Opera 5 opened the first Toronto Opera Festival last night at Factory Theatre with a gala featuring Greg Dahl and the singers from their intern programme; most of whom have McGill connections.. It was basically a concert of opera arias and scenes and musical theatre numbers in about equal shares. It was quite varied ad theire was some excellent singing supported with versatility and flair by Nate Ben-Horin on a slightly battered looking piano (it sounded fine though!).
Tag Archives: yee
Asmik Grigorian as Rusalka
Dvořák’s Rusalka is pretty well served on video but the latest recording has a very strong cast and I was intrigued. It was recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2023 and features, among others, Asmik Grigorian in the title role and Sarah Connolly as Ježibaba.

Chinatown
Chinatown; music by Alice Ho, words by Madeleine Thien and Paul Yee, is a multilingual opera about the Chinese immigrant experience in British Columbia. It ws commissioned by Vancouver City Opera where it played in 2022. It’s now been recorded for CD by the original cast.
Like some of Alice Ho’s previous work (The Monkiest King, The Lesson of Da JI) Chinatown is cross cultural in many ways. It combines Western and Chinese instruments, musical styles and vocal styles and in this case it uses three languages; Hoisan dialect, Cantonese and English. Unlike the previous two operas though this one isn’t based in myth and legend. Rather, it’s a gritty and moving story that doesn’t shy away from confronting the brutal institutional racism that Chinese people faced in BC well into the 20th century. Continue reading
We’re Late!
The Happenstancers latest concert We’re Late! happenstanced on Saturday evening at Redeemer Lutheran. It was a typical Happenstancers sort of event with chamber music works for various forces split up into their movements with the components then rearranged to make an interesting line up.
Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle provided the opening piece which also provided the title for the concert as a whole. It’s a setting of Auden for soprano and chamber ensemble and begins “Clocks cannot tell our time of day”. Which was pretty much the theme for the evening. This was followed by Toshi Ichiyangi’s Music for Electric Metronomes which had the whole ensemble banging things rhythmically and making stylsed gestures. Then came the first of three parts of rather a good musical joke; John Cage’s 4’33” arranged into three movements for different forces. which as might be expected cropped up at intervals during the show. For the record the movements were scored for piano and percussion, conductor and oboe and percussion.
Tapestry LibLab participants announced
Tapestry’s LibLab is a collaborative that brings together composers and librettists to create new work. It provides participants with the opportunity to work with several partners in a short period of time. Throughout the week-long program, writers and composers are partnered with one another for one day each. With input from music and stage directors, each pair writes a short piece of music theatre and investigates the collaborative process. Their work is performed at the end of each day by a resident ensemble of singers and repetiteurs, and then constructively critiqued by the group. The best of the works are polished up for a show later in the year (review of last year’s show) and some go on for further development.
Tapestry Briefs
Tapestry Briefs is the product of the Composer-Librettist Workshop run annually by Tapestry. Four composers and four librettists come up with sixteen ideas for a new opera and work up a scene from each. Last night twelve scenes from the most recent workshop were presented in a fully staged format with piano accompaniment in Ernest Balmer Studio and adjacent Distillery spaces. The quartet of singers for the evening was made up of some of Toronto’s top singer/actors; Carla Huhtanen, Krisztina Szabó, Keith Klassen and Peter McGillivray. Piano accompaniment was from Gregory Oh and Jennifer Tung.
