Volume 22 Issue 9 - Summer 2017

DAHLIA KATZ Bicycle

DAHLIA KATZ Bicycle Opera’s SWEAT hits the road July 15 Opera 5: June closes with a major treat for rarity hunters in the form of Suffragette, presented June 22 through 25 by Opera 5. The evening is comprised of two one-act operas by British composer and women’s rights campaigner, Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), the first female composer to be awarded a damehood. Her full-length opera The Wreckers (1906) is often considered one of the most important English operas ever written. Opera 5 will perform fully staged productions of Smyth’s Fête Galante (1923) and The Boatswain’s Mate (1916) accompanied by the composer’s own reductions for chamber orchestra. The first is a story about commedia dell’arte characters that ends unhappily. The second depicts a battle of the sexes and features Smyth’s own feminist March of the Women. Both works are directed by Jessica Derventzis and conducted by Evan Mitchell. July Bicycle Opera: In July and August, the intrepid Bicycle Opera tours to towns all through Ontario. In the past the company has toured collections of very short operas or opera excerpts. This year, it is touring the Canadian premiere of a single one-act piece titled Sweat, by composer Juliet Palmer and librettist Anna Chatterton. If these names seem familiar it is because the same duo wrote The Man Who Married Himself for Toronto Masque Theatre, which had its premiere earlier this year. Sweat is an a cappella opera for a five-member chorus and four soloists about the ethical problems of the global garment industry and is performed in English, Cantonese, Ukrainian, Spanish and Hungarian. The four soloists are Stephanie Tritchew as the Union Organizer, Catherine Daniel as an Overseer, Larissa Koniuk as a Neighbour and Keith Lam as the Factory Owner. The director is Banuta Rubess and Geoffrey Sirett conducts. The tour starts in Hamilton on July 15, travels to six other municipalities in Ontario including Ottawa and ends with a run in Toronto from August 3 to 6. Brott’s Carmen: While many still lament the disappearance of Opera Hamilton, opera in Hamilton has not completely died. In recent years the Brott Music Festival has presented a fully staged opera as part of its offerings from June 21 to August 17. This summer’s opera will be Bizet’s Carmen, presented for one night only on July 13 at Mohawk College. Beste Kalender sings the title role, Justin Stolz is Don José, Lauren Margison is Micaëla and Johnathon Kirby is Escamillo. Patrick Hansen directs and Boris Brott conducts the Brott Festival Orchestra. The Elora Festival also occasionally features opera. This year, the opera is Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, performed in concert by the Elora Singers and Festival Orchestra for one night only on July 27 on a double bill with Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, starring countertenor Daniel Taylor. SOLT: Straddling the end of July and beginning of August are the three productions of the Summer Opera Lyric Theatre in Toronto, fully staged with piano accompaniment. Two of the offerings are standard repertoire. On July 29, August 1, 3 and 6 is Bizet’s Carmen and on July 29, August 2 and 4 is Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. What stands out in this sesquicentennial year is a double bill of two Canadian operas – Night Blooming Cereus (1953-58) by John Beckwith and A Northern Lights Dream (2017) by Michael Rose. Beckwith’s opera, to a libretto by James Reaney, was commissioned by the CBC and first broadcast in 1959, with its first stage performance in 1960. The opera concerns the healing of a family rift that coincides with the mystical blooming of a rare plant that flowers once every 100 years. Rose’s opera will be a world premiere. It is set inside Helen’s Prêt-à- Porter and Bridal Shop on a hot midsummer day near the hamlet of Shakespeare, Ontario. A client’s refusal to pay a bill brings the shop close to ruin, until Helen calls on Robin to solve the problem and ordinary Ontarians start to meld with characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. August: Stratford Summer Music: In August, opera can be found in unexpected places. For the past two years Stratford Summer Music has presented a staged opera with dinner at the Revival House (formerly known as The Church). This year, the opera will be Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (1843). Alexander Dobson sings the title role of an elderly bachelor who plans to disinherit his nephew by taking a wife and producing an heir. Irina Medvedeva sings Norina, the wily woman Don Pasquale wants to marry, and Jonathan MacArthur is the nephew Ernesto who is in love with Norina. Amanda Smith directs and designs the piece and Peter Tiefenbach is the music director. The opera runs August 18 through 20. Highlands Opera: In Haliburton, the Highlands Opera Studio is presenting two operas. On August 27, 29, 30 and 31 it presents a fully staged production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, with one cast on the 27th and 30th and another on the 29th and 31st. On August 19, HOS presents the first public semi-staged workshop performance of a brand new Canadian opera, Wiikondiwin (Feast/Feasting), a co-commission with L’Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal, by Odawa composer Barbara Croall. Soprano Adanya Dunn and baritone Samuel Chan join with First Nations actors/singers/musicians Rod Nettagog, Bradley Nettagog and Croall herself in the performance. Woodland creatures are living happily until they realize that human influence is destroying their habitat. Led by a wolf, they hold a feast to discuss how to return the Earth to its healthy state. This December, Wiikondiwin will return in a fully staged form to both Haliburton and Montreal. Opera Muskoka: A second summer opera company in cottage country is Opera Muskoka, now in its eighth year. On August 22 it presents a concert performance of Puccini’s La Bohème in Italian with English surtitles at the Rene M. Caisse Theatre in Bracebridge. Tenor Daevyd Pepper is the organizer and will perform Rodolfo in the opera. Those willing to travel as far as Montreal will find a major treat in store. On August 6, the Festival de Lanaudière in Joliette will give audiences a chance to hear the Metropolitan Opera’s new music director designate, Quebec’s own Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conduct his favourite opera for the first time – Wagner’s Parsifal. The singers for this concert performance include tenor Christian Elsner, mezzo Mihoko Fujimura, baritones Peter Rose, Boaz Daniel and Brett Polegato and bass-baritone Thomas Goerz. Nézet-Séguin conducts Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain – certainly a pilgrimage worth making. Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com. 32 | June 1, 2017 - September 7, 2017 thewholenote.com

