she sang with Neil Craighead. The duet was very funny indeed. I wonder if I’m the only person who thinks Jacqueline looks a bit like a young Miranda Richardson.

Besides the duet with Jacqueline, Neil sang Madamina, il catalogo e questo, again with very nice comic touches as well as power and beauty of tone. He grows on me. He closed out the concert with a rarity, Per questa bella mano which is a virtuoso concert aria for bass-baritone with an equally virtuosic bass obbligato, provided on this occasion by Alan Molitz.

Before Neil closed things out we also heard the slightly terrifying Ambur Braid sing Non mir dir and the fiendish concert aria Vorrei spiegarvi, o dio. Ambur is definitely at her best in the batshit insane soprano repertoire. She’s agile and accurate and nails the high notes and difficult runs. I wish I liked the colour of her voice better. If she could also pull off a real richness or sweetness of tone she’d be set for superstardom. As it is I find her tone colour a bit harsh and metallic though still very impressive.

Anne Larlee was at the piano and excellent as always.

For added operatic squee bonus points I got to meet Simone Osborne who previously I’ve engaged with a little on Twitter but never met. She is lovely and I’m so glad that her career is starting to take off.