The headline is a quote from late in the second half of Zaiba Baig’s double header Kainchee Lagaa + Jhooti: The Begging Brown Bitch Plays which opened on Thursday night at Buddies in Bad Times in a production directed by Tawiah Ben M’Carthy for House of Beida Inc. The plays are loosely linked in that both deal one way or another with queerness and Pakistani-Canadian identity and experience.
Yolanda Bonnell’s White Girls in Moccasins, presented by manidoons collective and Native Earth Performing Arts opened at the Aki Studio on Friday night. Co-directed by Bonnell and Carmen Alvis, it’s a play about identity and and recovering roots. The principal character Miskozi, like the playwright, is Indigenous but I don’t think the play is entirely about Indigenous identity. The other two roles are Ziibi, played by a Bermudian Trans Woman of African ancestry and Waabishkizi; played by a second generation Settler woman. So while the focus is on Indigenous identity I think it raises a lot of other questions too.
Cyclops is the only satyr play by Euripides to come down to us though I guess whether it’s “complete” is a bit of an open question. A satyr play was a kind of weird hybrid of comedy and tragedy that closed out the Festival of Dionysos after the tragedies had been performed. Unlike most Athenian comedy it was usually based on mythological source material; in this case Odysseus’ encounter with the Cyclops from the Odyssey. It would have featured principals and a chorus of satyrs; half man, half goat with enormous erect phalluses.
Thursday’s RBA concert featured members of the Ensemble Studio singing German Lieder. First up were tenor Angelo Moretti and pianist Kimly Wang with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. Although this is probably the first true “song cycle” in German I feel it doesn’t get done nearly as often as the better known Schubert and Schumann cycles and it’s really pretty interesting. I think it was also my first time hearing Angelo sing in German and he’s really very good. This was a well articulated, rather beautifully sung set with equally skilled accompaniment. Continue reading
Back in the dark days of December 2020 Tapestry Opera and New Music Concerts collaborated on a filmed version of Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs featuring soprano Xin Wang. Thursday night, a quite different version opened at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. It also features Xin Wang and is directed by Michael Mori but this time saxophone has been swapped out for a tap dancer Rumi Jeraj which fits with the body percussion elements of the score.
Handel’s Theodora may just be his best oratorio, even if nowadays it’s better known in fully staged versions. On Friday night it was presented by a combination of the Schola Cantorum, The Theatre of Early Music and assorted guests under the direction of Daniel Taylor at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.
The Confluence Concert series for next season was announced last night. There are eight concerts:
Coming up next month (along, one hopes, with spring):
Opera, Concerts etc
Back in December 2012 I reviewed the 500th performance of Dean Burry’s opera for children, The Brothers Grimm. On Wednesday I went to the 25th anniversary performance in the RBA. It was packed; with loads of kids, some quite young.
My review of OperaQ’s film, La Maupin, about a 17th century swashbuckling, gender fluid French mezzo is now available at Opera Canada.
operaramblings 