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CMIM 2025: Our Predictions

By La Scena Musicale Team on 31 March 2025 Art Song, Classical Music, Montreal, Music Competition, Opera, Vocal

Each year, La Scena Musicale assembles an informal jury that listens, grades and evaluates the 24 participants of the Concours musical international de Montreal (CMIM). For this year’s Voice edition, a team consisting of La Scena’s voice specialists Adrian Rodriguez, Justin Bernard, Wah Keung Chan and Gianmarco Segato have drawn their top predictions for the competition winners. Jingjing Xu, mezzo-soprano, China Aria 1st: Adrian, Gianmarco Song 1st: Adrian, Gianmarco, Justin, Wah Keung AR: Jingjing Xu possesses what can only be described as flawless bel canto technique—her voice is consistently focused, her coloratura is impeccable, she can sing forte and (AR…

Benjamin Appl and Eric Lu. Photo 1: David Ruano

Review | Benjamin Appl & Eric Lu’s Schwanengesang at Bourgie Hall

By Amanda Wong on 17 February 2025 Art Song, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Piano, Vocal

A German-born baritone like Benjamin Appl is certainly no stranger to Schubert’s work. I can only assume that the Austrian composer’s impressive list of over 600 songs offer much to Appl’s repertoire, who himself is largely a Lieder singer. Accompanied by American pianist Eric Lu, Appl presented Schubert’s Schwanengesang—his ‘swan songs’—as well as Beethoven’s song collection, An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall on Feb. 13. What you missed Though one’s swan song is typically a final piece or performance before retirement or death, Schubert’s Schwanengesang is a collection of Lieder compiled and shared by…

CD Review | Rachel Fenlon, Winterreise

By Gianmarco Segato on 8 November 2024 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Vocal

Schubert: Winterreise Rachel Fenlon, soprano & piano Orchid Classics, 2024 Franz Schubert’s devastatingly confessional song cycle, Winterreise (1828) charts the journey of a spurned narrator through 24 songs set to poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is a pinnacle of Romanticism and foundational to the German Lied (Song) tradition. Although more associated with male singers, it was recorded by German mezzo-soprano Elena Gerhardt as early as 1928 and, in more recent times, by mezzos Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and contralto Nathalie Stutzmann. What makes Canadian soprano Rachel Fenlon’s new traversal unique is that she acts as her own accompanist, the first…

Olivier Godin. Photo : Tam Photography

Bourgie Hall: Complete Schubert Lieder

By Justin Bernard on 8 October 2024 Art Song, Montreal

Excellence, beauty and discovery. These are the keywords used by Bourgie Hall to present its new concert season. If there’s one event that brings them all together, it’s the launch of their traversal of the complete catalogue of Schubert’s Lieder. Bourgie Hall’s presentation of the complete cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach had only scarcely been completed when artistic director Olivier Godin was already thinking of another project on a similarly grand scale. There are no fewer than 600 songs born of Schubert’s genius. “It’s a very rich body of works,” he says, “and yet the public hears perhaps 20 per…

CD Review | Benjamin Bernheim, Douce France, DG

By Gianmarco Segato on 4 September 2024 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Vocal

Douce France: Mélodies & Chansons Benjamin Bernheim, tenor; Carrie-Ann Matheson, piano Deutsche Grammophon, 2024 For his debut album of French mélodies and chansons, French-Swiss tenor Benjamin Bernheim and Canadian pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson have not shied away from some of the most performed, most recorded songs in the repertoire. Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, three of Duparc’s glorious mélodies and even Chausson’s cycle, Poème de l’amour et de la mer are certainly not lacking in exposure. But as Bernheim notes in the program book, the Berlioz and Chausson sets have historically been the domain of high-voiced female singers, the Duparc often taken…

CD Review | Erin Morley, Rose in Bloom, Orchid Classics, 2024

By Gianmarco Segato on 31 May 2024 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Vocal

Rose in Bloom Erin Morley, soprano; Gerald Martin Moore, piano Orchid Classics, 2024 One of today’s most in-demand lyric coloratura sopranos, Erin Morley sings roles like Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier, Cunegonde in Candide and Gilda in Rigoletto at The Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera and Munich’s Bavarian State Opera. Rose in Bloom is her debut recital disc alongside pianist Gerald Martin Moore. It centres on floral themes in songs dating from the early 19th century to the current day. Morley’s consummate mastery of high, florid music ensures there are inevitably several songs representing composers’ penchant to equate piping coloratura with…

Photo by Eric Beliveau

Joel Ivany & Miriam Khalil: Just Getting Started

By Eva Stone-Barney on 10 November 2023 Art Song, Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary, Opera, Vocal

Author : (Eva Stone-Barney)

Against the Grain Theatre (AtG) is a pillar of the Canadian opera scene. The award-winning company has been pushing boundaries and challenging audiences to experience opera in exciting, new ways since its founding in 2010 by director, librettist, educator, and administrator Joel Ivany, and his partner, soprano Miriam Khalil. Ivany didn’t grow up with opera. He recalls watching La Bohème, starring Pavarotti, on Laser Disk, and later, going to the Canadian Opera Company (COC) for the first time, in Grade 13. Entranced by the “big stage, big sound, big … everything,” he remembers thinking: “How are we going to…

On his Own Terms: Davóne Tines at Bourgie Hall

By Eva Stone-Barney on 6 October 2023 Art Song, Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary, Opera, Vocal

Author : (Eva Stone-Barney)

Although Davóne Tines may have “tumbled his way into the opera world” somewhat accidentally, his artistic output has been deliberate ever since. As a young person, he says, he didn’t know where he would end up. Tines completed undergraduate studies in sociology at Harvard University, and worked at a series of arts organizations as an administrator, before considering the prospect of life as a professional musician. Tines grew up singing – in the Black Baptist church, growing up in Virginia; at college, in a Renaissance polyphony ensemble; in the professional choir at the National Shrine in DC; and in a…

Davóne Tines, Photo by Noah Morrison

Fall Highlights: Orchestras, Chamber, Solo

By Eva Stone-Barney on 1 September 2023 Art Song, Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Music, Montreal

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) Led by conductor Rafael Payare, the OSM celebrates the orchestra’s 90th anniversary this season, along with the 10th anniversary of the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. The orchestra will start the year with an electric performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Sept. 12-14). Payare and OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan will later take the stage to interpret Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Webern’s Passacaglia, and Mozart’s “Haffner’’ Symphony (Oct. 25, 26). Come November, Christoph Eschenbach will conduct Alban Berg’s Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” and Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 (Nov. 8, 9). The orchestra will get in the…

Review | J’Nai Bridges Dazzles Toronto Audience with Canadian Recital Debut

By Eva Stone-Barney on 28 July 2023 Art Song, Classical, Concert Reviews

Earlier this week, Toronto Summer Music announced that Canadian Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky had been forced to cancel her performance as part of this year’s festival due to unforeseen illness. Miraculously, the festival was able to secure a replacement of the highest caliber on just short of a week’s notice: Grammy Award winning American Mezzo Soprano, J’Nai Bridges. Bridges stepped in with grace and poise, dutifully acknowledging Ms. Radvanovsky’s absence at the concert’s outset. Joined by pianist Rachael Kerr, she opened the first half of her recital with a musical setting of the Lord’s Prayer (uncredited on the program). This was…

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