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Aida (Anna Markarova), Photo: Yves Renaud

Cautious Choice Aida Pays Off at the Opéra de Montréal

By Kiersten van Vliet on 19 September 2016 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

Returning to the Opéra de Montréal stage for the first time in a decade, Verdi’s Aida opened last night in a flash of grandeur. Set in a fictional pharaonic Egypt brought to life by the Romantic imagination, Aida is a classic story of forbidden love, jealousy, and revenge. Given the relative risk of Another Brick in the Wall (March 2017), a new commission from first-time opera composer Julien Bilodeau based on Pink Floyd’s seminal album The Wall, it seems judicious to open the season with this well-loved standard. While it remains secure in the operatic canon, Opéra de Montréal’s production…

Review – Franz Schubert: String Quintet – Lieder (Erato)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Romantic

His final work for strings, Schubert’s Quintet in C Major (1828) is unusual for its doubling of the cello voice rather than the viola, Mozart’s quintet model. With unmatched lyricism and finesse, Quatuor Ebène tackles this behemoth of Romantic chamber repertoire, which was only completed two months before the composer’s untimely death. Gautier Capuçon makes a fine fifth wheel, adding a dark intensity without disrupting the balance of the upper strings. This is perhaps the most evident in the exquisite second movement, Adagio, a nocturne that is so unusually slow for Schubert, and given a keenly sensitive treatment by Quatuor…

Filumena, Banff Centre, Photo: Don Lee

New Opera Productions in Canada

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Canadian Music, Classical, Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Opera, Romantic

The 2017–18 season is shaping up to be a milestone for new opera productions by Canadian companies. In celebration of the country’s 150th birthday, several works with Canadian themes will get their world premieres in Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto. Furthermore, Vancouver Opera has a watershed season with the inaugural year of the Vancouver Opera Festival. If you missed its triumphant opening run in Montreal last spring, Opéra de Montreal’s production of Les Feluettes (Lilies) travels to Pacific Opera Victoria this April. The Lost Operas of Mozart City Opera of Vancouver, 27 to 29 October, 2016 It’s a little-known fact that…

Inna Los as Cio-Cio-San and James Slayden as U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton, Photo: Ken Howard

Butterfly Emerges Strong in Berkshire Opera Festival Debut

By Charles Geyer on 31 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

OPERA REVIEW: Madama Butterfly, inaugural production of the new Berkshire Opera Festival INTERVIEW: Jonathon Loy, BOF General Director Opera is back in the Berkshires! The new Berkshire Opera Festival took its first bow on August 27 with its fascinating and beautiful new production of Puccini’s perennially popular Madama Butterfly at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. If first impressions are everything, a better introduction could not have been imagined. Of course we know Butterfly well, don’t we? For 112 years she has tantalized and beguiled operagoers (and shamed Western sensibilities) with her tale of innocent, exotic victimhood – the geisha…

Aleksey Bogdanov (Baron Scarpia), Tosca, Opera North, Photo: Lisa Morrison

Review: Putting Puccini in His Place

By Charles Geyer on 19 August 2016 Art Song, Choral, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera, Orchestral, Romantic

CONCERTS: Puccini “Beyond Verismo” at Bard SummerScape 2016 OPERA: Tosca at Opera North Puccini qua, Puccini là! Arguably the most popular and successful opera composer in history has been enjoying his typical ubiquity this summer, as a single weekend’s sampling around the Northeast United States will demonstrate. Friday, August 12 saw the closing performance of the maestro’s Tosca as rendered by Opera North (Lebanon, New Hampshire) in a taut, handsome production. And at Bard College’s final weekend of SummerScape 2016 (Dutchess County, New York), three full days of programming (August 12 through 14) were dedicated to winding up an exploration of…

Lebrecht Weekly – Schubert Lieder: Der Wanderer (Delphian)

By Norman Lebrecht on 12 August 2016 Art Song, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

It’s always a good sign when a pianist is named as the editorial force behind a lieder recital, giving the enterprise both objective distance and intellectual rigour. Graham Johnson’s Schubert cycle on Hyperion is a benchmark of this rule, each singer chosen to reflect the character of the group of songs performed. Now the vastly knowledgeable Iain Burnside has begun a similar odyssey on the exquisite Scottish label, Delphian. I must have somehow missed the first volume with soprano Ailish Tynan, but the second is a cracker. The Welsh baritone Roderick Williams, winner of this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society award,…

View on the mountains from the Combins terrace, Photo: Nicolas Brodard

Review: The Verbier Festival (July 26–29, 2016)

By Xenia Hanusiak on 8 August 2016 Chamber Music, Classical, Concert Reviews, Piano, Romantic, Violin

Verbier, Switzerland July 22 – August 7, 2016 For 23 years, Artistic Director Martin T:son Engstroem has curated the Verbier Festival with a dedicated commitment to intergenerational music making, encouraging the precocious energy of youth to collaborate alongside the cultivated gravitas of the some of the most respected musicians on the roster today. The famed Academy hosts young musicians and singers from across the globe assembling for orchestral, chamber music, and opera performances with the A-list. In the case of the 2016 edition the long-list red carpet roll out includes conductors Charles Dutoit and Gabor Takács-Nagy, pianist András Schiff, violinist…

Danish String Quartet

Daily News Roundup: 2 August 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 2 August 2016 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Daily News Roundup, Folk, Literature, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic

+ The Heckeler’s Andrew Burn takes on Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum & Jubilate with respect to the context around its creation and performance. “I’m not saying that this music shouldn’t be performed, quite the contrary. Its presentation, however, could be better geared to outlining the complex nature of its creation and allow for us to better appreciate our own history through live performance. What I am advocating for is an embrace of the whole truth to a work, even if that means acknowledging certain facts which may run contrary to the intent of its performance.” + The Danish String Quartet…

Orchestre de la Francophonie, Photo: Michel Pinault

Review: Orchestre de la Francophonie (July 28)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 2 August 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Musique québécoise, Orchestral, Romantic

For their 15th anniversary season, the Orchestre de la Francophonie participated in Les Concerts Populaires for a celebration of French music that placed foundational Quebec composers in a lineage extending from Ravel to Claude Champagne, Saint-Saëns to Pierre Mercure. The evening of July 28 marked the first Thursday of the season that was not interrupted by the Jeux du Québec, which increased competition for venues at the Parc Olympique from July 17 to 25. The concert, a veritable kaleidoscope – even with its French roots – began with a piece of the same name by Mercure, a constantly-shifting ternary form…

Franz Liszt

Daily News Roundup: 29 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 29 July 2016 Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Opera, Romantic

+ This is one the world has been waiting for: Norman Lebrecht reviews the Minnesota Orchestra’s final disc of their Sibelius cycle. + Shanghai Opera brings Thunderstorm to London. Read a review by the Financial Times here. + A recent biography about Liszt by Oliver Hilmes might simply be unnecessary. Read a review of the book here. “The weight of biographical commentary on Liszt is simply colossal. People have been writing full-length accounts of him since he was in his early 20s, and touring 1830s Europe. The first biographies written with the declared aim of stripping away accumulated myths appeared…

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