From the spin, you would think that there are three, maybe four great operatic tenors in the world at any one time.
If that were true, all opera houses save for the Met, Covent Garden and La Scala would have to close their doors.
The latest pretender to Tenor Superstardom is 33-year-old Italian Vittorio Grigolo, a serious and already very experienced artist with a growing career, including a turn in the Met's next La bohème, which opens Oct. 16. He has a lyric voice and an uncanny sense of phrasing.
National Public Radio is offering a free listen to the entirety of his new album, Vittorio Grigolo: The Italian Tenor, which is being released by Sony Classical on Tuesday. The album is a mix of the old chestnuts, as well as some less-recorded fare. It's definitely worth a listen.
Perhaps we should call him Another Great Tenor. Would that be so bad?
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LICITRA MASTER CLASS TODAY
Speaking of tenors, Salvatore Licitra is giving a master class today in Walter Hall, at University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The public is welcome, for free.
Renée Falconetti as Joan of Arc in Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1928 classic silent film.
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC **** (out of 4) Film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Music by Richard Einhorn. Live music directed by David Fallis. Repeats tonight. TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W. 416-968-3456 or www.tiff.net
Even without any sound at all, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film of the trial, torture and execution of Joan of Arc makes compelling viewing. Augmented by a live soundtrack by American composer Richard Einhorn, performed by a gang of talented Torontonians conducted by David Fallis at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday night, this is multimedia at its most riveting.
What a fantastic way to launch the four-title Essential Cinema Concerts series at TIFF's chic new home. (The three upcoming film-concerts are either world or Toronto premieres.)
This was the first time I'd seen The Passion of Joan of Arc, so I wasn't prepared for the mesmerising, doe-eyed face of Renée Falconetti (credited simply as Mademoiselle Falconetti onscreen) as Joan. For the story to work, we have to believe that the 19-year-old 15th century martyr was touched by God. Dreyer's in-your-face lens and Falconetti's unflinching intensity don't let us forget her state of grace for a moment.
Joan's angelic features are in sharp contrast to the caricatures of ignorance, pomposity, entitlement and sheer evil that stare down at her with unvarnished masculine contempt. This is Good vs Evil depicted in black and white, both literally and figuratively.
Although there is no room for nuance here, the visual intensity kept me from thinking about it too much. I was swept away.
The soundtrack, an oratorio called Voices of Light, by contemporary American composer Richard Einhorn, is equally polarized, making for an ideal match. Premiered in 1994, after the composer had been inspired by a 1985 remastering of the film (after an intact print of was found in 1981, in a mental hospital in Norway), the score for orchestra and voices has become the definitive accompaniment.
Blending vocal parts inspired by Medieval song and plainsong (and alternating between Latin and French) and instrumental writing based on layered minimalist note-patterns, Voices of Light could become tedious listening after the first 15 minutes. But, matched up seamlessly with the passionate visuals, the music becomes an integral part of the emotional rollercoaster.
There were times that I tried to focus on the music separately, but the faces on screen kept dragging me back to the movie.
Squeezed tightly on a small stage in front of the screen were an orchestra made up of about two-dozen string and woodwind players, as well as members of Choir 21 and the Toronto Consort, all led by David Fallis. They did a fantastic job in a demanding situation: there couldn't be any straying from the moving pictures, and they had to sound balanced with amplification (movie theatres are not designed for acoustic music; without microphones, the sound wouldn't travel past the first two or three rows of seats).
There is a repeat performance tonight, and its well worth experiencing, as it's such a departure from classical concerts where the visuals are an add-on, rather than the main event. (Prepare for cinematic sticker shock, though; a full-price adult ticket is $50.)
My only quibble is with the lack of background information. There were no printed programmes for the screening/concert and TIFF artistic director Noah Cowan's introduction was as brief as the notes on the film venue's website. If you didn't know anything about Dreyer, his masterpiece, Joan of Arc or Voices of Light before you entered the theatre, you wouldn't know any more on your way out.
You'd simply leave with the conviction that you'd just experienced something very special.
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The Criterion Collection released The Passion of Joan of Arc together with Einhorn's oratorio, performed by Anonymous 4 and the Radio Netherlands Philharmonic and Choir, not too long ago. The DVD comes with several background extras, and the booklet includes the full vocal text.
