Opera Atelier’s fall offering is Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée. It’s rather curious that such a rarely performed work should have had two productions in Toronto within a few months but there you go! It’s also a work that was conceived on quite a small scale. At the time of composition Lully had a monopoly on presenting opera in theatres in Paris so Charpentier’s work was written for the Duchesse de Guise and presented in private performance.
Euripides’ Iphigenia at Tauris formed the basis for an opera almost a century before the more famous one by Gluck. Henri Desmarets; one of the more notable successors to Lully at Versailles/Paris began work on an Iphigenia opera to a libretto by Joseph-François Duché de Vancy in the 1690s but work was interrupted by Desmarets being exiled from France for marrying a minor without her father’s permission. Eventually the Académie Royale de la Musique entrusted the task of completing the opera to André Campra who teamed up with Antoine Danchet as librettist. The end result was a tragédie lyrique in five acts and a prologue that premiered in 1704 to some success. An even more successful revival in 1711 led to multiple productions across France and abroad before it was effectively replaced by the Gluck work in 1779. Continue reading
Opera Atelier have announced the line up for their 2024/25 season. As with other recent seasons there’s one show at the Elgin Theatre and one at Koerner Hall.
The first show, October 24th – 27th, 2024, is Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Elgin. I’m not going to complain about more English language Handel! Bring it on. This show is indicative of the growing relationship between OA and Versailles with French tenor Antonin Rondepierre in the role of Acis and Blaise Rantoanina singing the role of Damon. The cast is completed by Meghan Lindsey as Galatea (yea!) and Douglas Williams as Polyphemus. Christopher Bagan conducts which is also nice to see. Continue reading
Cherubini’s Médée of 1797 is undergoing something of a revival at the moment albeit in an Italian version. But there’s an earlier and less known version of the same story with a libretto by (as opposed to based on) Corneille. It’s Charpentier’s Médée of 1693. It’s a tragédie lyrique with all the expected elements; an allegorical prologue in praise of Louis XIV, a classical subject, five acts, gods, spirits and demons and lots of spectacular theatrical effects. The Lully formula in fact. Continue reading
