Tag Archives: theocharidis

Minimalist Magic Flute with a Japanese twist

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The Glenn Gould School gave the first of two performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at Koerner Hall on Wednesday evening.  The production is directed by Allison Grant and is pretty straightforward, though quite heavily cut.  The “look” is maybe Miyazaki animation (costumes by Alex Amini) with a minimalist backdrop (Kim Sue Bartnik) which is enlivened by interesting projections by Nathan Bruce and quite striking lighting by Jason Hand.  There’s a sort of dumb show during the overture that the Director’s Notes imply is something to do with the opera being about a dysfunctional family (what opera family isn’t?) but the idea isn’t developed at all.

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Ecstatic Voices

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ecstaticvoicesjpegThis year’s West End Micro Music Festival opened on Friday night at Redeemer Lutheran with a programme titled Ecstatic Voices.  It was a mix of works for eight part a cappella vocal ensemble and a couple of solo tuned percussion pieces.

There’s something a bit special about unaccompanied polyphony.that has fascinated composers ever since the (probably apocryphal) debate on the subject at the Council of Trent.  I think a good chunk of it is the sheer versatility of the human voice which can do so much more than sing a tone.  It can laugh, whistle, speak, grunt, chatter and all manner of other things and if the composers of the Renaissance were happy to stick to tonal singing more recent composers certainly haven’t been.  Both were in evidence n Friday.

The ensemble was made up of eight singers  (Sydney Baedke, Reilly Nelson, Danika Lorén, Whitney O’Hearn, Marcel d’Entremont, Elias Theocharidis, Bruno Roy and Graham Robinson with Simon Rivard conducting) all well capable of singing major solo roles.  This was no semi-pro SATB group!

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Double bill from the Glenn Gould School

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Friday night the Glenn Gould School presented a pair of French chamber operas in Mazzoleni Hall.  The pieces were Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Debussy’s Prodigal Son with a new English language libretto by Ashley Pearson.  Pearson’s libretto concerns a gay man estranged from his family so director Mabel Wannacott’s linking idea is that the principal character in both is the same person as a child and twenty years later.

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Rebanks fellows in the RBA

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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.

COC Opera Rebanks-11

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Mansfield Park

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Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park opened last night at UoT Opera in a production by Tim Albery.  It’s a really interesting show that builds up in “layers” to a very satisfying whole.  The Austen  novel, of course, is very self consciously a novel.  There’s no pretence at “immersion”.  The author is both telling the story and commenting on it for the benefit of you, the reader.  Librettist Alasdair Middleton both builds on this and does a quite brilliant job of compression to bring in a condensed, and only slightly simplified, version of the story in under two hours.

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A first look at UoT this year

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The students of the post graduate program at UoT Opera were on show in the RBA yesterday with a show made up of staged opera excerpts curated and directed by Michael Patrick Albano.  It’s right at the beginning of the academic year and these sorts of concerts are a bit of a calibration exercise for those of us who follow the progress of young singers.  The starting point this year is decidedly high.

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reGENERATION week 2

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The second set of reGENERATION concerts of the Topronto Summer Music Festival took place yesterday at Walter Hall.  The song portion, unusually, consisted of 100% English language rep, mirroring the Griffey/Jones recital earlier in the wee.  The first concert kicked off with tenor Eric Laine and pianist Scott Downing with five songs from Finzi’s setting of Thomas Hardy; A Young Man’s Exhortation.  It was good.  Laine has a nice sense of style and very good diction.  The high notes are there though sometimes, especially at the end of a line, they don’t sound 100% secure.  There was some quite delicate accompaniment from Downing too.

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reGENERATION week 1

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There were three reGENERATION concerts in Walter Hall yesterday at 1pm, 4pm and 7.30pm.  It made for a long but interesting day.  As last year, each concert was a mix of vocal and chamber music.  The vocal program was not announced in advance so I’m working from notes and there could be the odd error.  Pleasingly, there were surtitles for the songs.  This is a huge improvement on a sheet of tiny print to be read in the dark! Continue reading →