Posts tagged as:

Opera de Montreal

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

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

Inside The Opera Machine

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Roberto Devereux, Place des Arts

by Lev Bratishenko
20.11.2010

Continued hassling of the Montreal opera establishment has lead to bizarre and extreme countermeasures: I have been invited into the belly of the beast, its tenderest backstage bits, where motors and maidens meet, and where I am liveblogging a performance of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.

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MUSIC

A Sadistic Season Opener

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Opéra de Montréal, Place des Arts

by Lev Bratishenko
07.10.2010

My double-tall opera companion mortified me by texting during Opéra de Montréal’s season opener Rigoletto. But then I looked at what she had written and it was okay. She had ordered rye delivery.

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MUSIC

Marketing Operatic Fruits

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L'Opéra de Montréal, Saturday, Marché Jean-Talon

by Lev Bratishenko
16.09.2010

The young lady (Emma Parkinson) handed me my change and began to sing the Habanera from Carmen, awfully well for a produce retailer. Then a fellow in a cape (Etienne Dupuis) across the aisle gave an unnervingly professional rendition of “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre”, completing the lyrical geometry begun by a La [...]

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MUSIC

I’m A Queen! Queen! Queen!

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Cendrillon, Opera de Montréal

by Lev Bratishenko
01.06.2010

I asked for it, I understand. I spent two seasons nipping at Opera de Montreal for its turgid sets and now it seems somebody must have been listening. Somebody powerful, with deep pockets and an insatiable hunger for the colour pink.

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MUSIC

Poor Wet Cat Redux

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Nelligan, Monument National

by Lev Bratishenko
08.03.2010

André Gagnon’s opera Nelligan premiered in 1990 at the Grand Theatre de Québec with a pop cast. On Saturday, the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal reprised it, twenty years on, at the Monument National. A more ambitious production than anything the Opéra de Montréal has dared at Place des Arts, it is full of [...]

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MUSIC

Shoot Him Again!

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Tosca, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier

by Lev Bratishenko
02.02.2010

Tosca! The name has teeth for good reason. Puccini’s opera averages a death every 37 minutes. It includes 19th century Italian politics, the homicidal lusting of a Roman police chief, a jealous girlfriend, and a superfluity of hypocrites. This is distilled opera of few peers in the repertoire, and is often a final examination for [...]

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MUSIC

Boy Prince And Birdbrain Get Lost

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The Magic Flute, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier

by Lev Bratishenko
11.11.2009

You can’t have opera without ridiculous plot devices, and the older the opera the worse they get. But modern audiences are used to comprehensible plots and characters that aren’t allegories, so we turn our attention to the singing or fall asleep (Mister Parterre W38). Opéra de Montréal presents The Magic Flute, and the singing is [...]

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