Vocal - my/maSCENA

Accompanist? Collaborator? Pianist!

By Olivier Godin on 4 September 2018 Piano, Vocal

I am lucky to have been able to work at what I love around the world for almost 20 years: performing with wonderful singers and instrumentalists. I also teach master classes on this profession that might be considered “in the shadows,” since it’s not about playing a recital or being a soloist with an orchestra. However, my profession is most certainly that of a pianist. I don’t “accompany” or “collaborate.” I play the piano. Chamber music and sharing with other musicians, on stage or in studio, is a different art than that of being a soloist. Although it’s the same…

French Diction: Hints for Non-Francophones

By François Leroux on 4 September 2018 Vocal

For non-Francophone singers, the difficulties involved in singing French correctly can be easy to explain. The issues are: French has more vowels than many other languages, especially English, with some peculiar nasal vowels. Liaisons are also risky for non-French speakers, and there are some basic guidelines for those. It’s also commonly said that French does not have a tonic accent, so the problem arises: how can a singer make the phrasing sound “colloquial” without avoiding the accents that are specific in classical music, i.e. the first and third beats in a 4/4 bar? Then there are the grammatical difficulties, which…

20th Century British Art Song: An Introduction

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

At the turn of the 20th century, the tradition of the drawing-room ballad still held sway. Songs of little literary value by Liza Lehmann, Maude Valerie White, Arthur Sullivan, Edward German and others were extremely popular. While Hubert Parry (especially his 12 sets of songs, comprising settings of Shakespeare and other important English poets, called English Lyrics), Charles Stanford and Arthur Somervell were trying to raise the standard of song-writing, their efforts paled when Edward Elgar presented his cycle Sea Pictures months before the new century. It was in many respects the beginning of the British art song renaissance. Though…

Seminar on Song Recitals: Looking Forward to an Artful Future

By La Scena Musicale Team on 4 September 2018 Vocal

On May 5, various stakeholders in the art of song in Canada – teachers, singers, pianists, presenters, scholars – met in Walter Hall at the University of Toronto to discuss the future of the art form. Co-sponsored by National Association of Teachers of Singing, Voice Studies of U of T’s Faculty of Music, the Art Song Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Art Song Project, this one-day seminar offered presentations and performances, but also gave its audience of about 120 participants the chance to discuss at length the various challenges faced by song recitals and possible creative responses. The day…

John Brancy and Peter Dugan: A Winning Pair

By Adrian Rodriguez on 4 September 2018 Art Song, Interviews, Opera, Vocal

Back in our April issue, Wah Keung Chan and I predicted that John Brancy would be one of the winners of the 2018 CMIM. I met the American baritone with pianist Peter Dugan two days before the Aria division finals. Brancy won First Prize in the Art Song division and the French Mélodie Award. Is vocal technique different for opera and art song? John: Absolutely. When I was singing mélodies at Bourgie Hall, I was able to play with the hall; it had the acoustics that allow the performer do that. I could go ‘off the voice’ and into pure…

Art song organizations

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

Canadian Art Song Project Canadian Art Song Project was founded in 2011 by tenor Lawrence Wiliford and pianist Steven Philcox. Its mission is to build on the rich legacy of Canadian song by engaging composers, authors and performers to share and celebrate their experiences through the creation of new music while providing opportunities for Canadian artists to champion the wealth of the existing song literature. In addition to presenting concerts, CASP has commissioned 13 Canadian works for voice and piano, released five commercial CDs and a podcast called Conversations with Canadian Art Song Project. During the 2018-19 season, CASP will celebrate…

Maria by Callas: A passionate view from Tom Volf

By Wah Keung Chan on 4 September 2018 Film, Opera

It happens almost everyday. Someone discovers opera for the first time through a live performance, and it becomes life changing. But it’s not everyday that this passion produces insight into the mysterious and iconic life of La Divina Maria Callas. French filmmaker Tom Volf, whose eclectic background included work as a model and photographer, was a medical student in New York in 2013 when he attended by chance a performance of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at the Metropolitan Opera. “Joyce DiDonato was singing the lead role, and the combination of music, theatrical and cinematic elements was transformative,” he recalls. “I fell…

Joyce Didonato: Into the Fire (Erato)

By Norman Lebrecht on 31 August 2018 Chamber Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Vocal

A bad album by Joyce Didonato is such a rarity that it warrants serious attention. The release at hand is a live recording of a Wigmore Hall recital just before last Christmas – not so much a recital as a tissue of decorations around a half-hour monologue by Joyce’s favourite composer Jake Heggie, ll of them accompanied by string quartet. The monologue is an evocation of the life of Camille Claudel, model and muse to the sculptor and painter Auguste Rodin. A sculptor herself, Claudel never gets the recognition she possibly deserves and winds up sadly in an asylum. It’s…

Philippe Sly: a Wandering Journey

By Adrian Rodriguez on 31 August 2018 Art Song, Interviews, Opera

I first heard Philippe Sly at the 2012 Concours musical international de Montréal. He was only 23, but that didn’t prevent him from winning every prize: First overall, best Quebec artist, best Canadian, best interpretation of an imposed Canadian art song and the Radio-Canada People’s Choice Award. I met him more than six years later on a hot summer day at his place in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve quarter, which has also enjoyed a recent cultural awakening. Sly reminisces: “The first thing I remember about opera was actually going to an operetta when I was seven years old in Ottawa. I was…

Sebastian Catana as Rigoletto; Berkshire Opera Festival; photo by Ken Howard

All Jesting Aside – the Berkshire Opera Festival’s Thrilling Rigoletto

By Charles Geyer on 30 August 2018 Classical, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Theatre, Vocal

REVIEW: of the Berkshire Opera Festival production of Giuseppe’s Verdi’s Rigoletto (August 25 at 1 p.m.; August 28 at 7:30 p.m. and August 31 at 7:30 p.m., at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, Massachusetts). Sex, power, seduction, revenge, and a dazzling lightning storm. Verdi’s gutsy 1851 operatic melodrama, Rigoletto, gets a fascinating, stylish, and unflinchingly close study in the Berkshire Opera Festival’s new production, running through August 31 at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (viewed here at the August 25 opening). Under director Jonathon Loy (who is also the festival’s co-founder), Verdi’s tale of a deformed court jester who seeks…

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