The genie in the lamp meets his match in this operatic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1891 short story The Bottle Imp, a morality tale (or perhaps morality thriller) about a bottle whose magic grants limitless wishes to its owner – but with, if you can believe it, a price. A co-production of Scottish Opera […]
Right up front, I have to say that I just don’t love Wagner. I’ve tried, I’ve tried so hard (I was well-rested, well-fed, well-Mentos’d to keep me alert during this latest interminable Wagnerian ordeal), but I cannot force myself to invest in overblown German dramatics about trolls for five hours at a time. The plot […]
Both of Canadian Stage’s current offerings are about people sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with. Both remarkably self-satisfied domestic dramas purport to be about “so much more” but that’s really about it. In the one-act contemporary opera Julie, well-to-do scorned woman Julie (Lucia Cervoni) sleeps with her callous, manipulative, engaged servant Jean (a […]
Historically, operas that choose to focus on love tend to privilege sweeping romances, richly orchestrated melodrama, couples separated by social mores, and, more often than not, a gloriously tragic finale. If you’re going to have several dozen musicians thrumming beneath your story of romantic entanglement, then it seems more than fair for your performances to […]
Oh, Giuseppe Verdi, how I adore your dedication to stories worth telling. You are, of course, a splendid composer whose soaring melodies and lush orchestrations fly beautifully from the mouths of the COC’s chorus and the bows of its spectacular orchestra (here under the capable baton of Marco Guidarini) but the real reason I love […]
Popular culture has resoundingly strong opinions and plenty of advice on love. Love is all you need. Love is a battlefield. Love changes everything. Live, laugh, love. Eat, Pray, Love. The list goes on. But, what is this Crazy Little Thing Called Love? For those people who Want To Know What Love Is,* Benjamin Folstein’s […]
There are a few operatic conventions that really get me down. The first is a wackadoo story that let’s say isn’t exactly grounded in human truth. The second is overdramatic Tragedy with a capital t. Though the two productions that make up the Canadian Opera Company’s spring season embody, respectively, these qualities to a tee, […]
Time after time, I seem to land on the opposing point of view when it comes to the latest COC production. I never could wrap my head around the critical apathy towards my favourite show to date- Verdi’s Masked Ball– nor could I see the reported genius of so many pieces I found deathly boring. […]