Beat by Beat | Art of Song Songs of the Open Road LYDIA PEROVIC While Toronto’s concert scene is winding down for the summer, it’s still possible to work out a solid, if lighter and necessarily more travel-filled, art song schedule for the next three months. June kicks off close to home, with the Music Gallery and Off Centre Music Salon/DÉRANGÉ co-presenting #IMWITHHER, a June 8 concert that puts women composers and soloists centre stage. An evening of electro-pop, modern jazz and contemporary art music is an intriguing enough mix; the contemporary segment with the mezzo Lucy Dhegrae and Lara Dodds-Eden at the piano, which includes so many composers that never get heard in Toronto, makes it a must. One of Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations, “Heart Meditation,” is on the program. Oliveros was a fascinating twentieth-century avantgardist – she passed away last year at the age of 84 – whose creative life spanned all the way from deep experimental electronics to an almost total withdrawal from performing and to sound creation as personal practice for staying sane and capable of listening in a disintegrating world. She also studied movement, kinetic awareness and the effect of social conditioning on the human body, and gradually merged her kinetic awareness and sonic practices into one. A group of women formed around these musical practices at the same time that the Second Wave of feminism began creating consciousness-raising groups. This new performing ensemble formed and reformed each time it would meet at Oliveros’ home. “They had been held down, musically, so long,” Oliveros said, explaining the reason behind the women-only group in an interview in late 1970s. That composing is a whole-body activity, that it can be done by a collective, and that it can effect social and psychological change are notions that will sound foreign to our ears, but that just shows how far back our own era has retreated from the questions on the philosophy and politics of music that the musicians of the avant-garde have left us with. Since there is no such thing as the definitive edition of Sonic Meditations, and since they tend to be textual (one recommends walking in absolute silence; another teaching oneself how to fly), what Lucy Dhegrae will do in this “Heart Meditation,” we can only guess. Actually, we probably can’t even guess. But to give you an idea of the Oliveros magic, I would recommend her Sound Patterns and Tropes, recorded on the 25 Years of New York New Music CD set, and her early Four Electronic Pieces 1959-1966 (both recordings are available in the Naxos free online music library via your library card). Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s song Hvolf, Sky Macklay’s Glossolalia and Tonia Ko’s Smoke and Distance are also on the program. Each has already been performed and digitally preserved and can easily be found on Vimeo and SoundCloud. The art song section completes with an as-yet untitled world premiere by NYC-based composer Leaha Villarreal. And that is just one third of #IMWITHHER: Toronto-based electro-pop band Bernice will perform a selection of old and new songs (their new EP Puff is out in June) and FOG Brass Band, headed by the trumpeter Rebecca Hennessy, will complete the program. June 8 at 8pm at Heliconian Hall; tickets via Off Centre Music Salon and the Music Gallery websites and at the door. Later in June, and quite out of town, there’s the Montreal Baroque Festival with some promising vocal offerings. On June 23, “Le Cracheur de feu,” with soprano Andréanne Brisson-Paquin and the ensemble Pallade Musica, is a program consisting of Purcell, John Eccles, Angelo Berardi, Alessandro Stradella and a world premiere by the young Quebec composer Jonathan Goulet. On June 24, Suzie Soprano Suzie LeBlanc, with Constantinople in a recent performance of their concert called “Metamorphosi.” LeBlanc and Constantinople perform June 24 at the Montreal Baroque Festival. LeBlanc and the musicians of the ensemble Constantinople will perform “improvisations on Italian masterpieces” (that is all the festival is willing to give away). Equally cryptic is the description of the concert by the ensemble Sonate 1704 with soprano Jacinthe Thibault scheduled for June 25, but we do know that that it will be a battle of sorts between Catholic and Protestant cantatas and sonatas that were written or published in France around the time of the early Reformation. July: My suggested art song trip is to Ottawa for the Chamberfest (July 22 to August 4). July 24 is going to be particularly packed. A free daytime concert at the National Gallery led by accordionist Alexander Sevastian, titled The Mighty Accordion: A Brief History, will include operatic bass Robert Pomakov singing a selection of CONSTANTINOPLE thewholenote.com June 1, 2017 - September 7, 2017 | 33