The Canadian Opera Company’s update of Giuseppe Verdi’s warhorse Rigoletto from the start of this past season is featured on today’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera broadcast on CBC Radio 2. Music director Johannes Debus was in the pit. On stage was a decent mix of visiting and Canadian singers.
You’ll find all the details here. The broadcast begins at 1 p.m. Eastern.
VOICES ON THE WEB
- You’ll find a stirring performance of J.S. Bach’s epic Mass in B minor from a Royal Albert Hall performance for the BBC Proms from Thursday, along with some insightful intermission commentary here. (All of the BBC Proms broadcasts are up for on-demand streaming for seven days after their performance.)
- Last Monday, wonderful Canadian soprano Gillian Keith added vocal colour to Oliver Knussen’s Symphony No. 2 in a richly diverse programme played by the BBC Symphony under favourite Toronto visitor, Gianandrea Noseda. The featured work is Gustav Mahler’s somewhat strange (and, consequently infrequently performed) Symphony No. 7. This concert is available here.
- On Sunday, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland presents tenor Rolando Villazón singing Mozart opera arias in an odd programme that starts with Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2 and ends with Beethoven’s Eighth. Mark Minkowski conducts the resident chamber orchestra. Details here.
- Coming up on Monday at the Proms is a rare opportunity to hear Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, a powerful and moving celebration of life he wrote as a delayed response to the assasination of John F. Kennedy. The bulk of the performers are Welsh. Kristjan Järvi conducts. Details here.
SOLO PIANO
There are nearly two-dozen fine concerts from the Swiss festival available for free streaming on medici.tv. Two solo-piano recitals of note are: David Kadouch making wonderful with Chopin’s Préludes as well as performing two pieces by Nicolai Medtner and Sergei Teneyev, Russian composers we don’t hear enough of in these parts (details here); and Canadian teenager Jan Lisiecki’s engagingly limpid readings of three Olivier Messiaen Préludes. It’s also nice to see him presenting music from Canadian composer Marjan Mozetich in Europe (details here).
John Terauds