In a nod to the impending 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth, Canadian Opera Company music director Johannes Debus led 13 members of his orchestra in a limpid, affecting reading of the Siegfried Idyll.
[Corrected]Originally known as the Triebschen Idyll, it had its premiere on the main stairs at the Wagners’ villa, Triebschen, in Switzerland. It was Richard’s Christmas present to his wife Cosima.
To echo that occasion, the musicians stood on the big steps of the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, while the audience sat in the space where artists normally perform.
It was a great idea.
The COC is celebrating the Wagner anniversary in a big way with the current new production of Tristan und Isolde — and in smaller ways through its free lunchtime concert series between now and the end of the season in June.
I’m under the impression that the original impetus to use COC Orchestra members more in the lunchtime concerts was an economy move, but it has turned into a great opportunity for those instrumentalists to connect with each other and with Torontonians in all sorts of more intimate ways.
John Terauds