Let’s make the most of the last two months of the year, all right?
Nov 3 – Against the Grain’s Opera Pub is back: first Thursday of the month, 8 p.m. at the Transac. It’s an evening of young, classically trained singers accompanied by a pianist, singing whatever arias or duets they fancy. There’s also an MC. Opera singers in pubs is quite an experience; first time I witnessed it was probably Danika Loren and her opera school buddies gathering in a shabby pub in Little Italy for a mix of arias and cabaret songs, the crowd at one point breaking into chorus from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment. Or was it AtG’s own La Bohème in the pub, which became so popular that the CBC recorded it and put it on the Gem streaming channel? Or was it Loose Tea Theatre’s Faust in a dive bar? Or Carmen on Tap at the Lula Lounge? This town has seen a lot of good opera in pubs and other drinking establishments, but I am afraid all that, like pretty much all of the indie opera scene, is gone now. [I hate it when I’m right.] Except for the AtG’s Opera Pub. I’m curious to see what that experience is like now. Vancouver and Edmonton will have their own Opera Pubs on different dates; check, as the kids don’t say any more, your local listings.
Nov 5, Stratford -- The email arrived on a Friday. “I need 800 words on something new and interesting happening in the opera world in Ontario between early September and mid-November. Filing by Monday. Available? Here are all the events that we have info on.” I said yes to my editor immediately, because I liked the sound of this new semi-staged piece that a chamber ensemble will be performing in a church in Stratford. Three immigrant Irish women who worked as milliners lose their lives in an apparent arson. What’s the story? What’s the speculation? The librettist-composer Marek Norman and director Marti Maraden try to imagine. There are a lot of scenes in the libretto of working, women at work, small manufacturing – stuff that we rarely see in opera. This ought to get a proper staging eventually.
Nov 9 – Pianist and composer John Kameel Farah, who divides his time between Berlin and Toronto, will perform “Byrd, Bach and I” in the Canzona Chamber Players Concert Series. This is taking place in a mansion in Rosedale; I have yet to check out this series but I’ve known of John’s work for more than a decade now. And let’s salute any and all mansion owners who are making their spaces available for live performance (see also the long-running Kitchener Waterloo Chamber Music Society). For details, scroll down here.
October 8 to March 23, 2023 – Her Flesh, one of the current exhibitions at the AGO, displays paintings and photography by 16 female artists in which they depict women, sometimes as objects of desire. “‘Something feels very different when womxn artists represent feminine bodies in art,’ explains Renata Azevedo Moreira, AGO Assistant Curator,” and I say, yes, what feels different is that the curator bullshit goes through the roof. WOMXN. Ignore the accompanying copy, see the thing itself. Smdh.
Nov 6 (and Nov 3) – A National Theatre production of Chekhov’s Seagull in adaptation by David Hare directed by Jonathan Kent will be streamed in multiple Cineplexes. Chekhov and Hare? We’ll see what happens. Anna Chancellor plays Arkadina.