Volume 22 Issue 1 - September 2016

Michael Mori, artistic

Michael Mori, artistic director, Tapestry Opera In the all-Canadian cast, Russell Braun sings the title role of the controversial Métis leader; James Westman is Sir John A. MacDonald; Simone Osborne is Riel’s wife Marguerite; Allyson McHardy is Riel’s mother Julie; Michael Colvin is Thomas Scott, an Orangeman executed on orders by Riel; and John Relyea is Bishop Taché, who is duped into helping betray Riel. Peter Hinton directs and Johannes Debus conducts this momentous production. Alternating with Louis Riel is the Puccini warhorse Tosca, in the now-familiar production directed by Paul Curran last seen here in 2012. The 12 performances run from April 30 to May 20 and will use a double cast. Adrianne Pieczonka and Keri Alkema will sing the title role, Marcelo Puente and Kamen Chanev sing Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi and Markus Marquardt and Craig Colclough sing the villainous Scarpia. Canadian maestra Keri-Lynn Wilson, making her COC debut, conducts. Opera Atelier’s season features two revivals of late 17th-century operas – Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689) and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Medea, (Médee, 1693). Dido and Aeneas, running from October 20 to 29, will feature Wallis Giunta as Dido, Christopher Enns as Aeneas, Meghan Lindsay as Dido’s confidante Belinda and Laura Pudwell as the Sorceress. Medea, running from April 22 to 29,will see Peggy Kriha Dye as Medea, Colin Ainsworth as Jason, Mireille Asselin as Jason’s wife Créuse and Stephen Hegedus as Créon. Both productions will be directed as usual by Marshall Pynkoski with David Fallis conducting the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. Tapestry Opera has an especially exciting season. The season begins with the Toronto premiere of Naomi’s Road (2005), composer Ramona Luengen and librettist and director Ann Hodges, based on the novel by Joy Kogawa. Set in Vancouver during World War II, the opera follows nine-year-old Japanese-Canadian Naomi and her brother who are sent to internment camps in the B.C. interior and Alberta. The opera runs from November 16 to 20, 2016, at St. David’s Anglican Church, the home of St. Andrew’s, the last Japanese-Canadian Anglican parish in Toronto. Running from May 24 to 30, Tapestry presents The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G., its largest-scale production since Iron Road in 2001. Oksana G. by composer Aaron Gervais and playwright Colleen Murphy is the story of a young Ukrainian girl lured into the world of sex trafficking by a Georgian recruiter who unexpectedly falls in love with her. When Oksana escapes to a refugee shelter, she finds herself entangled in a complex triangle between the recruiter and the Canadian priest who runs the shelter. With its fierce, contemporary heroine, Oksana G. sets out to challenge the operatic convention of the tragic victim. The premiere is led by acclaimed director Tom Diamond and conductor Jordan de Souza. Toronto Operetta Theatre also has two fully staged revivals on offer. Running from December 27, 2016, to January 8, 2017, is Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1879) with Colin Ainsworth as Frederick, Curtis Sullivan as the Pirate King, Elizabeth Beeler as Ruth and Vania Chan as Mabel. COC resident conductor Derek Bate wields the baton. Running from April 26 to 30 is The Chocolate Soldier (1908) by Oscar Straus, based on Arms and the Man (1894) by George Bernard Shaw. The popular operetta features Jennifer Taverner, Anna Caroline Macdonald, Stefan Fehr and Michael Nyby. Peter Tiefenbach conducts. Guillermo Silva-Marin directs both productions. Toronto Masque Theatre has a fascinating lineup. Its first production running from November 17 to 19 is Handel’s cantata Apollo e Dafne (Apollo and Daphne,1710) starring Jaqueline Woodley and Geoffrey Sirett and staged by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière. This is paired with Richard Strauss’ unusual melodrama for piano and spoken word, Enoch Arden (1897) based on the 1864 poem by Tennyson. TMT’s second production is a world premiere, The Man Who Married Himself, composed by Juliet Palmer to a libretto by Anna Chatterton based on a Karnataka folk tale. The singers include Scott Belluz, Subiksha Rangarajan and Alex Samaras and the dance will combine Eastern and Western traditions just as will the makeup of the orchestra. Hari Krishnan will direct and choreograph the piece and Larry Beckwith conducts both productions. VOICEBOX: Opera in Concert again helps to fill in the void in repertoire left by the larger companies. This season will begin with the second Bellini of the season in the form of I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830), Bellini’s version of Romeo and Juliet, on November 20, with Caitlin Wood, Anita Krause and Tonatiuh Abrego. On February 5 is Franz Joseph Haydn’s delightful L’Isola disabitata (1779) accompanied by the Aradia Ensemble with Kevin Mallon conducting. And on March 26 is Modest Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina (1886). Although not all of Toronto’s opera companies have announced their offerings, the season already presents an embarras de choix. Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com. DON’T MISS THE EVENT OF THE FALL SEASON! WATCH THE FULL FILM ON A 35-FT SCREEN WITH LIVE ORCHESTRA AND MEMBERS OF TORONTO MENDELSSOHN CHOIR PERFORMING MOZART’S MASTERPIECES OCT. 28 • 7:30 PM | OCT. 29 • 2:00 PM MAJOR MEDIA PARTNER Presented by Sony Centre and Attila Glatz Concert Productions MEDIA PARTNER sonycentre.ca 1.855.872.SONY (7669) 20 | September 1, 2016 - October 7, 2016 thewholenote.com

