Table of contents for Spring 2022 in Opera Canada

This is not a time for thoughtless optimism, but welcome to Issue #251 of the magazine, the first published in a brave but cautious new world of opera in Canada and Canadians in opera everywhere. Starting in February, there have been mainstage productions in Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, reviewed in this issue; meanwhile, news and reviews of live performances in schools, conservatories and companies are appearing at a quickening pace at operacanada.ca, the magazine’s online complement. Artists are working to pick up careers stunted by the pandemic’s forced hiatus, and companies have started to announce more confident and substantial plans for the 2022/23 season. At the time of writing, government-mandated pandemic restrictions have generally eased across the country, allowing theatres and concert halls to welcome audiences back. Some credible sources,…

Here’s what singers are discussing around the…what’s the theatrical equivalent of a water cooler? Trick question—Don’t clump, don’t gather or socialize or…sigh…I know, we’re all COV-er it. From the factory floor… In Europe and the US, my colleagues and I continue to be inspired by opera administrators’ strategic planning and execution (Canada is late to this verb) under extreme circumstances. Singing from Romania to North Carolina and proving where there’s a will, there’s a way, we singers thank these underappreciated and often underpaid leaders and staff heartily–Viva il lupo! (Google it—no space)! Could we start, in Canada, with what American and European houses have been doing all along—creating protocols that are more adaptive? For a recent La bohème in North Carolina, we did twice-weekly, drive-thru Rapid PCR tests, with results in…

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”—ALBERT EINSTEIN FOR CANADIANS INTERESTED in classical vocal pedagogy, November 9, 2021, was a special day. Mary Morrison, Canadian soprano and voice teacher extraordinaire, turned 95. In recognition of that milestone, the Voice Studies Program at the University of Toronto paid tribute to her with a special concert, Celebrating Mary! Sadly, because of COVID restrictions, the event was open to UofT members but closed to the public. Fortunately, it was videotaped and archived on the UofT Faculty of Music’s You-Tube channel, so we can enjoy the celebration (youtube.com/watch?v=hmYDy7FXZPw) It opens with 1948 film footage of Morrison singing Mimì’s entrance aria in La bohème. It’s vintage Morrison, to be sure, revealing a beautiful lyric soprano in…

“In the fall of 1946, an unprecedented and unique form of instruction was introduced into the curriculum of the newly organized senior school of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.”—OPERA AND THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, KENNETH PEGLER Developed by its first director, Arnold Walter, the Opera School, now the Opera Division of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, has had an enormous influence on the musical life of Toronto, of Canada and the world at large. As Pegler noted early on in his study: “The performances of the ‘Opera School’ were by no means the first of their kind in Canada. Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia played to pre-Confederation audiences in Quebec City in 1864.” Musicologist and former Dean of the Faculty of Music, the late Carl Morey,…

“A treasured holiday tradition,” the Met calls its annual series of family-friendly condensed operas, and maybe there’s indeed a chunk of its regular audience that treasures these year-end offerings. But for most experienced operaphiles, I suspect, they’re events more to be tolerated—for their children’s or grandchildren’s sake, or a niece’s or nephew’s, or even a curious contemporary’s—than to be actively enjoyed. That’s been the case for me, from the very start of the tradition in 2006, with the trimmed-and-translated Magic Flute that’s still getting trotted out regularly; anyone who knows and loves Mozart’s score won’t be happy about the many cuts—not to mention the equally many annoyances of Julie Taymor’s brittle puppet-show production. This year’s Cinderella, alternating with another round of Flutes, started out with a distinct advantage: a far,…

MÉLODIES DE LIONEL DAUNAIS ATMA CLASSIQUE ACD2 2893 THIS RELEASE FEATURING baritone Dominique Côté and pianist Esther Gonthier, recorded in Saint-Irénée, Que., in April 2021, is a most welcome and long-overdue tribute to a multi-talented musician. Born in Montreal in 1902, Lionel Daunais is fêted here as a composer, but he enjoyed a wide-ranging career. He was a successful baritone, winning a Prix d’Europe in 1926 that enabled him to study in Paris and become principal at Opera of Algiers, where he appeared in Carmen, Faust, Manon, La traviata and The Barber of Seville. After returning to Canada in 1930, Daunais starred in productions of Healey Willan’s The Order of Good Cheer and Deirdre, sang with the Société Canadienne d’Opérette and founded Trio lyrique, a vocal ensemble featured on CBC…

PHILIPPE SLY started his career in the world of opera as something of a wunderkind. At the age of 21, while still an undergraduate at Montreal’s McGill University, he was awarded one of the Grand Prizes in the 2011 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. The following year, he took home the First Prize, as well as the prizes for Best Canadian Artist, Best Artist from Quebec, Best Performance of the Imposed Canadian Work and the People’s Choice Award at the Montreal International Music Competition. By the age of 23, he had recorded his first album for the Analekta Label, and had been named “Révélation Classique” by Radio-Canada. After a short stint in the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio, he was offered an Adler Fellowship by San Francisco Opera and made…

