Tag Archives: szabo

Opera 5’s 2026 Toronto Opera Festival

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Following on from this year’s successful festival at Theatre Passe Muraille Opera 5 are once again running a sort of mini festival at that venue in June next year.  There will be two programmes.  There’s a Puccini double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi which, I’m guessing will be given with chamber ensemble accompaniment.  Rachel Krehm headlines as the theologically unsound nun while Gianni Schicchi has Greg Dahl in the title role.  Krisztina Szabó will appear in both operas as Princess Zia and Zita.  Jessica Derventzis directs and Evan Mitchell is in charge of matters musical.  This one runs June 3rd to 7th. Continue reading →

Queen of the Night Communion

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There was a time when site specific productions were very much part of the Toronto opera scene but, like much else, they seemed to disappear with the pandemic.  So it was especially pleasing to see Tapestry Opera, Luminato and Metropolitan United Church combining for just such an event.

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A cunning Turn of the Screw

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It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why Britten’s chamber operas are not done more often by smaller opera companies.  They use a modest orchestra (13 players for The Turn of the Screw), have equally modest sized casts, no chorus and they are in English.  They offer the chance to perform a work as written at much lower cost than grand opera and without the compromises inherent in downscaling works written on a larger scale.

Opera 5, The Turn of the Screw, Emily Ding Photography (Asitha Tennekoon_ Peter Quint_Prologue)

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Iron Chef d’Orchestre

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The second Tapestry show this week which played Wednesday night at Theatre Passe Muraille was Jennifer Tung’s Iron Chef d’Orchestre.  Knowing Jennifer’s kitchen prowess I expected this to be at least as food inspired as the previous night’s Le Kitchen Party but it wasn’t.

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TSO Messiah

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This year’s Messiah at the TSO is a fairly small scale affair by TSO standards.  There’s still the 100+ strong Toronto Mendelssohn Choir but the orchestra is quite small; 12 violins, 6 violas, 4 cellos, 2 basses, 2 oboes and bassoon, plus Christopher Bagan on a sort of monster harpsichord/organ combo. There were two trumpets in the gallery for “Glory to God” and they were back (on stage) with timpani for the Hallelujah chorus and part 3.  With Jane Glover conducting it felt like it was almost in Tafelmusik territory.

TSO Messiah 5 - Photo by Allan Cabral

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Opera 5 are turning the screw

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Those who know me are probably fed up of hearing me lament how slow the indie opera scene in Toronto has been to recover post plague.  Well here’s some good news on that front.  Opera 5 will be mounting a fully staged version of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw with the proper thirteen piece chamber orchestra at Theatre Passe Muraille in June next year.  Yea!

turnofthescrew

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The Highwayman – the CD

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The HighwaymanDean Burry’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman has now been released on CD.  I think it’s the same performance that was previously released on Youtube by Queen’s University.  If it’s not the same performance then it’s certainly the same performers and I really don’t have more than a few incidental thoughts to add to my review of that concert.

Listening to it again though I was struck by the links to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and also by the way Burry subverts popular tunes along the way.  There’s a particularly weird version for flute and struck cello of The British Grenadiers for example.

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Tapestry’s new digs

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You may have been following this saga.  Basically, Artscape had a twenty year lease on a lot of space in the Distillery District which they leased out various arts organisations and studio artists, including Tapestry Opera and Nightwood Theatre; who jointly occupied the Ernest Balmer Studio and adjacent space wherein I attended many, many performances, rehearsals, workshops and so on.  It’s what made the Distillery District more than a bunch of tourist tat and over-priced restaurants. But the lease ran out and the landlord declined to renew.  Tourist tat is more lucrative than art and the Distillery District’s owners have always struggled with the idea of any purpose other than maximising profits.

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The Highwayman rides again

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Way back in 2016 I attended a concert of Dean Burry’s music in Victoria College Chapel.  The highlight of that evening was a performance by Krisztina Szabó and the Talisker Players with Bill Rowson conducting, of Dean’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman. It was performed more recently at Queen’s University, again with Krisztina, backed this time by an ensemble of Queens faculty members (flutist, Sarah Moon, clarinettist, Kornel Wolak, violinist, Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak, cellist, Wolf Tormann, pianist, Younggun Kim and conductor, Darrell Christi).  This time it was also accompanied by some cool shadow puppetry.  It was recorded for video and audio and will eventually be released on Centrediscs.  This time it was preceded by chamber music by Debussy, Berg and Beethoven.  The whole thing is available now on Youtube for free.

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Songs From the House of Death

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Songs From the House of Death is a new song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra by Ian Cusson.  It was premiered in April by Krisztina Szabó and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  It’s a setting of three texts from Joy Harjo‘s How We Became Human.  Ian has a knack of finding really strong texts by Indigenous poets and these are no exception.  The longest (13 minutes of the 23 minute work) is “Songs From the House of Death; Or How to Make it Through the End of a Relationship”. This is an evocation of death and impermanence and memory.  The setting is very varied.  The opening pizzicato strings are barely audible but it rapidly builds to blend densely orchestrated (it’s a big orchestra) and very high energy music with much gentler and more lyrical passages; sometimes using the concert master as a soloist.  This fits the changing moods of the text and, as I’ve come to expect with Ian, the music is always rooted in the text.

szabovso

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