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Lev Bratishenko

MUSIC

Burns So Good

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Faust, Opéra de Montréal, to May 26

by Lev Bratishenko
21.05.2012

Two gentle people of the better sort were waiting for us at the opera. They had paid something like a firstborn for the privilege and I was not about to disappoint. I wore the gown normally reserved for Café Cleopatra, and the Standard Opera Companion wore nothing at all; just a litre of burning gasoline that had to be messily replenished every forty minutes. We didn’t expect to be upstaged by the show.

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MUSIC

I Could Have Danced (Baroque Music) All Night

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Review of the Mont-Royal Baroque Collective, The Rialto, April 13

by Lev Bratishenko
21.04.2012

I didn’t see much of the Rialto theatre while arriving—one never does from inside a litter—but once the boys put me down and I’d got out of the awful velvet and silk swaddling, I was pleasantly surprised. What a grand place to begin something.

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MUSIC

Return to the Ballet

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The Rite of Spring, Les Grands Ballets, Théâtre Maisonneuve

by Lev Bratishenko
31.03.2012

Ding! Ding! Was not a sound that I expected to ever hear, but it happened last week when we reached the bottom of the caviar bucket. Without any opera business on the horizon, daddy was forced to improvise, and so we went to the ballet.

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MUSIC

Student Operas, Best Operas?

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Opera McGill & the McGill Symphony Orchestra presents Mozart's Don Giovanni

by Lev Bratishenko
29.01.2012

Butler and I were at stalemate over my pneumatic tube subscription. He thinks it’s a waste of money, but he doesn’t know opera companies. Yesterday I had my glorious revenge when the old tube rattled and spat out an invitation. There, I screamed from the lavatory, not everybody went over to email. I went, of course, and though the ticket lady found my canister suspicious she judged it unwise to argue. Four stars for the ticket lady at Pollack Hall.

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MUSIC

Oh Bother

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MSO conducted by Sir Roger Norrington with Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

by Lev Bratishenko
03.12.2011

The evening started with an explanation that the order of the pieces was changed so that the orchestra would only have to shuffle seats once. For Beethoven’s 1st Concerto, they were seated tightly around the piano, with its back to us, in the manner of an 18th century chamber concert, so that we might appreciate [...]

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MUSIC

Singers Save Retro-Rendered Show

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Staging mars perfectly decent performance of Dvořák opera, Rusalka

by Lev Bratishenko
15.11.2011

Some people talk about putting on a Czech opera like you wear a lead apron to do it, but that isn’t true. It’s perfectly legal. So don’t buy the argument that a production of Dvořák’s Rusalka (containing an aria you’ll find on every best-of opera disc) means the Opera de Montreal took any risks. Not [...]

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MUSIC

Brass Hysterics and Weeping Grandmothers

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Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra bring Tchaikovskii's first and sixth, along with inimitable Russian style, to La Maison Symphonique

by Lev Bratishenko
26.10.2011

Critical stares of Russian matrons sweep the Maison Symphonique lobby like Distant Early Warning radar stations, but their targets are their neighbours’ outfits and so I pass unharmed and invisible. I am not wearing any gold or miniskirt. Arriving at my seat, I discover the under-chair heaters have been replaced by samovars.

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MUSIC

Eat the Rich

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Le nozze di Figaro, Opéra de Montréal

by Lev Bratishenko
20.09.2011

It was crowded like any opening night, full to the rafters with an assortment of Montreal’s best and worst dressed elders, all of whom had to part for me and my wheelbarrow. Butler complained about “pushing me about in public,” but what was he going to do, find another job?

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MUSIC

Leftovers in Another Kitchen

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Review: Opera Piccola, Theatre Outremont

by Lev Bratishenko
05.09.2011

The gilt-edged envelope smelled of perfume and was obviously caviar-stained. A monumental footman waited for a reply with a silver tray in one hand and a gun in the other. More opera tickets, I thought. Hooray.

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MUSIC

Sweaty Russian Exercises

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Soirée Russe, Centre Pierre-Charbonneau

by Lev Bratishenko
07.07.2011

I went to a weird place recently. There were a couple of hundred others there, all with healthy annuity incomes, and we were inappropriately dressed in tailcoats and spats and things. The row ahead of me passed a pair of army field binoculars around. I heard the most serious-looking one, their leader I think, mutter [...]

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MUSIC

Criminal By Design

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La Bohème, Place Des Arts

by Lev Bratishenko
25.05.2011

Stage design appears in the criminal code under “manslaughter – unusual,” which is a possible label for the season premiere of Opéra de Montréal’s La Bohème, a “lavish new production” that treats its talented cast with the thoughtfulness and dignity of a garden rake to the face, and succeeds largely in spite of itself. Only [...]

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MUSIC

Severed Heads & Oscar Wilde

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Salomé, Opera de Montreal, Place des arts

by Lev Bratishenko
31.03.2011

Goth teenagers loiter around the Grand Vizier’s shopping complex under the aqueduct, then a loopy teen wearing a dozen nighties dances in and gets them killing for her. They do it because she’s so hot. And she’s a princess. It’s good, right? Get this, her dad wants to get with her, she strips for him [...]

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MUSIC

Preferable To A Beating

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Werther, Opera de Montreal, PdA

by Lev Bratishenko
27.01.2011

In the golden days of opera, critics wore two pistols and audiences ritually burned the weakest cast member and ate them. Or forced the director to eat them, depending on whether they were delicious. It was around this time that an important critical methodology was discovered: Drink a tincture of ships’ caulking in ether and [...]

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MUSIC

A Fabulous Spectrum of Grey

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15th edition of the Opera de Montreal Gala, Place des Arts

by Lev Bratishenko
10.12.2010

Leopard print and gold stilettos welcomed us to Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, or as it is known in family jargon, daddy’s angry place. The hall looked the same but the opera crowd was thick for a Sunday matinee and more pomaded than usual. Offstage and on, ambition was in the air.

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MUSIC

Anyone that Hears my Voice

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VivaVoce, Montreal 2010 Bach Festival

by Lev Bratishenko
08.12.2010

Christ Church Cathedral glows with competence as the choir enters. The pews gleam with it, and I happily come out of the rain to receive a healthful serving of Our Cultural Solids. The concert is part of the 2010 Montreal Bach Festival, a healthy-sounding machine for the production of lovely evenings, which each year fills [...]

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