I won’t be seeing the COC’s Carmen until Friday the 5th. To make sure I go in with as many preconceived ideas about it as possible, here are some reviews: Toronto Star: Rinat Shaham is cheerful for someone who has just been thrown into an operatic fire – the Canadian Opera Company’s current Carmen, which [...]
Here’s an interesting Opera News interview with the COC’s General Director, Alexander Neef. The article takes particular note of his youth, suggesting it might help him attract younger audiences to opera (was he the one responsible for choosing the hipper-than-thou Drake Hotel to host the Opera 101 night a few weeks ago?). Of particular interest [...]
Filed in COC
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Tagged A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alexander Neef, Bluebeard's Castle, COC, Don Giovanni, Drake Hotel, Edmonton Opera, Erwartung, Fidelio, Filumena, La Boheme, Opera News, Robert Lapage, Rusalka, Simon Boccanegra, The Rake's Progress, War and Peace
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If you count Gilbert & Sullivan (and here, I will) the first opera I attended was the Rossland Light Opera’s Pirates of Penzance. I was around seven years old, and a fledgling pianist who greatly enjoyed my Classical Kids tapes. Evidently my mother decided I was capable of sitting quietly for up to an hour, [...]
Filed in Thoughts on Opera
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Tagged Bluebeard's Castle, Carmen, Die Walkure, Edmonton Opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Jenufa, Karita Matilla, La Traviata, me, Musicals, Pirates of Penzance, rec.music.opera, Robert Lapage, Rossland Light Opera, Royal Conservatory of Music, Ruggero Raimondi, Tosca
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
I started an opera blog, yes, but will it be an adequate one? Rather than enumerate to myself the various things making me unqualified to write about opera and discourage myself from blogging, I thought I’d preemptively list them here and go ahead with it anyway. 1. I don’t live in a major opera center [...]
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Back when my home company was four-per-year Edmonton Opera, the formula for their season planning was pretty easy to figure out. It typically consisted of: Gilbert & Sullivan in alternate years, with Mikado, Pinafore, and Pirates in rotation One of Puccini’s “big three” (Tosca, Boheme, Butterfly) alternating with popular Verdi or equivalent cash cow (Carmen) [...]
Filed in COC
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Tagged Adams, Aida, Ariadne auf Naxos, Britten, COC, Death in Venice, Edmonton Opera, Gluck, La Cenerentola, Mozart, Nixon in China, Orfeo ed Euridice, R. Strauss, Rossini, The Magic Flute, Verdi
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Attendees of Tuesday’s Opera 101 event at the Drake Hotel were deprived the sight of Clifton Forbis, slated to sing Otello. Since the concertmaster, Marie Bérard, had made particular note of his attractiveness (the women in the orchestra were definitely paying attention to him, she said) it was a bit of a disappointment not to [...]
