| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 8-May-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | The stark glory of Robert Carsen's Dialogues des Carmélites with Canadian Opera Company |
 Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmélites has the virtues of necessity. Director Robert Carsten’s production puts these virtues before us in simple black and white. The virtues begin with the story: Blanche, an aristocrat afraid of the French Revolution who hopes to find refuge in a nunnery, becomes a refugee of religious persecution, and chooses to die a martyr with her sisters. The story is told with a minimum of props and no end of imaginative staging, lighting and costumes.Read full review... | |
| 1-May-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | Atom Egoyan's strong, intoxicating Salome at the Canadian Opera Company |
 Atom Egoyan’s production of Richard Strauss’ Salome is styled for extreme contrasts. You could think of it as Springtime for Herod in Judea. While patrons spilling out of limos, taxis and Wheel-Trans were gathering on this magnolia blossom-filled May Day evening in the plaza outside the opera house’s glass façade, a parade hedged by bicycle cops was filing by. It flaunted floats carrying portraits of Karl Marx, with acrobats, dancers, jugglers and marching bands enthusiastically protesting AUSTERITY, demanding an END TO CAPITALISM, OIL SANDS, AND GMO’S.Read full review... | |
| 15-Feb-2013 The Royal Conservatory of Music, TELUS Centre, Koerner Hall | The Royal Conservatory Orchestra goes big with Handel and Mahler in Toronto |
 It was an evening of go big or go home. Koerner Hall is a world-class “acousticorium”. It has been praised for razor-sharp rendering of the sounds of soloists like guitarist John Williams, divas like Anne Sofie von Otter and Dee Dee Bridgewater, quartets like the Kronos and Takács, chamber orchestras such as the 28 strings of Gergiev’s Stradivarius Ensemble.Read full review... | |
| 8-Feb-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | Ancient magic updated: Peter Sellars' Tristan with the Canadian Opera Company |
 Peter Sellars successfully updated the ancient magic in Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Wagner had already modernised the medieval tale by focusing on the middle of the story, where the passion of the doomed lovers catches fire. Wagner treats the mythic origins of the romance as back-story recollected while passions are flaring. Sellars tightens that focus by stripping away sets, scenery and costumes. He restricts action and staging to bare gestures. The actors, often uniformed in black, are illuminated by rectangles of spotlight on a stage, bare except for a black box podium.Read full review... | |
