Alice Munro vs. symphonic orchestra
Plus, Masha won't be wearing black in The Seagull at Soulpepper
This is Your April in Arts
April 6-30 at Soulpepper: Chekhov’s The Seagull. But note that this is a new adaptation by Simon Stephens, and going by the reviews after its 2017 premiere, the play is firmly parked in the 21st century. Still, Chekhov is Chekhov (I hope?).
Two works about life as an artist open in Toronto around the same time mid-April:
Apr 8-16 Theatre Passe Muraille presents Never the Last, a two-woman play with music about the Russian-Euro-Canadian composer Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Grammatté at the time of her relationship with her expressionist painter husband, Walter Grammatté. (He died in 1929 of tuberculosis. Her second husband Ferdinand Eckhardt lived long and died in Winnipeg in the 1990s. She had an eventful, twentieth-century life, as her Canadian Encyclopedia page attests.) I’m always curious about the live classical music - straight play hybrid, whenever it’s attempted. Why don’t we see more of it?
Apr 13: Kelly Reichardt’s new film collab with Michelle Williams Showing Up, “affectionate and gentle satire of starving artistry” (The Guardian), “Reichardt’s first great film” (the perennially unhappy Richard Brody of the New Yorker) opens at the Tiff Bell Lightbox. We follow the life of a (budding?) sculptor as she juggles art-making, a regularly paying desk job, her bipolar brother with artistic pretensions, neglectful landlord/fellow artist with greater commercial success, and much else besides. This conversation with Reichardt about her own life-long balancing of teaching and other jobs alongside an independent filmmaking career is a great read (as is Peter Bradshaw’s review of the film in the link beside the piece… I’m not the only one who thought of Woody Allen, then). Here’s the trailer:
Apr 15, 7:30. Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Zosha di Castri’s Dear Life which is a piece for symphonic orchestra that includes prerecorded bits from Alice Munro eponymous story, and a live soprano voice (here the young Alexandra Smither). The work was commissioned and originally premiered at the NAC – and toured various places and was seen at Luminato a few years ago – with immersive video projections, but I expect this will be a sans-video performance. Still, having dipped into the CD recording that made it to YT, I am intrigued and will probably make good use of my Presto card and the frequent Go Bus to Hamilton from the Union Station (last bus departs for Toronto well past midnight). The rest of the program is early Romantic delicious: Beethoven’s Egmont, Schubert’s 9th “The Great” and an “Ave Maria”.
Apr 26, 28, 29: at the TSO: Stravinsky’s Chant du rossignol is probably the biggest draw for me in this program of Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. It would usually be Ravel, but the TSO performs D&C every year, feels like it. Why have I been underwhelmed by the TSO programming and guest musicians as of late? What would bring the excitement back? A topic to be revisited.
Apr 27, Hot Docs Festival starts. On first skim, there’s an unusually high number of films on Ukraine, on personal/family life, climate and nature conservation, and neurodivergent lives. I immediately though put on my list this doc on TikTok’s role in outbreaks and pseudo–outbreaks of Tourette, multiple-personality disorders and tics among its young users. Possibly also this doc that tackles the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind themes.
Apr 28, Verdi’s Macbeth opens at the COC in a brand new production by David McVicar. While Macbeth is not one of my favourite Verdis, I trust McVicar will know what to do with it. The production has had two of its principals cancel as the rehearsals were about the start – instead of Sondra Radvanovsky for ex, Lady M will be sung by Alexandrina Pendatchanska, which for me is great news as I’m not a Radvan fan, but La Radvan was a box office draw. The Macbeth Verdi is still a Verdi of the ubiquitous cabaletta (the incongruously cheerful final part of dramatic arias in a lot of the nineteenth century Italian opera). When I watched my first live Macbeth, at the Vienna State Opera, I found it so jarring that I left at intermission (granted, I was newly bereaved and perhaps not the most generous listener) but I didn’t mind them when I watched a DVD of an old production with Josephine Barstow who owned the role inside out. So let’s see what happens, musically and dramatically.
Apr 30: Elmer Iseler Singers brings us an all-contemporary spring concert, kicking off with John Rutter’s Requiem. A friend recently took me to hear the Rachmaninoff Vespers in the Byzantine-style church of St Anne’s on Gladstone Avenue and I was reminded how much I missed choral music. The singers of Amadeus Choir alas (save for a few short solos) all wore masks while singing. It was… odd. But their numbers made up for what was lost in the muffled sound and general discomfort. Here’s hoping that the singers of the chamber-sized EIS will not mask.