Luxury! Two operatic concerts on consecutive lunchtimes in the RBA. On Thursday it was the turn of the Glenn Gould School’s Rebanks fellows with mentor Paul Groves to present a series of staged opera excerpts directed by Anna Theodosakis. Stéphane Mayer provided the excellent piano accompaniment throughout.
Wednesday lunchtime saw the members of the COC’s Ensemble Studio kick of the free concert series season in the RBA. It was good. Pianists Brian Cho and Mattia Senesi started off in fine style with a four hands version of the overture to The Barber of Seville and then it was on to the singing.
Well late August has been a bit thin in terms of live performances but September. sees things back with a bang.
Wednesday’s lunchtime recital in the RBA featured Simone Osborne; currently appearing as Norina in Don Pasquale, and pianist Rachael Kerr. It was a well curated selection of songs apparently, at least partially, inspired by sleep deprivation singer and pianist both have small children!). There were three sets of four songs. One in each set was by a Canadian composer backed up by two others that were thematically related.
So the first set featured birds. Godfrey Ridout’s arrangement of She’s Like The Swallow was supported by Viardot’s Grands oiseaux blancs and Grieg’s “Ein Schwan” from Sex digte af Henrik Ibsen. It worked. The Ridout got a reasonably folk song like treatment, the Viardot was dramatic and the Grieg was just beautiful. A good start. Continue reading
It’s coming towards the end of the traditional “season” but there’s sill plenty happening. Here’s how I see may shaping up at present (I expect more theatre listings will come in. They tend to be somewhat less notice!):
Thursday’s concert by members of the Ensemble Studio in the RBA was an all French affair (at least as far as language went) and it was rather good. Karoline Podolak iniated proceedings with Mattia Senesi at the piano with Kurt Weill’s “Youkali”. Now I’ve heard this sung by everybody from Barbara Hannigan to Benjamin Appl and I’d have to see that Ms. Podolak is right up there. There was no male stripper though.
Korin Thomas-Smith has something of a penchant for the bizarre and I think that’s a fair description of two sets drawn from Apollinaire’s Bestiaire. There were five of the Poulenc settings (about as far from Dialogues of the Carmelites as one could imagine) and six from Rachel Laurin’s more atonal and abrasive settings. I would probably sing these songs if I had four dromedaries and could sing. Fine work from Brian Cho at the piano. Continue reading
Tuesday’s lunchtime performance in the RBA was a preview of the upcoming Opera Atelier show All is Love which is essentially a remount of the February 2022 show that nobody much saw because it happened during a blizzard with most of downtown closed due to “trucker” activity.
Last wednesday’s RBA recital was given by mezzo-soprano Jingjing Xu; the 2022/23 Wirth Vocal prize winner, and Christopher Knopp; piano. It was one of the most impressive performances by a singer at this stage of her career (just finished her master’s) that I have heard in quite a while. Mr. Knopp is pretty impressive too and it’s obvious that they have worked together quite a lot.
The Canadian Art Song Project presented their latest commission in the RBA on Wednesday lunchtime. But first we got Jorelle Williams and Steven Philcox with four songs by iconic Canadian/American composer R. Nathaniel Dett. I confess that early 20th century American song is rarely to my taste and the first three Dett songs I found workmanlike but not especially interesting. The fourth though; The Winding Road to a text by Tertius Van Dyke I found much more interesting. It seemed that Dett had allowed himself to be more “American”. There were influences from both “Negro music” and marching band here with an overall effect not unlike some of Charles Ives’ songs. I can’t knock the performance though. It did full justice to the songs; especially the last.
First some additional February shows
Opera
operaramblings 