To give you a taste, here are the opening 10 minutes. (Incidentally, one thing that surprised me was the frequency of the camera-angle cuts; they feel right at home in the 21st century):
Here are two great classical releases that satisfy the soul in two very, very different ways. Both deserve ***1/2 (out of 4). For details on each album, click on the performers' names:
EYBLER QUARTET & JANE BOOTH Backofen & Mozart, Theme & Variations (Analekta) Made up of three members of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (violinists Aisslinn Nosky and Julia Wedman plus violist Patrick Jordan) as well as a frequent Tafelmusik freelancer (and very busy cellist-about-town) Margaret Gay, the six-year-old Eybler Quartet's specialty is presenting Classical-era chamber music on period instruments. It's been a long wait for this, the group's second album. On it, they are joined by accomplished period woodwind player Jane Booth. The disc's centrepiece is the exquisite, four-movement Quintet for Bassett Clarinet and Strings, K. 581, written by Mozart in 1789. It's longer than most of the composer's symphonies and concertos, showing off clever craftsmanship and, best of all, line after line of gorgeous melody for this flexible, mellow-voiced woodwind. This recording does the work full justice, rendering the music with meringue-like crispness and delicacy. Two quintets by German composer Johann Backofen (1768-1839) are also pretty, much less interesting musically (violist Max Mendel plays second viola on the B-flat Major piece). There is a particular combination of delicacy and texture that one gets from period instruments that feels especially well-suited to chamber music. All of this makes for 75 very satisfying musical minutes.
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PAUL JACOBS Olivier Messiaen, Livre du Saint-Sacrement (Naxos) American organist Paul Jacobs is such a phenomenal talent, not only technically but in how he manages to coax every conceivable colour out of any instrument he confronts. The man who became head of the organ faculty at the Juilliard School at the age of 27 (in 2004) has made a specialty of the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). Here, in a two-CD set, her presents the pinnacle of Messiaen's contribution to the organ repertoire, the Book of the Holy Sacrament, 18 meditations he completed in 1984 that transcend time, space, sound and conventional notions of musical narrative. As titular organist at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Paris, Messiaen's output is directly tied to the Roman Catholic Mass as well has his own deep spirituality. Jacobs recorded this music in the incense-filled, neo-Gothic time capsule that is the Church of St. Mary-the-Virgin near Times Square in Manhattan, with its generous reverberation and fabulously massive Aeolian Skinner organ. Divorced from the atmosphere and environment that this music was written for, these tonally daring meditations and transports come across as dense and difficult. With eyes closed and mind cleared of everyday cares, it is music that can insinuate itself into the deepest recesses of the soul.
To give you a taste, here is movement 15: "The Joy of Grace," performed by French organ master Olivier Latry at his organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris:
In a conference call yesterday morning, Placido Domingo told the board of Washington National Opera that he will not stay on as general director when his contract in the U.S. capital expires next June. He has been in the D.C. post since 2003, having started as artistic director in 1996.
He made the call from his office at Los Angeles Opera, where he is also general director (with a recent contract extension to 2013) and happens to be singing in one of its current productions, and conducting the other.
And that doesn't even touch on all the other engagements he has this year, in various parts of the world.
For more details about the Washington move, check out the Washington Post.
Maureen Forrester, who died on June 16, was an early and enthusiastic champion of raising awareness and money to help research into HIV/AIDS and helping people living with HIV. A group of well-known local musicians is honouring that legacy, as well as her memory with a tribute concert this evening at 7:30 p.m. at Metropolitan Community Church in Riverdale (at the corner of Simpson and Howland Aves).
One of the performers, Adrian Luces, sent me a note with some specifics:
Performing will be Louise Pitre, Norine Burgess, Jackie Richardson, Patti Janetta, Michael Burgess, Michael Danso, Stephen Hegedus, Adrian Luces, David Warrack, Ted Moroney, Diane Leah and the MCC Choir.
There will also be spoken tributes from Casey House, Canfar and the Performing Arts Lodge recognizing Maureen's significant contributions to those organizations in the past. Stuart Hamilton and David Warrack will also deliver personal tributes.
