Tales from the score: Anna's innocence

If you love opera, you probably love Mozart's Don Giovanni. The jury is out, however, on the question of whether or not you like Donna Anna. "Hmm, tough one," say you. Mozart and Da Ponte start this story of Don Juan just after his encounter with Donna Anna, which means we can only infer information from the last pieces of their post-coital conversation.

Centre Stage: 7 finalists compete in the COC's Ensemble Studio Competition Gala

Interview

Next Tuesday, November 25th, the seven finalists from the national auditions for the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio will compete for precious few spots in the coveted young artist programme. Hosted by the beloved Canadian tenor Ben Heppner, the event is called Centre Stage, and it's an ongoing evolution of the audition process for these young singers.

I kind of like Black Pearls...

Humour

One afternoon a few years back, after discovering these on YouTube, I showed them to a singer friend of mine; I figured they'd find the collection of operatic misses as fascinating as I did. My singer friend didn't find it fascinating, perhaps due to the sympathy he couldn't help but feel for the voices.

In review: Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots

Review

Tapestry Opera is currently enjoying its 35th anniversary season, and they seem to be celebrating by putting on fantastic theatre (and a bit of food and drink). I went to see Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots on Sunday night, the last of three performances in the Distillery Historic District.

He said/She said: Aprile Millo at Trinity St. Paul's

Review

On Saturday night I went with go-to concert date Greg Finney to Trinity St. Paul's Centre on Bloor Street to hear the great Aprile Millo in recital. Upon opening sitting down and flipping through the programme, I was a little humbled to find out that I really should have known more about Aprile.

Shh...Don't tell them it's opera!

Op-ed

I'm spending this month touring around Ontario, putting on opera for kids. We bring a whole set, costumes, props and electric keyboard, to school gyms and perform for hundreds of kids, twice a day. It's a lot of early mornings, a lot of equipment-schlepping, and a lot of time in the tour van.

In review: Extensions of Us

Review

On a cool Thursday night I trotted down to the Extension Room at 30 Eastern Avenue for Extensions of Us, featuring Lucia Cesaroni, Adrian Kramer, Jennifer Nichols and Justin De Bernardi with Maika'i Nash on piano.

Encore?

Op-ed

I was in rehearsal for an upcoming concert, and the only thing left to look at was the encore. I always feel like a lame impostor, rehearsing an encore.

When Disney made a cartoon about an opera-singing whale

So, in 1946 Walt Disney produced an anthology of animated short films, called Make Mine Music. There are ten film segments, almost all of them set to music; there's an animation of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and the artists involved include Benny Goodman and the Andrews Sisters.

The Opera Posse Phenomenon

Op-ed

Opera singers are masters of multi-tasking: they juggle an important list of technical elements in order to sing a performance, and they have to do it in foreign languages, while following a conductor and negotiating weird costumes/lighting/staging. Singers' to-do lists don't get simpler as they gain experience.