The latest Opera Vision Youtube recording to catch my attention is a recording from L’opéra nationale de Paris of Spontini’s La Vestale. Productions of La Vestale are rare and most Opera Vision streams come from considerably less prestigious houses so this is particularly welcome. I reviewed a Palazetto Bru-Zane audio recording of this work in 2023 and I’m not going to repeat what I wrote about the performance history and the plot. Here I shall concentrate on the Paris performance.
The Queen of Carthage is a webstream of a show produced by Early Music Vancouver and re:Naissance Opera this last summer. It’s currently available for watching for a donation. My review is up now at Opera Canada.
Songs From the House of Death is a new song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra by Ian Cusson. It was premiered in April by Krisztina Szabó and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. It’s a setting of three texts from Joy Harjo‘s How We Became Human. Ian has a knack of finding really strong texts by Indigenous poets and these are no exception. The longest (13 minutes of the 23 minute work) is “Songs From the House of Death; Or How to Make it Through the End of a Relationship”. This is an evocation of death and impermanence and memory. The setting is very varied. The opening pizzicato strings are barely audible but it rapidly builds to blend densely orchestrated (it’s a big orchestra) and very high energy music with much gentler and more lyrical passages; sometimes using the concert master as a soloist. This fits the changing moods of the text and, as I’ve come to expect with Ian, the music is always rooted in the text.
The latest commission from the Canadian Art Song Project is Another Day by Abigail Richardson-Schulte. It’s a setting of six poems by schoolchildren on the theme of refugees and human rights. It’s now available on video performed by soprano Anna-Sophie Neher with Carl Matthieu Neher at the piano.
In Winter is the latest digital offering from the COC and is available free until June. Described by the COC as a concert that “explores and celebrates winter” it’s more a Eurocentric potpourri of seasonal fare with a decidedly Christmas twist. It’s a cut above “Christmas’ Greatest Hits” though a John Rutter arrangement of Deck the Halls and I’ll be Home for Christmas are in that vein and even the exuberance and lovely voice of Midori Marsh can’t make more of The Twelve Days of Christmas than is there to be had.
Toronto Operetta Theatre’s latest offering is a webstream of Emmerich Kálmán’s 1915 operetta The Csárdás Princess (Die Csárdásfürstin) presented here in English with the usual minor tweaks to the dialogue including obligatory Rob Ford jokes, which have become something of a TOT tradition. The plot turns on the fact that an Austro-Hungarian aristo, let alone a second cousin of the Emperor, can’t marry someone with fewer than 64 quarterings on their coat of arms, let alone a cabaret singer. Implausible impersonations etc abound and love triumphs in the end. It’s all entirely harmless for heaven forfend that anything satirical might have made it past the Vienna censorship, especially in wartime. And there’s no sex because this isn’t France. The humour mostly turns on Hungarian antipathy for their Austrian masters. It’s light hearted and very tuneful fun.
If you haven’t already seen it, Glyndebourne’s 2016 Barber of Seville is available for free right now on their Youtube channel. I liked it!
And in a completely different vein the season announcement from Provincial Opera Canada is an absolute hoot.
Against the Grain Theatre have released a location shot film of Holst’s Sāvitri on Youtube. It’s a very beautiful film with some fine music making but I really wonder why anyone would choose to lavish their talents on this particular opera.
Opera Atelier’s webstream of Handel’s The Resurrection premiered on Thursday evening and will be available until this coming Thursday. It’s ticketed and you can buy an access code from the RCM box office. It’s the first Opera Atelier show conceived for webstreaming as opposed to filming a stage performance. The action was filmed in St. Lawrence Hall and the music was recorded at Koerner.
The Glenn Gould School released their spring opera performance on the new Koerner livestream platform on Thursday night. It’s a concert performance of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. This is a piece I find hugely problematic but since I went into considerable detail about why in a review of an MYOpera production that I wrote exactly five years ago I won’t repeat myself. Let’s just look at what the GGS did with it.
operaramblings 