Long Play goes video

and a couple of other things from the February Notebook

Made you click?

Good. Of course I’m not PIVOTING TO VIDEO (early aughts phrase returns with a vengeance). This remains a writing establishment. However I will experiment with short video occasionally for topics and only for those topics where video enhances the conversation (for example, visual arts).

Get to Know Your Bookseller was meant to start like this, but my first effort with the lovely Rupert McNally ended up being written because my phone camera changed its FPS (that is frame-per-second*, grandpa) on its own initiative, and besides, I had not purchased the clip-on mics at Best Buy yet. Lessons continue to be learned. And one of these days I’ll even stabilize the camera.

Video editing of course is insane amount of work, but it’s still not writing, and writing is the hardest kind of work (for a writer).

*The concept I learned that day

Get to know your bookseller: Claire Foster, Type Books (Queen St location)

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What next for the COC?

The COC finally has a new General Manager, and it’s a tree that quietly fell in the forest without anyone bothering to have an opinion about it. Ian Derrer is an American exec who worked in various American companies in multiple capacities, including as a singer, stage manager and assistant director. His most recent job is the General Director and CEO of the Dallas Opera (8 years).

Around the time of this announcement came the new season announcement - the last, presumably, by the interim committee. The 26-27 season has, unusually, two chamber operas, Turn of the Screw for the Four Seasons stage, and the Ryan Trew-Rachel Krehm Come Closer for two singers, in the small theatre on Front St. It has one new work, the Indigenous-themed and long-in-the-works Empire of Wild (Ian Cusson-Cherie Dimaline). Its composer Cusson, as these things go, had a brush with intra-Indigenous cancellation due to being adjacent to Thomas King and their joint work on the now permanently cancelled opera Indians on Vacation (and by some unconfirmed accounts, for initially defending him). The rest of the season is two humdrum revivals - the Elisir, and Atom Egoyan’s here-are-some-butterflies-and-school-uniforms Cosi fan tutte - and the multiple times revived Traviata directed by Arin Arbus. There is also a new to Toronto production of Ariadne, directed by Paul Curran, which looks like any number of other Ariadne productions in contemporary dress.

So it struck me that the COC is now effectively settling into being a regional company of modest ambitions that just wants to blend in and break even, like the rest of the opera companies in Canada and most of the US houses between the two coasts.

They however own and operate an opera house that was built at a very different time of cultural optimism, starchitecture and willingness to Go Big.

Is having to fill up the FSC going to become a drag on the company’s programming - is it already? Can a modestly ambitious company in a society where opera isn’t exactly embraced as local and endogenous continue being a 200+ staff enterprise? Perhaps the programming could be different - well, more exciting, more interesting - if the company didn’t have to sell out the FSC each year?

The 2006 me would be shocked to learn that in 2026 I’d be asking this question.

I haven’t looked at the stats since after the covid period, but I don’t expect subscriptions have returned to their pre-pandemic levels, and not even close.

American opera ecosystem is unique in the world - perhaps major East Asian cities are becoming similar to its model. Canadian ecosystem is also specific, an uneasy mix of European willingness to fund the arts and take pride in them and a North American reluctance to fund them generously, coupled with an aging subscriber base. The younger generation billionaires, the tech barons, will not be underwriting opera and symphony - that much has become clear.

What kind of impact will a general manager well-versed in American business of opera have? We’re about to find out.

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Meanwhile in early music

This happened when I wasn’t paying attention - or I noticed it and immediately suppressed it - but The Toronto Consort fell apart a couple of years ago. The only ensemble in town specializing in pre-Baroque music (from Hildegard to Monteverdi) that achieved stable and extensive year-to-year operation did not survive covid. “But we were nimble and introduced digital concerts immediately, and continued with them in earnest!” some people may have been thinking, but digital TV was part of the reason why you failed, guys. Few ensembles embraced the pivot to video as keenly as the TC. Well.

There is some good speculating here on the Lebrecht forum as to what would happen next - the ‘historically-informed-performance movement snobbery’ being detrimental to classical music audience renewal coming up more than once - and meanwhile some kind of a Phoenix has risen from the ashes, partly. They have the new AD in countertenor Daniel Taylor and have announced Emma Kirkby in this completely fictitious-sounding role of “Honorary Patron”. Daniel Taylor leads another HIP ensemble, however - Theatre of Early Music - and still tries to keep his singing career going, so I am not sure how it will all manage to be juggled with any degree of commitment. The TEM has Handel’s Theodora coming up with U of T affiliated Schola Cantorum choir and a group of Tafelmusik instrumentalists, which I was excited about until I spotted that it’s a sort of a student production. Toronto Consort is offering free tickets, with registration.

Previously on Long Play:

—> Elisa Citterio in Conversation

—> For Jeanne Lamon on news of her death

In much better HIP news, Tafelmusik 2026-27 season actually looks… good. So decent, in fact, that for the first time in eons, I am contemplating a subscription.

At some point after Elisa Citterio quit, the ensemble announced that they would proceed to have a collective sort of leadership format, with several people programming and running things, one of whom is British HIP violinist Rachel Podger (pictured above in red). I was skeptical. The multiple-people artistic leadership did not work great in Stratford, for example. But this particular vehicle keeps going.

How I saw it, Tafel had to relax some of the tight grips on some of its positions. Forever and a day, performances involving Tafelmusic choir had to be conducted by Ivars Taurins, whatever the rep, whatever the season. Every opera engagement with Atelier had to be conducted by David Fallis. Bruno Weill simply had to conduct symphonies, there was no one else in the world.

This appears to be changing. There is a St John Passion coming up next year which is to be conducted by Kristian Bezuidenhout, I expect from the mellifluous fortepiano. This is my favourite Bach Passion, and will be conducted by one of my favourite keyboardists around. There’s a King Arthur, so finally we’ll hear some Purcell who is criminally underperformed in these parts. There’s an all-French choral baroque program, Podger will do a Mozart symphonies night and a cafe-themed night of secular crowd-pleasers, Alison McKay comes back from retirement for a multi-media Telemann program, and a young German conductor Jakob Lehmann who works in modern instrument orchestras as much as the HIP - shocking developments - will debut in a symphonic program of Louse Farrenc and Beethoven.

Another thing of interest coming up in April is the Opera Atelier and Tafel’s HIP performance of Pelleas et Melisande. I have never heard Debussy’s opera performed on ancient instruments (or will they be instruments from Debussy’s era? TBC). The score will be re-orchestrated by Christopher Bagan, assistant conductor with Atelier though the billing shows David Fallis conducting. One hopes the corps de ballet will not use the stock baroque gestures in a Debussy opera?? The cast looks really good - thank the gods, they have stopped putting Measha in major roles, presuming a star power that’s not there. The venue is Koerner Hall, so one more ✔️.