Volume 21 Issue 8 - May 2016

Boston-based Irina Muresanu in a solo violin recital, “Four Strings
Around the World,” featuring music by Prokofiev, Enescu, Paganini,
Kreisler, O’Connor, Piazzolla and more. May 20, the K-WCMS brings
the Xia Quartet (Edmonton Symphony Orchestra concertmaster
Robert Uchida, TSO violinist Shane Kim, TSO assistant principal
viola, Theresa Rudolph, and TSO principal cello, Joseph Johnson) to
their music room in program of Schubert, Bartók, Debussy and John
McPherson.
May 15: The Windermere Quartet’s latest recital includes Schubert’s
greatest quartet, Quartet in D Minor D. 810 “Death and the Maiden.”
May 16: Xia Quartet members cellist Joseph Johnson, violinist
Shane Kim and violist Theresa Rudolph put on their TSO hats when
they join concertmaster Jonathan Crow and pianist Angela Park for
an Associates of the TSO concert that includes music by Dohnányi,
Schumann and Prokofiev.
May 18: Toronto Summer Music artistic director Douglas McNabney
previews TSM’s upcoming “London Calling: Music in Great Britain”
program with a COC free noontime concert at the Richard Bradshaw
Ampitheatre.
May 21 Shannon Mercer, soprano, Andrew Burashko, piano.
Yehonatan Berick, violin, and Rachel Mercer, cello, perform
Shostakovich’s Trio No.2 and Seven Romances on Poems by
Alexander Blok Op.127 in Hamilton’s 5 at the First Chamber Music
series’ final concert of the season.
May 26: James Ehnes brings his 40th Birthday Tour to London
under the auspices of Jeffery Concerts. Four days later, May 30, he and
his collaborative pianist, Andrew Armstrong, continue the tour for
Bravo Niagara!
May 29 and 30: The Canzona Chamber Players present two pillars
of the chamber music repertoire, Beethoven’s Septet in E-Flat Major
Op.20 and Schubert’s Octet in F Major D803.
Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.
Beat by Beat | On Opera
Making Things New
& Making New Things
CHRISTOPHER HOILE
Opera this May is about making things new and making new
things. Not only will Tapestry Opera stage the world premiere
of a Scottish/Canadian collaboration but two other companies
will provide new librettos to well-known works.
First up is Against the Grain Theatre’s production of A Little Too
Cozy. The production, workshopped at the Banff Centre last year,
reimagines Mozart’s 1790 opera Così fan tutte as a television game
show. This will complete AtG’s series of “transladaptations” of the
three Mozart/Da Ponte operas after Figaro’s Wedding in 2013, with
the audience conceived of as wedding guests, and #UncleJohn, staged
in 2014 as the wedding reception for Zerlina and Masetto. Like the
previous two, AtG artistic director Joel Ivany has provided Mozart’s
opera with a new English-language libretto.
Ivany is not the first to write a new libretto for Così fan tutte.
The work was unpopular when it first premiered and had only ten
performances in Mozart’s lifetime. In 1791, Friedrich Schröder called
Da Ponte’s libretto “a miserable thing, that debases all women.”
In 1875, critic Eduard Hanslick made the famous statement that “the
boundless triviality of the libretto everywhere deals a death blow to
Mozart’s lovely music.” Because of this attitude, which many people
still hold, there were several unsuccessful attempts to rewrite the
libretto. Only after the Glyndebourne Opera revival in 1934 did the
work with Da Ponte’s libretto become standard repertoire.
In Ivany’s adaptation, the audience becomes the studio audience
for a live taping of the final episode of a reality show called “A Little
Too Cozy.” The show asks its contestants, “Can you fall in love with
someone you’ve never met?” The opera will be presented in a real TV
studio, CBC Toronto’s Studio 42 at 25 John Street. Before the show
begins, the final four contestants have already found their match, but
as the final test of the show, the women have to meet an additional
set of people before they’re finally allowed to be with their fiancés.
After that, the women must then decide if they still love their fiancés
– whom they have never met in person – since from the start the men
and women have been separated by the so-called Wall of Love. As
Ivany says, “These four contestants go on the show because they’re
tired of this superficial way that relationships are presented now, and
they’re looking for something more authentic, more real, more rooted
in our being. But then over the course of the show, they get messed
around and played with.”
The two female contestants are Felicity (i.e. Fiordiligi) sung by
soprano Shantelle Przybylo and Dora (i.e. Dorabella) sung by mezzosoprano
Rihab Chaieb. The two male contestants are Fernando (i.e.
Ferrando) sung by tenor Aaron Sheppard and Elmo (i.e. Guglielmo)
sung by baritone Clarence Frazer. Baritone Cairan Ryan plays the host
of the show, Donald L. Fonzo (i.e. Don Alfonso), and soprano Caitlin
Wood is his lovely assistant Despina. As with AtG’s previous productions
conductor Topher Mokrzewski has also arranged the music The
opera runs from May 12 to 21.
Toronto Masque Theatre: A second opera in May also has a libretto
that has impeded its regular performance. This is The Fairy Queen
from 1692 by Henry Purcell. As many people will know from recordings,
the work contains some of the loveliest theatre music Purcell
ever wrote. The problem is that this music what was called a “semiopera”
of the same name, adapted by an anonymous author from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Purcell’s music is
concentrated in five masques, related only thematically to the play,
each following one of the play’s five acts. The adaptation of the play
is generally deemed to be dreadful and to perform it with Purcell’s
music would take up to six hours.
22 | May 1, 2016 - June 7, 2016 thewholenote.com