Beat by Beat | Classical & Beyond A Summer of Clever Conceit PAUL ENNIS My musical life in Toronto this summer was bound up in Toronto Summer Music’s “London Calling” season, 25 days of activities spurred by the idea of musical life in London throughout the centuries. That clever conceit enabled the program to broaden its content beyond English works to encompass music heard in London, particularly in the popular 19th-century concertgiving associations. TSM’s 11th edition, the sixth and final under its personable artistic director Douglas McNabney, was its most extensive to date, unfurling a huge amount of repertoire between July 14 and August 7. I was able to take in ten concerts, three masterclasses and a rehearsal, making for many memorable moments, much of which I have already written about on thewholenote.com. Here are some highlights: McNabney’s farewell season got off to an impressive start with a concert of English music for strings conducted by Joseph Swensen. He introduced the evening and noted that Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, which we were about to hear, was the first piece he wanted to program in the festival. The remarkable performance which followed - by American tenor Nicholas Phan, TSO principal horn Neil Deland and the TSM Festival Strings - was breathtaking in its execution. Deland’s horn playing was unforgettable for its purity of tone, a wondrous support for the mercurial tenor and the assorted poetic anthology, the text taken from some of Britten’s favourite verse by the likes of Tennyson, Blake and Keats; the powerful Blow, Bugle Blow, the foreboding horn of The Sick Rose, the anguished and awestruck Lyke Wake Dirge and the seductive voice of To Sleep. What a rare treat! In a refreshing concert July 19, pianist Pedja Muzijevic’s presented “Haydn Dialogues,” a 75-minute performance of four Haydn sonatas separated by pieces by Oliver Knussen, John Cage and Jonathan Berger. Passionate about mixing old and new music, Muzijevic is also a genial talker, combining a delicious wit and the occasional catty comment with a streamlined historical sensibility that made it easy to relate to Haydn and his relationship with his patrons, the Esterházy family, and to the timely invitation by the British impresario, Salomon, to live and work in London. (“Talk about London Calling,” Muzijevic added in a clever aside.) The Coronation of King George II took place in October of 1727; Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the ceremony. On July 26 in Walter Hall, Daniel Taylor led his Theatre of Early Music in a delightful hour-long re-imagining of the event that literally and figuratively was the grand centrepiece of TSM’s season. In addition to using music of the day, Taylor had the wisdom to include three anachronistic elements: Hubert Parry’s I Was Glad and Jerusalem, as well as John Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God, which broadened the evening and extended the ceremonial maelstrom into the 20th century. The effervescent Taylor and his company had the musical smarts to carry it off. A week of exceptional musicality (which also included TSO concertmaster and TSM artistic director designate, Jonathan Crow, headlining an enjoyable evening of mostly British chamber music, July 28) concluded July 29, with an outstanding recital by the talented Dover Quartet. It was TSM’s nod to the Beethoven Quartet Society of 1845, the first public cycle of the composer’s complete string quartets, a series of London concerts each of which included an early, middle and late quartet. So, in that spirit, the capacity Walter Hall audience was treated to Op.18 No.4, Op.59 No.3 and Op.132. The Dovers’ playing of the early quartet was empathetic, subtle, Presented by Attila Glatz Concert Productions in association with AEP Mozart Requiem & Bach Magnificat KlangVerwaltung Orchestra & Chorgemeinschaft Neubeuern Chorus Enoch zu Guttenberg, conductor Susanne Bernhard, soprano • Anke Vondung, mezzo-soprano Daniel Johannsen, tenor • Tareq Nazmi, bass A unique performance of timeless masterpieces October 22 • 8 pm TICKETS: 416.872.4255 or roythomson.com thewholenote.com September 1, 2016 - October 7, 2016 | 21