There's going to be a massive game of musical chairs in Times Square just before 6:45 p.m., as New Yorkers, bridge-and-tunnelers and tourists vie for 2,000 free chairs to watch the Metropolitan Opera Company's opening night performance on the big screen.
Opera in Times Square? Cradle of North America's finest commercial theatre, sure. Home to some of the world's worst restaurants, absolutely. But opera? Not just any opera, but Das Rheingold, the opening episode in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle (in a staging reimagined by a Canadian, no less).
That's on top of the 3,000 free-ticketed outdoor seats (all snapped up yesterday afternoon) in the plaza at Lincoln Center, where people will watch a projection on an outdoor wall of the opera house. For everyone else, the Oct. 9 performance will be broadcast to movie theatres around the world.
For diehard opera fans, Robert Lepage's $16-million production is the big story. But crazy-expensive Ring productions are nothing new. For me, the big news is how the Mt. Everest of opera experiences is going to be available in Times Square.
This is marketing at its best, telling everyone within sprinting distance of a No. 1 subway train that opera is here and now and cool -- so here's a free sample.
(The Star's Richard Ouzounian is in Manhattan today, so hopefully he'll be able to share the experience in tomorrow's paper.)
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has been doing the same kind of hey-guys-check-this-out outreach in the plaza around Place-des-Arts for its early-September season-opening concerts, which feel like a big outdoor party.
I know I'm starting to sound drearily repetitive here, but the Toronto Symphony Orchestra really should try something like this. Last Thursday's opening night was even more low-key than in the two previous years; the seats of some of the most generous patrons were actually empty, because the opening-night reception had taken place before the concert. The sidewalk outside Roy Thomson Hall looked as it does before any of the season's concerts. If I'd walked two blocks in either direction, people wouldn't have known that it was opening night. I'm willing to bet most wouldn't even have been able to tell me where the TSO performs regularly.
I'll leave the last word on elitism and public perceptions to Alex Ross, who was typically eloquent and persuasive in an op-ed piece the New York Times ran yesterday.
Yesterday, on would have been Glenn Gould's 78th birthday, I read an article on Gould's piano technique by New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini. He, like many other New Yorkers, have been pondering the Canadian legend since the Canadian documentary Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould began screening in Manhattan at the beginning of the month.
At the same time, I've been trying to wrap myself around yet another new book on Gould (which isn't being published in English for another month, so I'll save full comment for later), the latest on what I believe is a case of ever-diminishing returns as we squeeze every last drop of juice and sift through the pulp of what was a pretty luscious piece of musical fruit.
The dissection of everything Gould into tiny little pieces is a strange symptom of our times.
Thanks to Twitter, I know what Justin Timberlake had as a mid-afternoon snack. Thanks to omnipresent paparazzi, I know Jennifer Garner prefers Starbucks or that Paris Hilton doesn't just have lipstick in her handbag.
Is this a natural human curiosity about the musicians, actors and other celebrities (I can't think of a word to describe Hilton, actually) that we admire? Or have we become stalkers?
In trying to push to the extreme every possible psychological and physiological and philosophical analysis about the nature of genius and eccentricity and Glenn Gould, are we interested or obsessed? Are we appreciating, or are we destroying the magic of art and craft?
What is it about our nature that compels us to go past enjoying artistic creation in the moment?
We appear to have a need to possess the object of our love so completely that we frequently run the risk of destroying it in the process (I cite as an example Michael Clarkson's awful The Secret Life of Glenn Gould: A Genius in Love).
But this is hardly something new, as 17th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza reminded me in his 1677 book, The Ethics, written as a series of postulates and proofs. (This is from R.H.M. Elwes' 1883 translation from the original Latin:
Postulate 36: He who remembers a thing in which he has once taken delight, desires to possess it under the same circumstances as when he first took delight therein.
Proof--Everything which a man has seen in conjunction with the object of his love, will be to him accidentally a cause of pleasure...in other words, he will desire to possess the object of his love under the same circumstances as when he first took delight therein. Q.E.D.
Just because it's nothing new to want to swallow up the object of your love doesn't mean we need to do it to our favourite artists and interepreters, is it?
