Table of contents for Vol. LIX, No. 2 in Opera Canada

On Oct. 22nd, some of Canada’s most fervent opera fans and supporters gathered in Toronto to celebrate 2018’s Opera Canada Awards—’The Rubies’ honourees. This year, the coveted 18-karat gold and ruby musical note pins were awarded to Wayne Gooding, opera educator and former Editor of Opera Canada; Dominique Labelle, soprano and vocal pedagogue, and Alexander Neef, General Director, Canadian Opera Company and Artistic Director, Santa Fe Opera. Each year, ‘The Rubies’ celebrates the talent and accomplishments of individuals who have made a significant contribution to the Canadian opera world as artists, builders, administrators and philanthropists. Thanks to all of our generous sponsors and patrons, especially title sponsor BMO Financial Group, for making our sold-out gala a night to remember! See our ‘Rubies’ profiles of Wayne, Dominique and Alexander at operacanada.ca.…

For 85 years, the Banff Centre has established itself as a mountaintop beacon, attracting top artistic talent and pedagogues and then beaming their accomplishments in music, theatre, literature, film, visual art and other forms of expression across the land. Banff has undergone a major physical transformation over the past decade, including opening the new Shaw outdoor amphitheatre and the sleek, Jack Diamond-designed Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation, and giving their hotel rooms a hip Scandinavian makeover. Even the name has been officially rebranded to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, reflecting a wider outlook. There have been positive strategic changes too, especially to the centre’s relationships with the area’s Treaty 7 Blackfoot, Stoney Nakoda and Tsuut’ina Nations. In 2017 a new Director of Indigenous Arts was brought on…

As might have been expected, last issue’s cover story dealing with the absence of Canadian opera productions in the burgeoning world of online and cinema livestreaming attracted a fair amount of comment. It was the first time Opera Canada shared one of its long form features with our online audience—a practice we’ll continue in the future. The story also prompted Opéra de Montréal General Director, Patrick Corrigan, to point out our omission of his company’s tradition of transmitting popular operas titles such as La Bohème, Madama Butterfly and Carmen live to Percival Molson Memorial Stadium. Union cooperation made these one-off screenings financially viable for the company as they were viewed as free, public events. This is still very different, however, from the ongoing live stream and HD cinema programs discussed…

Meeting soprano Tracy Cantin, one is struck by her personal warmth and ready smile, her peals of melodious laughter never far away. When we chatted in May, she had every reason to be happy. It was just days after her triumph in Anna Bolena at Canadian Opera Company, jumping in for an indisposed Sondra Radvanovsky. For a young singer to make a COC debut replacing a superstar must have been daunting, but Cantin was up to the task. Her Anna was youthful and sympathetic, her tone gleaming and sweet. Cantin received a well-deserved ovation: “When I came out for my solo bow, the audience was spectacular. I was so thrilled.” Covering Sondra seems to be a good-luck charm for Cantin, who had previously replaced her, again as Anna, at Lyric…

On Aug. 18th, I had the pleasure of meeting with Canadian baritone Russell Braun in the old-fashioned Niemetz Café on Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz in Salzburg. It was just two days after he’d sung the gruelling role of Pentheus in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s hairraising production of Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids. The premiere was a huge success, especially for Braun as the ill-fated king, a victim of humiliation and destruction at the hands of his own family and subjects who have turned into fanatic followers of Dionysus. In a free-flowing conversation he spoke about growing up in Germany and Canada, conducting, golf, being the father of two champion baseball players and over 25 years of singing in centre field. RB: I first sang at Salzburg in 1997. It was Pelléas, with my father singing…

DECEMBER 28 TORONTO OPERETTA THEATRE. Ring in the New Year with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus starring Lara Ciekiewicz, Adam Fisher, Caitlin Wood and Cian Horrobin. JANUARY 26 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY, Toronto. Second revival of James Robinson’s production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra with Christine Goerke in the title role. The COC’s most recent Elektra, Susan Bullock, now plays her mother, Klytämnestra, and Erin Wall makes a role debut as the sister, Chrysothemis. 29 OPÉRA DE MONTRÉAL. Canadian premiere of American jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s Champion, the story of gay boxer Emile Griffith sung by American bass, Arthur Woodley. Also starring Aubrey Allicock, Catherine Daniel, Brett Polegato and Asitha Tennekoon. 29 TAPESTRY OPERA, Toronto. Partnering with Theatre Passe Muraille, the premiere of composer Chris Thornborrow and librettist Julie Tepperman’s Hook Up—three young…

CDs A QUIET PLACE BERNSTEIN Decca 4833895 2018 marks the centennial of the birth of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) and one of the year’s tributes is a new recording of his last work for the stage, the opera A Quiet Place, with a strong young cast and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and Chorus conducted by OSM Music Director Kent Nagano. Premiered in 1983 in Houston, A Quiet Place was intended as a sequel to Trouble in T ahiti (1952), Bernstein’s jazz-influenced one-act satire on 1950s American suburban life centred on the married couple Sam and Dinah. For A Quiet Place, Bernstein and librettist Stephen Wadsworth advanced the time by 30 years, when Sam and the now-adult children are grieving the death of Dinah after a recent car crash. Enter…

Arts criticism—what’s the point? Jenna Simeonov asks…is there room for ‘biased’ observers in the classical media? There’s a question that has lingered, passive and benign, around the topic of arts criticism. And for me in particular, in recent months it has grown into an insistent, tangible problem craving a real solution. What is the function of criticism in the realms of opera and classical music? Or, more bluntly posed: what’s the point of reviewing performances already past? Certainly, readers aren’t taking opera reviews to heart the same way they do in other media. They don’t look up the classical music equivalent of Yuja Wang’s IMDB score or find out how many Rotten Tomatoes La traviata has. They don’t buy tickets to shows based on our reviews, either—the performance runs are…

There are clusters of Canadian musician-expats in just about all of Germany’s major cities today. The young Torontoborn mezzo-soprano Marta Herman moved away right after university and immediately forged a stable career in the German fest system. She auditioned for Canadian young artist [YA] programs after finishing her studies, but to no avail, and moving to the US was never really in the books as she found the American opera circuit a bit alienating. Polish relatives just across the German border as well as the relatively close distances between European opera centres provided even more incentive to cross the ocean. “I always knew that if I didn’t get into any of the YA programs [at home], I would go overseas,” she says. Oper Frankfurt invited her into their YA roster,…

Canadian director Robert Carsen is acclaimed for his international productions as well as stagings on home turf. His 1997 Metropolitan Opera production of Eugene Onegin opened the 18/19 Canadian Opera Company season. This autumn he turned his attention to Die tote Stadt for Komische Oper Berlin (KOB), a work with a fascinating history and an enthusiastic renaissance. The 1920 opera by Erich Wolfgang Korngold enjoyed immense popularity in its time, though it was later banned by the National Socialists in Germany for its Jewish origins. Based on the novel Bruges-la-mort by Belgian symbolist author Georges Rodenbach, it features a libretto by the then 22-year-old Korngold and his father under the name of “Paul Schott.” The spectre of WWI casts long shadows across both the novel and the opera, as does…