Here’s my take on what’s coming up in the Met “Live in HD” cinema series in the 2026/27 series. There are again eight operas in the series. One is a work new to the Met, two are new productions and five are repertory shows. There’s also a special that goes out live on September 19th; Twenty Years of the Met in Cinemas: An Anniversary Celebration, hosted by soprano Renée Fleming. Expect a tightly scripted orgy of self congratulation!
I have a very ambiguous relationship with Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Britten’s music I love and there’s a pretty dramatic story (albeit nonsense historically) trying to escape from Ronald Duncan’s weird Christo-prophetic and somewhat overripe libretto. Centaurs casting their seed among the stars? Anyone? So I was most interested to see what Anna Theodosakis would do with it in her production for UoT Opera currently playing at Harbourfront Centre.
Sam Holcroft’s A Mirror opened on Thursday evening at 918 Bathurst in an ARC production directed by Tamara Vuckovic. It’s a complex play with many levels and multiple places where the boundary between play and audience dissolve. The first “framing device” has us as the audience for an “unlicensed” play which s being performed under the cover of a wedding.
My second Walter Hall DMA recital on Tuesday featured one of Toronto’s most interesting, and least predictable, musical talents; countertenor Ryan McDonald. Having seen Ryan perform as Dido and as a rather menacing nightmare figure in Rebecca Grey’s Bus Opera (as well as in several more conventional capacities!) I was expecting the unexpected. The presence on stage of a drum kit rather reinforced that.
So, no big surprise that the opening number was “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Saint Saêns’ Samson et Delila (with Ivan Estey Jovanovic at the piano). It was some gorgeous singing as long as one wasn’t distracted by the shiny back outfit topped by a transparent rain cape (really sorry there are not more photos!). Then after a quick change to something that looked a like a very shiny vampire impersonating a boy in the lower school at Eton, we got a lovely account of John Dowland’s If my complaints could passions move which was bookended by electronics and some vocalising into the piano. This was followed by a straightforwardly lovely version of Schumann’s “Der Nussbaum”. And so to “Dido’s lament”. I did mention that I’d seen Ryan sing the role some years ago in Opera Q’s gender bending Dido and Belinda. Continue reading
The first of two DMA recitals I attended on Tuesday in Walter Hall was given by contralto Nicole Percifield. It’s always interesting to hear this comparatively rare voice type; especially in an interesting and well thought out programme.
The first half of the programme was songs scored for contralto, piano and viola. It’s intriguing because the range of the viola is very similar to that of a contralto. In this case Grace Kyungrok Moon played viola with Joel Goodfellow at the piano for Brahms’ “Gestillte Sehnsucht” (from Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91). The text is by Rückert and it’s definitely at the romantic/sentimental end of the spectrum. It was pleasant to listen to with Nicole’s rich lower register brought out nicely. Continue reading
Ed Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic have produced some stunning recordings for the Chandos label. The new release of Richard Strauss’ Elektra is no exception. Indeed this is likely now the first choice audio recoding of this work.
It’s a very strong cast. Iréne Theorin has enough heft for the title role but she’s also surprisingly lyrical where appropriate, Jennifer Holloway is a sweet toned and sympathetic Chrysothemis and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner sounds suitably unhinged as Chrysothemis without sounding like her voice is past its sell by date. Iain Paterson is an interesting Orest. He’s kind of eerily creepy especially in his first scene with Elektra. I rather liked it. All the other roles are perfectly adequate too and so is the chorus.
But isn’t the real glory of Elektra the orchestral writing? Gardner gets the most out of it with a reading that’s both very dramatic and surprisingly lyrical. It’s taut too. The tension just goes on and on. The Bergen players respond splendidly.
The recording was made in the Grieghallen in December 2023 from live concert performances. It’s splendid and has been released as a hybrid SACD. The high resolution tracks are as good as any recording I’ve heard but this does mean that the dynamic range is realistically extreme! With the volume set to a realistic level for the voices, the orchestral climaxes are very loud indeed so unless you have no neighbours within miles you might prefer headphones. The climaxes though are super clean and detailed so not particularly fatiguing to listen to. There’s a booklet with useful info and full text and translation. The SACD physical release can, of course, be played like a standard CD on most CD players and the album is also available digitally as MP3 and lossless in 44.1kHz/16 bit and 96kHz/24 bit versions.
And what did my Elektra think? She thought it was perfect music for an extended nap!
Catalogue information: Chandos CHSA 5375(2)
To Walter Hall on Saturday evening to hear a recital by tenor Marcel d’Entremont. I was intrigued by the programme; English song; art and otherwise, with the resources of a piano quintet for accompaniment. It’s quite rare for an art song recital to have more than just piano accompaniment so this looked promising. I wasn’t disappointed.
Proceedings began with three of Beethoven’s Irish Songs scored for voice and string trio (Here Aaron Schwebel – violin, Rory McLeod – viola and Guillaume Artus – cello). I wasn’t familiar with these songs and they are really rather jolly and were nicely done. Two Irish ballads of the sort that people mistake (sometimes) for “traditional” (but no Tom Lehrer) followed. Marcel has the style down pat (or Pat) for these. Think all those best selling recordings of Irish tenors from the 78 era. Continue reading
I was brought up on the British TV sketch comedy of the 1970s; above all Monty Python, so I ought to love sketch comedy, right? I’ve actually been trying to rekindle some enthusiasm for it. I went to Spotlight at Srcond City and last night I went to Sex T-Rex; the featured act of Sketchfest at the Theatre Centre. It’s not working for me. Sketch comedy has changed or I have changed and likely, honestly, both. Bottom line it really doesn’t do it for me.
It’s not that the current show Crime After Crime (after crime) doesn’t have any merit. It does. It’s cleverly set up as the multi-generational saga of the Stone family; colourblind crime bosses of Crime City. It’s inventive. There’s a recurrent joke about defusing the bomb that’s about to go off but nobody can tell which wire is the red one. It manages the mood change from 1940s noir to 1980s James Bond to more contemporary super-hero genre movies with a clever nod to Star Wars Along the way; to whit a starfighter pursuit crafted out of coat hangers. The movement; goofy simulated car and boat chases is funny but in the end it couldn’t hold my attention for 90 minutes. YMMV. Continue reading
It Could Still Happen’s The Herald opened at Buddies in Bad Times last night. It’s a really difficult work to pigeonhole. It’s a poetic exploration of “labour” through words and music using Ancient Greece as a sort of vehicle for discussing more contemporary, or perhaps, universal concerns. It starts with playwright and director Jill Connell making a speech in front of a projection of the “principles for work” which could perhaps be summarised as “labour should be a temple of awareness” but along the way we get a lot of astrology; night charts and day charts and Antonio Banderas and whether his fashion line includes capes.
The Surrogate by Mohsin Zaidi, directed by Christopher Manousos opened in the intimate Studio Theatre at Crow’s last night in a production by Here For Now Theatre. It’s an impassioned piece about the ethics of surrogacy. So let’s look at surrogacy and what Zaidi is trying to say about it. It’s the practice of a couple, usually wealthy, usually male, usually gay contracting with a woman, usually poor, usually vulnerable, often immigrant, to carry a baby that is not biologically hers to term. Surrogacy is legal in forty plus US states but illegal in Canada and, crucial to the play, Louisiana.
operaramblings 