Here a bit of Bach to set us on the right path, thanks to Gould, countertenor Russell Oberlin and Cantata BWV 54, Winderstehe doch der Sünde (Why don't you try to keep away from Sin, already):
Salvatore Licitra and Sondra Radvanovsky in Chicago Lyric Opera production of Verdi's Ernani. Photo: Chicago Lyric Opera
There are plenty of treats in store while we wait for the Met to return to CBC Radio 2's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on Dec. 18 (with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting Verdi's Don Carlo), including the fantastic Canadian Opera Company Production of Mozart's Idomeneo, from last season, on Oct. 30.
Today's treat is Verdi's Ernani from Lyric Opera of Chicago, starring soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Elvira, and tenor Salvatore Licitra in the title role.
Torontonians can catch both singing stars live soon: Radvanovsky in the Canadian Opera Company's season-opening production of Verdi's Aida, which opens next Saturday; and Licitra in a free master class at University of Toronto on Thursday afternoon, or at a gala fundraiser for the Bel Canto Foundation (in an acoustically risky conference centre and banquet hall in Thornhill) on Wednesday night.
Last spring, Radvanovsky was a guest in the concert lobby at Classical 96.3FM for a live broadcast with host Alexa Petrenko. Here it is, to warm us up:
Culture Days, the nationwide did-you-know-there-are-artists-iving-among-us? celebration being held over the next three days, is a great idea. But how do you deal with it in a city like Toronto, where every day is a Culture Day?
Oh, and don't forget that next weekend is Nuit Blanche.
Being a pan-Canadian affair, Culture Days must by political necessity treat a market town in agricultural country the same way as a regional centre or the nation's capital.
On top of that, Culture Days is a voluntary effort, so any local coordination depends on the strength and stamina of the people trying to get the job done.
There is so much going on here that Toronto would need its own website to help manage the choices. Instead, Torontonians are being presented with a mad jumble of options that they have to take the time and energy to sort through. It's a worthwhile effort, given how many artists, musicians, dancers and large producers have lined up special, free events for this grand arts-tasting menu. But how many people who don't already have a sense of what their interests are will make the effort to figure this out? How many people will keep on keeping on with whatever they would normally do during a nice early-fall weekend?
Lost in all of this are regularly-scheduled events. Here are a couple of small-scale musical efforts backed up by large-scale talents that are not part of Culture Days:
*Tapestry New Opera Works has harvested its latest crop of opera kernels, sown at an its annual composer-librettist laboratory, and will serve them up, gently roasted and buttered at the company's spacious rehearsal studio in the Distillery District, this evening to Sunday. Details here.
*Parkdale's Gallery 345 has a recital series called The Art of the Piano, which has three very different, yet equally compelling offerings: -Tonight: Eckhardt-Gramatte competition laureate Claudia Chan plays a clever mid-century programme, divided evenly between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries; -Saturday: New works by Toronto's inventive composer-improviser-pianist John Kameel Farah on Saturday evening; -Sunday: Adam Sherkin presents an eclectic programme that includes new work of his own alongside John Adams' China Gates and some of Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations. Hmm.
To give you a taste of Sherkin, here's a freshly made music video of him performing his own work, Three Preludes, form 2003. True to the spirit of the 19th century prelude, each effort sounds as if Sherkin is making it up as he goes along:
American composer and choral conductor Eric Whitacre thinks that singing in a virtual choir of more than 900 people is the same kind of transcendent experience as doing it in one, big room, surrounded by the other voices.
I'm not sure about that. Singing a single vocal part into my webcam is not my idea of communal fun, but it is an interesting experiment.
Whitacre wants to beat the Guiness world record for members in a virtual choir, and has sent out a call to you and me and everyone else to please submit an audio-visual recording for his work Sleep before the end of the year.
You can check it out on his website, as well as on his YouTube channel, where you'll find this introductory video, among others, including detailed how-to instructions. I've also included the virtual-choir rendition of Lux Aurumque, Whitacre's original virtual-choir project, in case you didn't catch my blog post on it earlier this year:
John Terauds started at the Toronto Star as a freelance writer in 1988, and has been on staff since 1997. He began writing on classical music in 2001, and has been the full-time classical music critic since 2005.
He is also the organist and choir director at St. Peter's Anglican Church, a parish founded in 1863 in downtown Toronto.
If he's not listening to, writing about or playing music, it means he's either asleep, unconscious, walking his dog -- or all of the above.
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