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Welcome to La Scena Musicale’s weekly Highlights, a roundup of classical music news from Canada and beyond. Canadian artists continue to be prominent as opera companies across Canada and the world announce their 24-25 seasons. Budget cuts keep rolling out at big name classical presenters in Paris and Cardiff.
Joel Allison. Photo: Taylor Long
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Deutsche Oper Berlin, one of Berlin’s three major opera companies, recently announced its 24-25 season with several Canadian artists featured in major productions. Soprano Jane Archibald will make a role debut as the Empress in a new staging of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten directed by Tobias Kratzer. Archibald also debuts another Germanic role, Leonore in Beethoven’s Fidelio in a fall revival of David Hermann’s 2022 concept.
Joining her in Fidelio as Don Fernando is Canadian bass-baritone Joel Allison who has been a member of DOB’s ensemble since 2020. Allison sings multiple roles throughout the season in Tosca, The Cunning Little Vixen, Il viaggio a Rheims, Rigoletto, Intermezzo, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Don Carlo and Les vêpres siciliennes.
Other season highlights include Etienne Dupuis in the title role of Rigoletto, Sondra Radvanovsky in Tosca and Andrea Chenier as well as conductor Kerri-Lynn Wilson at the helm of Salome.
Full details about the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s 24-25 season can be found here.
Jonelle Sills. Photo: Alexander Vlad
Edmonton Opera
Edmonton Opera opens its 24-25 season with Johann Strauss’s comic favourite, Die Fledermaus with a cast headlined by Canadians Jonelle Sills, Adam Luther, John Tessier, Karoline Podolak and Danielle MacMillan. Staged by the company’s Artistic Director Joel Ivany as a show within a show, a concept he used at the Glenn Gould School in 2018 when Sills also starred as Rosalinde!
The season continues with London (UK)’s Theatre of Sound production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle that reimagines a Judith suffering from dementia with Bluebeard as her caregiver. Ivany recently presented this version in Toronto under the auspices of Against the Grain Theatre, a company which he co-founded. Veteran Canadian stars Russell Braun and Krisztina Szabó are Bluebeard and Judith.
Aquarius is a concert of opera favourites intriguingly presented at the Zeidler Dome planetarium while the season closes with Wagner’s Die Walküre, a continuation of the company’s presentation of the Ring Cycle in Jonathan Dove’s reduced score. Heading the cast are Jaclyn Grossman, Scott Rumble, Catherine Daniel, Giles Tomkins and Mariya Krywaniuk.
Full details about Edmonton Opera’s 24-25 season can be found here.
Palais Garnier, Opéra national de Paris
Funding Cuts in Paris and Cardiff
Further to last week’s report concerning orchestra salary and touring cuts at Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, the company has announced it will no longer tour to Llandudno and Bristol early next year because of “increasing financial challenges.” Reductions in grants from both the Arts Council of England and Arts Council of Wales are to blame.
Opéra national de Paris will receive a 6 million euro reduction in its grant from France’s Ministry of Culture. This, despite the organization becoming profitable again for the first time since 2017, generating a net profit of 2.3 million euros in 2023, as reported by France Musique.
Better news in funding from Quebec
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