Round of applause for Toronto's B-list
April 02, 2007
CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Anyone who peruses the city's classical concert listings knows
there aren't many other places in the world that match Toronto's musical
riches.
As a music scene grows, it stratifies. There is the best, the good
and the passable. There are big budgets and small.
Call it the A-list and the B-list.
Toronto's best rival the world's top offerings. The standards one
would apply in Carnegie Hall or in Covent Garden don't need to be lowered nor
the critical gauge blurred when sitting in Roy Thomson Hall or the Four Seasons
Centre for the Performing Arts.
B-list presentations have much smaller budgets and tend to use
local talent.
As with any profession, the bulk of our musicians are solid
performers who, for whatever reason, toil without fanfare in their hometown.
These are our day-to-day musical heroes, the people who nurture audiences and
budding talents in Toronto and its hinterlands.
But their group efforts do not always measure up to A-list
standards. One soloist may blow the critic away while the rest of them
disappoint. Perhaps the staging is cheesy or awkward. Or maybe there wasn't
time for more rehearsals.
Opera in Concert, which presented its final work of the season
yesterday afternoon at the Jane Mallett Theatre, is a case in point. General
director Guillermo Silva-Marin consistently finds exciting, obscure works to
attract the city's opera aficionados to a single performance, usually
accompanied by a hardworking pianist or occasionally by a small orchestra.
Yesterday's work was Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt (The
Dead City), which took Europe by storm after its 1920 double premiere (in
Hamburg and Cologne, Germany). For many reasons, it has since fallen from
grace, with the exception of the soprano-showcase "Marietta's Aria"
in Act I.
Opera in Concert mixes established young talents and unknowns,
with mixed results. Yesterday's performance was no exception: soprano Joni Henson,
who has had two notable successes in the last year with the Canadian Opera
Company, was stunning as Marietta, a dancer in an itinerant theatre troupe who
is being stalked by a man whose dead wife she resembles.
Baritone Peter Barrett, 26, singing Marietta's comrade Pierrot,
was magnificent in "Mein sehnen, mein wähnen" in Act II, showing deep
artistry.
But the other soloists each need further development as singers.
The piano reduction of Korngold's lush score was played indifferently,
diminishing the deep, sensual score.
The city would be poorer without its B-list music presenters,
which include groups like Off Centre Music Salon, Toronto Masque Theatre and
Mooredale Concerts, just to name a few. They deserve applause and
encouragement, even if not regular reviews.