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Volume 22 Issue 9 - Summer 2017

  • Text
  • Festival
  • Toronto
  • Jazz
  • August
  • Theatre
  • Musical
  • Concerts
  • Quartet
  • Arts
  • September
  • Volume
CBC Radio's Lost Horizon; Pinocchio as Po-Mo Operatic Poster Boy; Meet the Curators (Crow, Bernstein, Ridge); a Global Music Orchestra is born; and festivals, festivals, festivals in our 13th annual summer music Green Pages. All this and more in our three-month June-through August summer special issue, now available in flipthrough HERE and on the stands commencing Thursday June 1.

Beat by Beat | On Opera

Beat by Beat | On Opera Operatic Staycations! CHRISTOPHER HOILE Summers in Southern Ontario used to be known for their dearth of opera. Not anymore. While festivals such as Glimmerglass beckon across the border, there is so much operatic activity of interest in Ontario and Quebec that opera lovers need not venture out of Canada. June Stratford: Opening on May 31 and running until October 21, the Stratford Festival makes one of its occasional forays into operetta with a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. The 1878 work, G&S’s first big success, features the favourite Gilbertian plot device of babies switched at birth and its attendant satire of the British class system. Steve Ross is Captain Corcoran, Mark Uhre is Ralph Rackstraw, who loves above his station in pining for Josephine, sung by Jennifer Rider-Shaw, the captain’s daughter. Affairs on board are scrutinized by Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty, sung by Laurie Murdoch, while Lisa Horner, well-known from Mirvish musicals, is Little Buttercup. Lezlie Wade, who directed Obeah Opera in 2015 in Toronto, is the stage director and Franklin Brasz is the music director. TOT: Those with a taste for more operetta should check out the Galope Offenbachienne on June 4 by Toronto Operetta Theatre. There will be excerpts from La Vie parisienne, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, La Belle Hélène, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and Orphée aux enfers. Michael Rose at the piano will accompany Holly Chaplin, Meagan Larios, Michael McLean and Janaka Welihinda, and Virginia Reh will direct. Opera by Request: As for those with a taste for opera that has operetta very much in mind, they will be pleased to see that Opera by Request, for its 10th anniversary gala, is presenting a semi-staged version of Richard Strauss’s waltz-inflected Der Rosenkavalier (1911) on June 9 and 10. Unlike most previous OBR operas, the opera will be accompanied by a chamber ensemble under the baton of William Shookhoff. Shookhoff states that Rosenkavalier will mark the debut of a new production model for OBR. Katharine Dain sings the role of the Marschallin, Barbara King is her lover Octavian, Uwe Dambruch is the Marschallin’s cousin Baron Ochs and Danielle Dudycha is the young Sophie, his fiancée who falls in love with Octavian. TSO: On June 14 and 15, audiences can get a feel for how much changed in continental music between 1911 and 1933, when the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under Peter Oundjian presents the “sung ballet” The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill, written to a libretto by Bertolt Brecht after both had fled Nazi Germany. The story concerns two sisters, Anna I, a dancer, and Anna II, a singer, who are really two sides of the same person. The Annas’ actions are the subject of commentary by a male quartet called The Family. Anna I’s simple project is to have her own little house, but in trying to achieve this she commits each one of the seven deadly sins. Jennifer Nichols dances Anna I, Wallis Giunta sings Anna II, and the quartet is made up of tenors Isaiah Bell and Owen McCausland, baritone Geoffrey Sirrett and bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus. The much-indemand Joel Ivany directs the semi-staged production, which also includes filmed segments. The evening program is completed with Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (1938), and Bela Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1937), and a short new work by Andrew Balfour. Riel at NAC: On June 15 and 17, anyone who missed the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Louis Riel by Harry Somers and Mavor Moore will have another chance to see it at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. It is the same production that played in Toronto Playbill from the original 1878 production at the London Opera Comique. directed by Peter Hinton and starring Russell Braun in the title role. The major difference will be that in Ottawa’s Alexander Shelley and the NAC Orchestra will replace Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra. Charlotte: Back in Toronto as part of Luminato on June 16 through 18 are performances of a work-in-progress called CHARLOTTE: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music. Czech composer Aleš Brezina has set a libretto by Canadian actor Alon Nashman about the life and artwork of French artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943), who produced over 1000 paintings between 1941 and 1942 while in hiding from the Nazis. Before she was deported to Auschwitz at age 26, she gave her book Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel to a local physician for safekeeping. The goal of CHARLOTTE is to put this modern singspiel on the stage as Salomon might have envisioned it. A cast of eight actors and singers, including Nashman, is directed by Pamela Howard and an ensemble of four is conducted by Peter Tiefenbach. Fri. July 28, Sat. Aug. 5 at 8 pm & Sun. July 30, Sat. Aug. 5 at 2 pm thewholenote.com June 1, 2017 - September 7, 2017 | 31

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