The Enchantress (sometimes translated as The Sorceress) is a rather infrequently performed 1887 opera by Tchaikovsky. It got a production in Frankfurt in 2022 with an interesting cast. Asmik Grigorian plays the title character; Kuma or Nastasya, and Iain MacNeil, late of this parish, is Prince Nikita. It’s the first time I’ve come across him since he moved to Germany.
Mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska made her Koerner Hall recital debut on Sunday afternoon just twenty-six years after first enrolling at the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was clearly an emotional occasion for her and justified the barely choked back tears in her introduction. The emotion though did not negatively affect her singing which was notable for, among other things, great control; emotionally and technically.
The COC has just announced it’s 2024/25 season. It’s a mixed bag. There are some very welcome examples of operas not seen in Toronto for a long time and a new co-commission. There’s a perhaps surprisingly earlier than expected remount of Eugene Onegin plus Madama Butterfly yet again but at least it’s a “new to Toronto” production. There are no new/new productions and no COC Theatre production though there’s one performance of a concert version of Cavalleria Rusticana at the Four Seasons Centre. It’s a bit light on star power too though there are plenty of opportunities for home grown favourites.
A scene from William Kentridge’s Wozzeck – photo: Ruth Walz
So you are Christof Loy, it’s early 2021 and your production of Fedora in Frankfurt can’t go ahead due to… you know. So what are you going to do with a set that basically consists of a lavishly decorated, multi-purposable drawing room? Loy’s answer is to create a narrative around twenty four Tchaikovsky songs and some of his piano/chamber music and stage and film it in an empty theatre.
I first came across Russian soprano Ekaterina Siurina as Zerlina in the 2008 video recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni from Salzburg. She had had plenty of success already in coloratura roles such as Gilda and Adina and was, I thought, the best Zerlina I had come across. Fast forward to 2015 and she sang a very fine Violetta at the Four Seasons Centre opposite her husband Charles Castronovo. A few years on and it’s not terribly surprising that she’s starting to venture into slightly heavier lyric-dramatic territory. This is reflected in her recent album Where is My Beloved? recorded in 2022 with the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constantin Orbelian. Continue reading
The 2019 production from the Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper (basically their young artists programme) was a bit unusual. Director Axel Ranisch created a kind of mash up of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s very short opera Mavra. Iolanta is about a blind princess who doesn’t realise she is blind. It’s only when she meets her future husband, a French count Vaudémont, that she realises this. Her father the king employs a Moorish doctor to try and cure her, which fails, but believing that if she doesn’t pretend to be sighted her suitor will be executed she fakes it and is given to him in marriage. He alone realises she is still blind and puts out his own eyes in sympathy (this is pretty hard to watch!). In the process they both realise that God’s creation is much greater than human eyes can perceive.
Tanya’s Secret is a queer-trans adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. It’s a production by Opéra Queens who seem to be a Montreal based group created during the pandemic and doing their first show in Toronto; in this case at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. Actually it’s not a particularly radical adaptation compared to, say, some of Against the Grain’s transladaptations. It’s sung in Russian (with some Ukrainian interpolations including a Lysenko art song) with subtitles on screens either side of the stage). The plot isn’t really changed at all though the ball scene in Act 3 gets a sort of drag queen competition element. The big change is that some roles are assigned to the “wrong” gender. Tatiana is sung extremely well and acted even better by Mike Fan. Catherine Carew is a strongly sung and impressive Gremin doubling as the very different Madame Larina. Christina Yun’s Lensky is ardent and she makes a nice fist of “Kuda, kuda”. (Who needs tenors?) Oddly this doesn’t really come across as all that radical. The necessary transpositions occasionally create the odd awkward high note but it’s very singable and generally well sung.
The 2018 Wirth Song Prize winner tenor Marcel d’Entremont gave the customary recital in the RBA at noon yesterday accompanied by Dakota Scott-Digout. It was an interesting choice of material; nicely balanced between old and new worlds. He started with Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques. I guess these set the tone for the recital. Marcel has a very operatic voice. It’s big with quite a lot of vibrato. The Ravel was loud but nicely characterized and sung in perfect French. He followed up with a rousing. but not overly subtle, Kuda, kuda. I was beginning to find things a bit one dimensional.
Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame is a rather odd opera. It’s not just that the main plot turns on a pretty bizarre tale of the supernatural but that it also contains a significant number of big set piece numbers that don’t advance the plot at all; the “military children” in Act 1, the Pastoral in Act 2 and the bizarre “Glory to Catherine” chorus in Act 3 aren’t the only ones. One assumes that they are there so that the composer could interpolate some suitably “Russian” bits because without them it’s just any other opera that happens to be in Russian.
Yesterday’s lunchtime recital in the RBA was given by soprano, Vanessa Vasquez and pianist Miloš Repický. It was a well constructed programme though there were few surprises. The first set was three Strauss standards; Ständchen, Breit’ übermein Haupt and Befreit; the last dedicated to Vanessa’s teacher who died recently. They were all well sung with appropriate emotional emphasis and, best of all, both performers appeared to be enjoying themselves.
operaramblings 