The week in prospect

Posted on March 13, 2016 by operaramblings

alcina_365sq Back to relative quiet! The main event in the coming week is the GGS spring production. They are doing Handel’s Alcina. The cast includes Meghan Jamieson, Irina Medvedeva, Christina Campsall, Lillian Brooks, Joanna Burt, Asitha Tennekoon and Keith Lam. Leon Major directs and Ivars Taurins conducts. The publicity material suggests a 1920s setting. Anyway it’s at Koerner Hall at 7.30pm on Wednesday and Friday.

There are a couple of kid friendly March break concerts in the RBA. Tuesday sees what seems to have become an annual event; Kyra Millan’s Opera Interactive. This year she is joined by Tina Faye and Charles Sy. Then on Thursday Cawthra Park Chamber Choir and conductor Bob Anderson, one of the GTA’s leading school choirs, present various choral traditions and styles from the Renaissance to contemporary Canadian works. Charles Sy, a Cawthra Park alumnus also features in this one. Both at noon of course.

Then at the Newmarket Theatre on Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm opera Luminata are performing. This is a rather odd spectacular thing with taped orchestra and pyrotechnics. I haven’t seen them but they got a rather more positive reception than I expected last time around. www.operaluminata.com for details.

GGS Vocal Showcase

Posted on January 31, 2016 by operaramblings

campsall The Glenn Gould School Vocal Showcase at Mazzoleni Hall last night was a chance to see twenty of the school’s singers in action. It was a curious mix actually; one bass, one baritone, a handful of tenors and mezzos and a lot of sopranos. There was a huge range of age and experience too from 18 year old first years to quite seasoned post-grads. As usual with these things I’m not going to attempt to be comprehensive but instead focus on the highlights as I saw them. Continue reading →

Selfie

Posted on October 10, 2015 by operaramblings

Selfie is a work in progress by Chris Thornborrow and Julie Tepperman. It’s still incomplete and the performances over the last couple of days were workshops designed to elicit audience feedback. It had its genesis at the 2013 LibLab and it’s come a long way. The original sketch of two teenagers texting each other is turning into an hour long piece about cyberbullying. It’s a rather disturbing exploration of how technology allows teenagers to do all those things which teenagers do with even less “supervision” than ever. In this case a manipulative girl (Cindy played by Larissa Koniuk) tries to make up for her split from her rather feckless boyfriend (Devon played by Asitha Tennekoon) by engineering a split between her friend Mindy (Meher Pavri) and her bloke Tyler (Giovanni Spanu). The result is a massive on-line slut shaming campaign against the fifth character Heather who has no real identity or agency until the very last scene. Adults encountered along the way are portrayed as clueless, ineffective or bureaucratically indifferent.

Continue reading →

News from MY Opera

Posted on September 27, 2015 by operaramblings

Two announcements from MY Opera at their fundraiser yesterday. First, they have rebranded from Metro Youth Opera to MY Opera. I guess everybody is getting a little older! More exciting, their spring 2016 production will be Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia which is a definite departure into much darker territory for this company and a chance to see a work that isn’t performed too often. Dates and casting TBA.

The fundraiser itself was fun with some fine singing from, among others, Stephanie Tritchew, Lyndsay Promane, Asitha Tennekoon and Kelsey Vicary with Natasha Fransblow on keyboards. There was beer and silly hats and a vast quantity of rather good chicken wings. There was also a raffle and a photo booth thingy. And did I remember to mention the chicken wings.

Much Ado

Posted on April 25, 2015 by operaramblings

I really wasn’t at all familiar with Berlioz’ Béatrice at Bénédict before last night’s opening of a production by Metro Youth Opera at the Daniels Spectrum. All I knew was that it had something to so with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and a reputation for being rather tedious. For the record it’s basically the Shakespeare play shorn of all the darker elements; no Don John, no fake funeral, resulting in a RomCom in which the title characters, after much verbal sparring, are finally brought to admit that they are in love and get married along with Claudio and Héro. Further compressed a little (Somarone is axed) for this production it runs a pleasingly untedious two hours or so.

Continue reading →

Béatrice and Bénédict

Posted on April 9, 2015 by operaramblings

Here’s another listing I missed in the chaos of moving back into the Kitten Kondo. Metro Youth Opera have a run of three performances of Berlioz’s Béatrice and Bénédict at the Daniels Spectrum (Aki Studio). The shows are on April 24th and 25th at 7.30pm and the 26th at 2.30pm. Alison Wong directs with Natasha Fransblow as Music Director. The cast includes Simone McIntosh as Béatrice and Asitha Tennekoon (Paris in the recent GGS La belle Hélène) as Bénédict. Full details and tickets are available here.

operaramblings

John's opera ramblings

Tag Archives: tennekoon