Category Archives: Personal ruminations & essays

Met HD Akhnaten

Posted on November 24, 2019 by

Yesterday I watched Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten as presented in the Metropolitan Opera’s High Definition broadcast on a big screen in Scarborough, at the same time people were watching it in many places around the world. I wish the Canadian … Continue reading →

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Politics, Reviews, Spirituality & Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Oxymoronic Augmented Opera

Posted on November 23, 2019 by

I don’t use that word lightly, and it’s not an insult. Some operas are oxymoronic, rife with contradiction, asymptotic in their fascination with impossibilities. Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande is the creation of a playwright who cringed in the presence … Continue reading →

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Opera Atelier Don Giovanni: Toronto context

Posted on October 28, 2019 by

Two down, one to go as far as the big operas are concerned. Robert Wilson’s Turandot and David McVicar’s Rusalka, a pair of fairy-tale operas in visually brilliant productions have finished at the Canadian Opera Company, while Opera Atelier are … Continue reading →

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Rusalka: and now for something completely different

Posted on October 13, 2019 by

Tonight the Canadian Opera Company premiered their take on the recent Lyric Opera of Chicago production of Dvořák’s Rusalka directed by Sir David McVicar. It stands in rather stark contrast to the other current COC production, Puccini’s Turandot¸ whose mise-en-scene … Continue reading →

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Amplified Opera —The Queen in Me

Posted on October 12, 2019 by

The title tells the story. Night #2 in the Amplified Opera opening concert series at the Ernest Balmer Studio was The Queen in Me, a performance piece straddling the line between surreal confessional and stand-up comedy, a brilliant piece of … Continue reading →

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Somewhere over the… moon?

Posted on October 11, 2019 by

Both works currently playing at the Canadian Opera Company feature a famous aria known by people who might otherwise not know the whole work. In Turandot it’s “nessun dorma”, a piece associated with Luciano Pavarotti, and maybe a little bit … Continue reading →

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AMPLIFIED OPERA @ birth: The Way I See It 

Posted on October 11, 2019 by

I was among the audience present at the Ernest Balmer Studio for the birth of Amplified Opera, the brain-child of Teiya Kasahara & Aria Umezawa, in the first of three different programs to launch a new opera company. Directed by … Continue reading →

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