Canadian opera training may need a rinascimento, a second act in which characters come together, untangle the plot and move it forward. The opera industry has changed, but does the current system for training artists fully prepare them for new realities in the professional trenches? Considering the problem holistically, the system encourages the Perpetual Student Singer, cycling young talent through undergraduate and graduate degrees, summer programs and now multiple Young Artist Programs (YAP). The result is at least 10 years spent learning, but mostly sitting and waiting. Current practice would seem to underplay the new normal, which is that most would-be opera singers need transferrable skills training and more diversity of thought in school and in their apprenticeships to help them develop a portfolio of income streams. Betty Allison, who…

DONIZETTI PENTATONE PTC 5186970 DONIZETTI’S THREE “TUDOR Queen” operas—Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (in which, despite the title, the real star is Elizabeth I)—are often seen as a sort of trilogy and have occasionally been performed as such with a single soprano starring in all three. It’s a feat Sondra Radvanovsky achieved at the Metropolitan Opera in the 2015/16 season. It’s not particularly surprising, then, that she should have been sought by Lyric Opera of Chicago to star in a show featuring the final scenes of each opera, which was recorded live in Chicago in December 2019. The format of this two-disc set is that the overture of each opera is followed by its final scene. Radvanovsky sings the queens while the supporting roles are taken by young…

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MELODIES OF FRANZ LEHÁR PROFIL PH22004 THE AUDIO COMPONENT OF this dual CD/DVD release documents a June 2020 concert at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the best-loved composers of Viennese operetta. (The DVD, which presents a made-for-TV documentary, Franz Lehár: The Man of Smiles, has not been reviewed.) The concert features the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1900 and, like the Theater an der Wien, has had a long and close association with Lehár, Polish tenor Pyotr Beczala, Canadian tenor Michael Schade and Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund, all under the baton of Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck. This concert program seems intent on undermining any presumption that Lehár’s tuneful operettas are mainly lighthearted and even…

“Not at all,” counters Toronto-born, Munich-based soprano Jacoba Barber-Rozema, a McGill alumna in classical voice performance. “I love film but have always been very excited by the idea of live performance. I’m not closing any doors.” Sound advice. And Barber-Rozema has gleaned other indispensable nuggets from her parents. “Probably to try to listen to your gut as much as you can,” she continues. “Don’t say ‘yes’ to projects just because you may be perceived as ‘successful’ for doing them. Say ‘yes’ to ones you’re excited about, or feel are necessary, or that you’re inexpressibly drawn to. Also, always continue to question the patriarchal, white and hetero-normative systems we find ourselves in, even though it’s easier to just accept and run with them.” Barber-Rozema talks the talk and walks the walk.…

As a Latino in Canada, I soon became aware of the unique potential of my position as General Director of two performing arts organizations to help steward progress for other Latinos and facilitate opportunities for friends in the lyric theatre who labour mightily for a space on stage. How little did I know that complexities in cultural matters would thwart many of my moves. Issues arose first in 2003, when I programmed the Cuban zarzuela, Cecilia Valdes, by composer Gonzalo Roig, based on the novel by Cirilo Villaverde, for Toronto Operetta Theatre (TOT). I was fascinated by the operatic treatment of sexism and machismo in Latin America, racial bias, the slave trade, incest and murder, all themes in the novel and followed with equal candor by the zarzuela. But the…

At the end of her legendary series of Juilliard masterclasses in 1971, Maria Callas is reported to have left the stage with one last instruction: “Whether I continue singing or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you use whatever you have learned wisely. Think of the expression of the words, of good diction, and of your own deep feelings. The only thanks I ask is that you sing properly and honestly. If you do this, I will feel repaid.” Entire plays, novels and movie scripts have been written about mystical relationships between students and their teachers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a musician, a journalist or an actuary, you never forget your best teacher—or your worst one. They can become second, surrogate parents. Their words, whether toxic or supportive,…

SAINT-SAËNS PALAZETTO BRU ZANE BZ1047 THE LATEST RELEASE IN THE CD/book series from the Palazetto Bru Zane is Saint-Saëns’s 1893 opéra comique, Phryné, loosely based on an incident in the life of the famous 4th-century BCE courtesan. It’s a two-act piece lasting about 65 minutes. The original was given with spoken dialogue, but as so often with this genre, recitatives (here added by André Messager in 1896) have been used in this recording, as they were in most contemporary performances. The plot is straightforward enough. Dicéphile is a rather pompous magistrate and has just been honoured by the city with a bust. His nephew/ward Nicias is in love with Phryné, but also broke and about to be arrested for debt. With the help of Phryné’s servants, he beats up the…

ABRAHAMSEN BSOREC 1002 AS ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED, Hans Abrahamsen‘s The Snow Queen is a dark piece that cleaves closely to the original Hans Christian Andersen story. This production from the Bayerische Staatsoper, recorded in Munich in 2019 in an English version adapted by Amanda Holden from the original Danish, takes it to a new level of complexity and darkness. Director Andreas Kriegenburg has added additional avatars of the children Gerda and Kay to the scene, creating three Gerda/Kay pairings. There are the children as children played by actors; there’s an adolescent pair played by mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson as Kay and an actor, Anna Ressel, as the adolescent Gerda; and there’s a 40-something couple played by soprano Barbara Hannigan as Gerda and actor Thomas Graßle as Kay. The magic mirror fragments that…