Tag Archives: rossini

Golden Age; the CD

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Being distinctly impressed by Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee’s performance at Koerner Hall las month, I got my hands on the CD on which the tour is based. It’s much the same material but with orchestra which really changes things up a bit. It’s a different order too. They begin with six numbers in French starting with comic duets from La fille du régiment and Le comte Ory. It’s very playful but backed up by exquisite technique. There’s no sense of strain despite some serious high notes and some exacting coloratura passages for Morley. The orchestra; the Múncher Rundfunkorchester conducted by  Ivan Repušić sounds great too.

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24 carat Golden Age

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It’s not often that one attends a recital that is so stunning that one struggles to find words to describe it but The Golden Age recital given by soprano Erin Morley, tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Malcolm Martineau at a packed Koerner Hall on Thursday evening, as part of Toronto Summer Music, was in that class. Most of the rep was drawn from the Golden Age album released last year with a few change ups. It’s basically all highly virtuosic material in the bel canto style (plus a couple of piano pieces).

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Unusual double bill from the Glenn Gould School

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The Glenn Gould’s Spring Opera, which opened on Wednesday night, is an intriguing double bill.  It pairs Rossini’s first, and rarely performed, opera; La cambiale di matrimonio with Puccini’s much better known Gianni Schicchi.

La cambiale di matrimonio (The Wedding Contract) is a one act screwball comedy (technically a farsa).  It has all the plot elements that see will see over and over in later Rossini comedies; cunning servants, an old man trying to make money out of a marriage, young lovers facing obstacles etc.  The plot elements are mirrored by the music; patter songs, breakneck ensembles and an impossibly florid soprano aria, inter alia.  In this case they are used in the service of a plot that features a cash strapped English merchant who is trying to marry his daughter off to a rich Canadian who is seeking a suitable bride but she’s in love with a far less wealthy young man.  Everyone seems to want to kill the Canadian but he’s fundamentally a nice chap (of course) and he engineers a happy ending

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Ensemble Studio do the standards

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Last Tuesdays’s concert in the RBA featured four singers and two pianists from the Ensemble Studio in a concert of highly recognisable opera arias.  I guess with Barber of Seville and Rigoletto coming p on the FSC stage that was a bit inevitable.  It was though very well done with all four singers not only singing well but really conveying a sense of character.

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Ensemble Studio kick off

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The free concert series in the RBA kicked off on Wednesday with, as usual, a performance by the artists of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.  Owing to illness only five singers performed and only one of those, Emily Rocha, was a returnee.  The other four singers and both pianists were newcomers.  It was short but enjoyable.

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The Last Castrato

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The last great castrato, we are told, was Vellutti who was a favourite with many early 19th century composers.  Tuesday night’s concert at Koerner Hall as part of Toronto Summer Music was a tribute to him with counter-tenor Franco Fagioli accompanied by L’Orchestre de l’Opéra de Versailles and their flamboyant violinist/conductor Stefan Plewniak performing music associated with Vellutti interspersed with orchestral music from (mostly) the same operas.

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A Tancredi for our times?

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Rossini’s early opera seria Tancredi is set in Syracuse in the early 11th century and turns on two rival families coming together in the face a threat from both Byzantines and Saracens.  The hero is the knight Tancredi, secretly in love with the daughter of one of rival families.  Jan Philipp Gloger’s production filmed at Bregenz in 2024 updates it to the present with the families being rival drug gangs and the “threat” the police.  There’s a further twist.  Tancredi is a mezzo role and always sung by a woman.  Here Tancredi is played as a woman pretending to be a man; at least to everyone except her lover Amenaide.

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