Tag Archives: verdi

Stellar singing in Rigoletto revival

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Wednesday night I attended the second performance of the current run of Verdi’s Rigoletto at the COC.  This is a revival of the Christopher Alden production first seen in 2011 (first cast, second cast) and again in 2018.  So the basic concept is the same.  All the action is played out, quite publicly, in the “gaming room” of a Victorian gentlemen’s club.  I think the production has grown on me over time.  I felt the tweaks in 2018 were improvements and I suspect some more tweaks this time.  Certainly from where i was sitting in the Orchestra the set seemed bigger than I remember.  It’s huge and very painterly.  It also has great acoustics.

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Lise Davidsen at the Met

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Soprano Lise Davidsen recently gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera with pianist James Baillieu.  The live recording of that gig is now being released by Decca in various formats.  My gut reaction was to think that a piano recital at the Met is not such a great idea but the recording turns out to be terrific.

It starts out with a couple of opera arias,  There’s a powerful but very beautiful account of “Vissi d’arte” and a very stylish account of “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.  In this one she shows some interesting colours as well as terrific, clean, high notes. Continue reading →

Ensemble Studio do the standards

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Last Tuesdays’s concert in the RBA featured four singers and two pianists from the Ensemble Studio in a concert of highly recognisable opera arias.  I guess with Barber of Seville and Rigoletto coming p on the FSC stage that was a bit inevitable.  It was though very well done with all four singers not only singing well but really conveying a sense of character.

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Un Ballo in Maschera in the dark

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Vincent Boussard’s production of Vedi’s Un Ballo in Maschera staged and filmed at Barcelona’s Liceu in 2017 is dark.  Basically there’s a light box in which the characters at front of stage can be seen while others lurk in the darkness.  According to the notes Broussard is using light and shadow to bring out the themes of illusion and truth, duty and betrayal.  That sounds to me like cleverness masquerading as a production concept and bar a few striking visuals this is hardly a production at all.

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Greyscale Macbeth

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Christof Loy’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth filmed at the Liceu in Barcelona in 2016 is grey, very grey.  Costumes and lighting are such that one might think one is watching a black and white film.  The first, brief, touch of colour; some lights and bunches of flowers appears at the beginning of Act 4.  Beyond the greyness the vibe is essentially late 19th century and it’s pretty sparse.  It’s also very dark; at times almost unwatchably so on video (even Blu-ray).

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Not really a review at all

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So Thursday lunchtime I went to see Karoline Podolak and Wesley Harrison supported by Mattia Senesi and Brian Cho in the RBA.  It was a “schmaltzy” programme (Wesley’s description not mine!).  The whole thing consisted of arias and duets from La Traviata, The Barber of Seville and Don Pasquale with a bit of Lehar and a final Prayer chucked in.

It was the sort of rep that if it came up on University Challenge any opera goer would be hitting the buzzer in under two seconds!  And it’s all lovely of course.  It was beautifully sung by two beautiful people with two excellent pianists.  They sing beautifully separately and wonderfully together and Karoline’s coloratura is spectacular.  It’s rep that fits them like a glove at this stage of their careers and I’m not going to bore you with a blow by blow account.  It was unalloyed, undemanding enjoyment made all the better by being in the RBA on a sunny day!

Photo credfit: Karen E. Reeves.

COC announces 2025/26 season

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Without notice or fanfare the COC season announcement landed in my email inbox at 11.30 this morning.  I kind of miss the old 10am press conference which at least offered an opportunity to ask about the rationale of some of the decisions.  I guess though that the number of people writing about opera in Toronto these days would fit in a phone box so maybe it’s too much to hope for.  There are some mildly surprising aspects to the announcement.  There’s no Mozart or Puccini nor, more consequential, any sign of the various new opera projects that COC has/had under development which do have a bit of a habit of disappearing without trace.  There’s also no “second stage” production.  I guess that experiment is done.  So it’s six main stage productions in the traditional three pairs. Continue reading →

Brutally stark Ernani

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Verdi’s Ernani is set in the reign of Charles V of Spain just before he becomes Holy Roman Emperor (1519), not that there’s anything remotely historical about the plot which is classic love and revenge stuff.  The reason I mention it is because I’m trying to understand what director Lotte de Beer is driving at in the production staged and filmed at Bregenz in 2023.

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A fascist Macbeth

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Krysztof Warlikowski’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth; recorded for video at Salzburg in 2023 is certainly not short of ideas.  Whether it all hangs together is another matter.  There seem to be two main ideas in play.  We are in a 1940s-ish fascist state with party armbands and so on.  This gets more explicit as the piece develops.  On top of this there’s a foregrounding of Lady Macbeth as the real driving force of the drama coupled with the idea that what’s driving her is her inability to provide an heir.  For example, she’s clearly the one being crowned after Duncan’s murder and babies are a recurrent visual motif.

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