Vocal - my/maSCENA

Faith and Folly — Taking Up Serpents, a New American Opera, Bows in Boston

By Charles Geyer on 26 September 2018 Art Song, Choral, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Indigenous, Interviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Musical Theatre, Opera, Theatre, Uncategorized, Vocal

PREVIEW: of a public workshop performance with orchestra of the new opera Taking Up Serpents – libretto by Jerre Dye, score by Kamala Sankaram; presented by MassOpera, Boston; Sunday, September 30, 2018 at 3 p.m.; Deane Hall at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts (527 Tremont Street, Boston); the opera is a commission of the Washington National Opera and this workshop is presented by MassOpera. In the final passages of St. Mark’s Gospel, Christ declares that a hallmark among his true believers shall be a willingness that “they shall take up serpents!” And in certain quarters…

Canada’s Next Great Art Song Vies for $100k Aviva Community Fund

By La Scena Musicale Team on 26 September 2018 Art Song, Arts Industry, Music Competition

Editor’s Note: La Scena’s project Canada’s Next Great Art Song is in competition for a $100,000 grant from the Aviva Community Fund. Read below about the project and how to vote. Our September issue was a special edition on the Art Song. Read about it in PDF format or in HTML. Vote for your favourite art song of all time at www.nextgreatartsong.com Few things bring people together better than great music or a great song. At La Scena Musicale (LSM), Canada’s foremost classical music and jazz magazine, our mission is to highlight the richness and diversity of talent of Canada’s…

Game On! Cerise Jacobs Boots Up PermaDeath, the First Video Game Opera

By Charles Geyer on 25 September 2018 Interviews, La Scena Online, Musical Theatre, Opera, Theatre, Uncategorized, Vocal, World Music

PREVIEW: of the new opera, PermaDeath, by Cerise Lim Jacobs and Dan Visconti, which will play Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theatre for three performances, September 27, 28 and 29, 2018. The theater dims. A martial blare and glistening orchestral clamor suddenly rives the murmuring darkness, and a bewildering vista of strange, vast landscape floods the stage. Two beautiful, luminous, titanic beings – the sibling gods Apollo and Artemis – are in pitched battle with the massive, earthen Niobe and her fourteen grotesque offspring. The stuff of mythic dreams? Yes. But it’s also the planned dazzler of an opening for the new…

James Westman (Rigoletto) Myriam Leblanc (Gilda) 2 © Yves Renaud

Review: an Uneventful Rigoletto

By Adrian Rodriguez on 17 September 2018 Concert Reviews, Opera

Opéra de Montréal has launched its 39th season with Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. The production counts on a mainly Canadian roster of singers lead by Ontario baritone James Westman in the title role and Quebec soprano Myriam Leblanc, a graduate of OdM’s Atelier lyrique, debuting as his daughter Gilda. The lead cast initially was to be completed with Kosovian tenor Rame Lahaj in the role of the duke of Mantova, but was replaced by American upcoming opera star Rene Barbera. The scenography is by Robert Dahlstrom, based on a 2010 co-production of Seattle Opera and San Diego Opera. It is a…

An Opera for Our Time: Hadrian Conference Explores Opera’s Place in the 21st Century

By Newswire on 12 September 2018 Newswire, Opera, Toronto

Toronto – Tickets are now available for Hearing Hadrian: An Opera for Our Time, a conference on Sunday, October 14, 2018. Just one day after Rufus Wainwright’s Hadrian, with libretto by Daniel MacIvor,receives its world premiere, the Canadian Opera Company will host a day-long series of panels and guest speakers dedicated to exploring the themes found in the opera and its broader operatic context. Hearing Hadrian aims to bring the long-buried relationship between the Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover, Antinous, to the forefront of public knowledge and discussion; it also examines Hadrian’s place within the larger context of 21st-century…

New Vocal Works

By Benjamin Goron on 11 September 2018 Opera

Canadian Operatic Overview The coming opera season is once again full of surprises, including many made in Canada. From the depths of the Nigredo Hotel to the majestic summit of Mount Everest; from an American post-World War II boxing ring to the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein; from a lonely Roman emperor to a First Nations woman confronted by the disappearance of her people –; the subject matter is eclectic, to say the least. Hadrian Canadian Opera Company of Toronto, Oct. 13 To -27 Composed by Rufus Wainwright on a libretto by Daniel MacIvor, this opera recounts the story of…

A New Production of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila Opens The Metropolitan Opera’s 2018-19 Season on September 24

By Newswire on 6 September 2018 Newswire, Opera

New York, NY (September 6, 2018)—The Metropolitan Opera will open its 134th season on Monday, September 24, with a new production of Saint-Saëns’s biblical tragedy Samson et Dalila, conducted by Sir Mark Elder and starring Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna, last seen together at the Met in acclaimed performances of Bizet’s Carmen. Laurent Naouri co-stars as the High Priest opposite Elchin Azizov as the Philistine King Abimélech and Dmitry Belosselskiy as the Old Hebrew. Making his Met debut, Tony Award-winner Darko Tresnjak directs the first new Met production of the opera in 20 years. The opening performance will be simulcast…

Opera and Vocal Music

By Justin Bernard on 5 September 2018 Opera, Vocal

Rigoletto and Das Rheingold The Opéra de Montréal kicks off the season with Verdi’s tragic Rigoletto. This italian classic, inspired by Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse, will be performed on September 15, 18, 20 and 22. Two Canadian singers are featured in this production: baritone James Westman and the soprano Myriam Leblanc play respectively the bouffon Rigoletto and his daughter Gilda. The Duke of Mantua will be sung by the tenor Rame Lahaij while the assassin Sparafucile and his sister Magdalena will be portrayed by the bass Vartan Gabrielian and Canadian mezzo Caroline Sproule. This is the perfect chance to…

Three Essential Lieder Recordings

By La Scena Musicale Team on 4 September 2018 Art Song, Vocal

It all started in 1985, during dinner. Ted Perry, founder of the British independent label Hyperion Records, asked the celebrated collaborative pianist Graham Johnson what he would most like to record. Johnson’s answer was simply, “All of Schubert’s Lieder.” Perry agreed immediately. Schubert set more than 700 texts, most as songs for solo voice, but also for vocal ensemble. Almost all are accompanied by piano. Ironically, it took 18 years for Schubert to compose his Lieder (1810-1828), the same time that it took Hyperion (1987-2005) to record and distribute 37 compact discs featuring more than 60 individual singers. Johnson was…

Schubert’s Winterreise: Reference Recordings

By Pierre Chénier on 4 September 2018 Art Song, Vocal

Composed in 1827 by Franz Schubert, Winterreise is a landmark in the annals of classical music. So much so that that this 24-song cycle for voice and piano based on poems by Wilhelm Müller has been recorded an estimated 200 times. The words convey the wanderings of a man befallen by an unrequited love. The cycle, however, deals less with the man’s states of mind than the images of loneliness conjured by the winter scenery, or the people that cross his path, like the hurdy-gurdy player, a fellow wanderer whose company he solicits. Winterreise is truly one of the great…

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