The Canadian Opera Company unveiled a leaner season for 2014-15 with six instead of its usual seven productions, on Wednesday evening. Among the mix of old and new, serious and light, is a return of the COC’s acclaimed production of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
That double-bill of operas by Béla Bartók and Arnold Schoenberg put the company on the international map in 1993. Robert Lepage’s work also galvanized Toronto, awakening thousands of new fans to the dramatic possibilites of opera.
It will be interesting to see how the show will feel nearly a generation after its first performance — but we will have to wait until May, 2015 to find out. The cast includes two Canadian powerhouses: John Relyea and Toronto mezzo Krisztina Szabó.
In the meantime, the Canadian Opera Company general director Alexander Neef has stayed true to his work by continuing to update some of the presenter’s rickety productions of the core repertoire, with the help of prestigious co-presenters to help mitigate the costs.
The most significant of these is Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville, as filtered through the fertile imaginations of Spanish troupe Els Comediants (whose work was first seen in Toronto in La cenerentola). The effort arrives with a strong international cast, as well as Joshua Hopkins as Figaro. The curtain rises on this treat on April 17, 2015.
Mozart’s ever-popular Don Giovanni will also be all-new, courtesy of Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov. The stellar cast includes tenor Michael Schade and baritone Russell Braun, as well as the return on Nova Scotia native Jane Archibald as Donna Anna. That production opens at the end of next January.
Besides Bluebeard, other revivals of existing COC productions are Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre.
Butterfly returns with a largely imported cast and conductor in October. Atom Egoyan’s Walküre starts the new year playing in rep with Don Giovanni. Canadian Opera Company music director Johannes Debus will conduct the work, which was part of the Ring Cycle performances that opened the Four Seasons Centre in 2006.
This will be Debus’s first Walküre. Besides conducting his first Bluebeard/Erwartung, he will also lead his first production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, directed by Toronto native Robert Carsen, which kicks off the new season with a bang on October 3.
Canadian expat Gerald Finley returns to the Toronto opera stage, after a long absence, to sing the title role. Another welcome returnee among the powerful, largely Canadian cast is contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.
It’s interesting to note how the company has managed to balance local and international talent, as well as styles of opera. It’s one of those seasons that should leave just about everyone satisfied — which has got to be the right strategy as the COC battles a gentle but steady slide in revenues and subscription sales from year to year.
Another tool to fight the box office blahs is a reduction in subscription prices, with the cheapest seats to cost $169 for all six operas — not much more than buying tickets at your neighbourhood Cineplex for a Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast.
All the details of who and what and where should be available on the Canadian Opera Company website here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
