Tag Archives: uot opera

UoT Opera’s Orpheus in the Underworld

Posted on by
Reply
brittany-cann-headshot-150x150

Brittany Cann

French operetta is notoriously difficult to get right.  The genre treacherously combines a kind of humour that doesn’t always translate well in time or language, difficult music to sing and a need to be as “naughty” as the original seemed without being crass.  It’s a huge credit to Michael Patrick Albano and his student cast that they pretty much pulled off all of that last night with their new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.  One could nit pick details (I shall) but overall it was a well paced show with some good singing and acting and it was genuinely funny.  Unsurprisingly the audience lapped it up.  Continue reading →

This week

Posted on by
Reply

5720421dc9-jpgToday at 2.30pm Voicebox:Opera in Concert are performing Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.  It’s Bellini’s take on Bandello rather than Shakespeare, not a lot happens and the orchestral music is ho hum so a semistaged version with piano isn’t a bad bet if the singing is good.  Juliet is the up and coming Caitlin Wood.  Romeo, on whom much depends, is Anita Krause.  It’s at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.

Continue reading →

UoT Opera season opener

Posted on by
1

As has become the norm, UoT Opera opened their concert season with a free “preview” of their spring show in the RBA at noon today.  It was a series of Mozart scenes which were given semi-staged today but will, in the fullness of time, form a staged and costumed performance.  It’s always an interesting event because it’s so early in the academic year.  It’s the first chance to try and talent spot and see how things develop over the rest of the cycle.  As such, it’s often a bit rough but today really wasn’t.  It was a surprisingly high quality across the board effort which augurs well.  That said, it was all ensembles and nobody was asked to pull out vocal fireworks so maybe not the sternest test imaginable which makes star picking that bit trickier.

uoft-opera-c-tanner-davies Continue reading →

UoT 2016/17

Posted on by
Reply

UoT Faculty of Music have just announced their 2016/17 season.  It’s the usual broad range of performances so I’ll highlight the opera and vocal music contributions.

UoT Opera is offering four shows.  The fall main production is Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld with new English dialogue and stage direction by Michael Patrick Albano.  Choreography i by Anna Theodosakis and Russell Braun makes his podium debut.  There are four performances November 24th to 27th.  Spring sees a Handel rarity; Imeneo.  Tim Albery directs and Daniel Taylor is in charge of the music.  This one runs March 16th to 19th.  Both shows are in the MacMillan Theatre.

machinestops

Last year’s student composed opera; The Machine Stops

Continue reading →

Poisson d’avril

Posted on by
Reply

osolemeowAs we approach All Fools Day the calendar starts to get busier.  On Tuesday 29th March there’s a concert at lunchtime in the RBA called The Four Tenors.  In this case it’s Andrew Haji (lucky St. Louis folks can see him as Rodolfo next season), Jean-Philippe Fortier-Lazure, Charles Sy, and Aaron Sheppard.  The program is a bit predictable and, yes, there are Neapolitan songs, though not, at least according to the on-line version O sole mio.  Also no Nessun dorma so I think we have a handle on the possible encores.

Then it’s on to April 1st itself and here the gods are laughing.  At 5pm, at the McMillan Theatre, UoT Opera are doing the The Art of the Prima Donna; a selection of staged and costumed scenes from classic operas.  Parts of this were performed in the RBA in October last year.  Then at 8pm at the Arts and Letters Club, Bicycle Opera Project and the Toy Piano Composers’ Collective have a show called Travelogue featuring short operas about travel.  This one is repeated on the 2nd.  Finally, Voicebox:Opera in Concert are premiering Isis and Osiris by Peter Anthony Togni and Sharon Singer.  This one is at 8pm at the Jane Mallett Theatre and it’s sponsored by the Egyptian Tourist Authority who can probably use all the help they can get right now (and no jokes about pyramid marketing schemes please).  This one is repeated at 2.30pm on Sunday 3rd April.

I am Way, I am Act

Posted on by
Reply

This spring’s main opera production from UoT Opera is Britten’s Paul Bunyan.  It is a really peculiar work.  The libretto is by WH Auden and is, well, weird.  It mixes up the (apparently) profound with the absurd and the downright silly.  There’s a Swedish lumberjack fish slapping dance, talking cats and dogs, trees that aspire to be product and a philosophical accountant (*).  There are also countless pronouncements from the off stage voice of Bunyan along the lines of the closing:

“Where the night becomes the day, Where the dream becomes the fact, I am the Eternal guest, I am Way, I am Act“

Walt Whitman meets Dr. Seuss meets a lot of drugs?  One of those 1970s English public schoolboy prog rock bands?

bunyan

Continue reading →

Coming up

Posted on by
Reply

letravail_365sqIt’s getting a bit busier again.  This afternoon there are a couple of concerts.  At 2pm in Mazzoleni Hall you can catch Mireille Asselin and Brett Polegato with Peter Tiefenbach and Rachel Andrist in a painting themed program of lieder, artsongs and chansons called Le travail du peintre.  At 4.30pm at Metropolitan United Church Bach’s Mass in B Minor meets German film maker Bastian Clevé’s film The Sound of Eternity.  The soloists are Marjorie Maltais, Geoff Sirett, Jennifer Krabbe and Charles Sy plus the Orpheus Choir, Chorus Niagara and the Talisker Players.  I suppose it would just about be possible to do both…

Continue reading →

First week of February

Posted on by
Reply

There are a number of interesting concerts and performances this week.  Tuesday sees the graduate students of the UoT Opera Division in cabaret at the Tranzac Club.  It’s at 7.30pm and it’s free.  The beer at the Tranzac is better than it used to be so should be a decent night out and if you don’t like it the NAGS are performing in the other room, alas without Neil Sorbie.  Earlier in the day there’s a noon hour concert in the RBA featuring Bob Pomakov and the Gryphon Trio (also free).  The program features works by Mozart and Heather Schmidt.

3.page

Continue reading →

The Telephone and The Medium

Posted on by
2

UoT Opera’s fall production opened last night at the MacMillan theatre.  It’s a double bill of Menotti works; The Telephone and The Medium.  The former was cleverly updated by Michael Patrick Albano to reflect the age of the smartphone.  It actually seems more relevant than ever and, slight as it is – an extended joke about a girl who won’t get off the phone long enough for her fiancé to propose – it was wryly amusing. The Medium I’m not so sure about.  It’s a contrived piece written in the 1940’s but set a few years earlier about a fake medium and her deluded clients.  It seems dated, not so much in the sense that seance attendance is pretty unusual today, but in the extent to which the characters are clichéd, cardboard cut outs even.  The medium herself is bad enough but her sidekicks are her rather dippy, if kind, daughter and a boy who is mute (k’ching), Gypsy (k’ching) and “found wandering the streets” (k’ching, k’ching) “of Budapest” (k’ching, k’ching, k’ching).  The first act in which the fake seancery goes on isn’t bad but then the medium gets a shock; a real or imagined cold hand on her throat (probably imagined as she is a raging alcoholic) and decides to go straight.  The second act is pure bathos.  I can see why it was a Broadway hit in the 1940s but I think tastes have moved on.  And who the heck calls their daughter “Doodly”?

medium Continue reading →

First week of November

Posted on by
Reply

1.sevenA few notable events this coming fall week.  Tuesday sees the COC’s annual gala competition for young singers, Centre Stage.  Prizes and possible places in the Ensemble Studio for next year are up for grabs.  The public part of the event starts at 5.30pm at The Four Seasons Centre with a cocktail reception followed by the final round of the competition.  Unusually this competition feature the full COC orchestra, not just piano.

Continue reading →