The COC’s production of Massenet’s Werther opened at the Four Seasons Centre on Thursday evening. My full review is published at Bachtrack.
TL/DR version… there’s some excellent music making but the production doesn’t really elevate a rather dull, sentimental opera.
@bachtrack
I suppose one of the most well known “relationship” stories in classical music history is the one concerning the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann, his illness and death and the role that Johannes Brahms played in Robert’s last years and Clara’s subsequent life. So why not create a song recital programme around that theme using songs by all three composers? That’s what Liz Upchurch and Jane Archibald have done and they presented it in Temerty Theatre on Wednesday evening.
Maeve Palmer
I finally made it to AtG’s Opera Pub for the first time in a long time. Ladst couple of times I went it was at the Drake and that just felt so wrong! It’s now at the Tranzac which just makes all kinds of sense. It’s a decent size, it has a pretty good bar and it’s easily accessible on the the TTC. And it feels like a pub, not the lobby of a five star hotel. Also it has lots of AtG history including the original La Bohème (2011) and the 2017 remount. Stay there please AtG. Continue reading
Opera 5’s interns for their Toronto Operas Festival gave a recital in the RBA on Monday. It was a varied mix f opera, song and musical theatre; from Mozart and Strauss to Camelot and Spamalot. Both the rep and the performances demonstrated the emphasis that the Schulich School; with which all the performers are affiliated, puts on musical theatre compared to some of its competitors.
This year’s offering from the Artists’ Studio of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company was Judith Weir’s The Black Spider. One doesn’t get many opportunities to see a Weir opera, let alone one composed for young performers, so this was very welcome. That it’s a very funny mash up of several gothic/horror tropes is a definite bonus. Throw in a lively production with whole hearted and skilful performances and it makes for a great show.
Karma, by Aksam Alyousef, is the latest in what seems to be a genre of plays about second generation Canadians or people who came to Canada at a very young age needing to return to their ancestral homeland to discover/resolve some mystery. See, for. example, The Green Line at Buddies last year.
Christina Anderson’s How to Catch Creation is a very cleverly constructed play that sucks the audience into it’s world of shifting relationships and coincidences that, at first blush, seem too pat. Along the way it explores what makes us creative and what makes us lose our creativity and, interestingly, how that’s related to the most basic act of creativity, biological reproduction. It’s currently playing at the Young Centre ina production directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu.
Don Giovanni!
I wanted to give a shout out to a one off performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni coming up later this month as it’s in support of a good cause; the Redwood Women’s Shelter. Appropriately the show is at the Redwood Theatre on Gerrard East (an interesting space with an excellent bar if you haven’t been there before.) It’s on May 22nd at 8pm with a talk by Michael Jones of Opera Canada at 7.15pm.
It’s piano accompaniment (Brahm Goldhammer) and I suspect it’s basically arias with narration format but it’s an excellent cast headed up by Alex Hajek as the Don. Tickets start at $50 and are available at:
https://www.theredwoodtheatre.com/event-details/don-giovanni
And there’s early bird discount code DG2026 for 20% off tickets.
The full details including casting are in the linked document
Andrew Kushnir’s new play, The Division, currently playing in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre, is both a very personal story and an interrogation of some very uncomfortable aspects of Ukrainian history. It’s told, in the present, as a letter to Kushnir’s nephew to be read in maybe fifteen years time when, perhaps, it will be easier to divorce history from current events (and then maybe not…)
My review of the COC’s excellent revival production of the Robert Lepage double bill of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung is now published at Bachtrack.
Christian Van Horn and Karen Cargill in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle – Photo: Michael Cooper
@bachtrack
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