Toronto Summer time Music: Monteverdi: L’incoronazione di Poppea (live performance efficiency) . Cappella Mediterranea, Leonardo García-Alarcón, conductor, Soloists – Poppea: Sophie Junker Nerone: Nicolò Balducci Ottavia / Virtù: Mariana Flores Ottone: Christopher Lowrey Seneca / Console: Edward Grint Arnalta / Nutrice / Famigliare 1: Samuel Boden Fortuna / Drusilla: Lucía Martín Cartón Amore / Valetto: Juliette Mey Lucano / Soldato 1 / Famigliare 2 / Tribuno: Valerio Contaldo Liberto / Soldato 2 / Tribuno: Riccardo Romeo Littore / Famigliare 3 / Console: Yannis François. July 10, 2025, Koerner Corridor.
Time flies when you find yourself having enjoyable, because the saying goes…
It’s arduous to consider, however this 12 months’s Toronto Summer time Music (July 10 – August 2) marks its twentieth season. All of it started in the summertime of 2006, when TSM beneath its Inventive Director Agnes Grossmann launched its first full, four-week Pageant, providing a program that featured a mixture of dwelling grown skills and celebrated worldwide artists.
As somebody who has been attending TSM occasions from the very starting, I can truthfully say that it has contributed immeasurably to the musical lifetime of Toronto in the summertime months, often a time of 12 months when live performance programming takes a hiatus. With TSM there’s no have to journey out of city for a musical repair. I heard many terrific TSM occasions which have eternally etched in my reminiscence financial institution.
Final night in Koerner Corridor, a nicely attended, extremely enthusiastic if not fairly full viewers witnessed a scintillating live performance efficiency of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea (1643), his final opera and certainly one of a handful of the oldest operatic works nonetheless carried out at the moment. In reality, this opera was staged by the Canadian Opera Firm method again in 1983, starring Carmen Balthrop and Michael Myers because the lovers.
There are a number of variations of this piece, all fairly prolonged at roughly three hours with one intermission. I’m fairly certain the COC manufacturing was lower. Due to this fact, I used to be stunned to learn within the TSM brochure that it was solely two hours lengthy, which turned out to be inaccurate. Final night was fairly the marathon, clocking in at three hours 20 minutes! By no means thoughts — each minute was fulfilling.
The French troupe, Cappella Mediterranea, at the moment on tour in North America, made a welcome cease at TSM. A forged of 11n soloists, some tackling a number of roles, introduced this early traditional to life, supported by 12 musicians, taking part in on a mixture of modern and interval devices.
Live performance Efficiency
It was a live performance efficiency with no units to talk of. Nevertheless it was decidedly not the “stand and sing” — or extra indelicately coined “park and bark” — selection.
In reality, there was loads of stage motion. We received a forged of younger and energetic singers with (largely) nice voices, completely sport with regards to stage antics. There was actually not a uninteresting second. They wore character-appropriate attires, nothing too elaborate thoughts you, with costume adjustments for these assuming a number of roles.
The Singers
For such an early work, Coronation of Poppea has various demanding vocal writing, notably for the ladies, with vocal traces that go above the stave, albeit no excessive Cs. All of the soloists have been as much as the duty and sang up a storm.
Kudos to the 2 leads, soprano Sophie Junker (Poppea) and countertenor Nicolo Balducci (Nero). They’d glorious chemistry and the requisite charismatic stage presence. Their love duet was a spotlight of the night.
Maybe it’s a bit unfair to single out just one or two within the supporting forged for reward, as I can truthfully say that there was not a weak hyperlink. That mentioned, I used to be fairly struck by Argentine soprano Mariana Flores for her fierce, in-your-face Ottavia.
Additionally noteworthy was the Lucano of Italian tenor/Tafelmusik soloist Valerio Contaldo. Within the crystal-clear acoustics of Koerner Corridor, the Cappella Mediterranea, a 12-member chamber ensemble beneath Music Director Leonardo Garcia-Alarcon, produced actually pretty sounds that was a pleasure to the ear.
A twenty first Century Staging
Whereas this opera is a few 380 years previous, the general really feel of this efficiency is decidedly twenty first Century. The staging of this supposedly live performance efficiency begs the query – can we, or ought to we, contemplate this efficiency traditionally genuine or correct?
Whereas it’s unattainable to know for certain what efficiency follow was like within the seventeenth century, I quite doubt {that a} efficiency practically 4 centuries in the past can be as dramatically rousing as what we noticed final night. That mentioned, this opera premiered within the Carnival in Venice, so maybe that there have been plenty of enjoyable and sport for the event. We’ll by no means know!
In any case, the enthusiastic viewers final night lapped all of it up, giving the performers enormous, repeated, and far deserved ovations on the finish. It was a grand begin to the 2025 Toronto Summer time Music Pageant, with lots extra gems for the eyes and ears, till August 2.
Are you trying to promote an event? Have a news tip? Must know the most effective events occurring this weekend? Ship us a note.
#LUDWIGVAN
Get the each day arts information straight to your inbox.
Join the Ludwig Van Toronto e-Blast! — native classical music and opera information straight to your inbox HERE.
Joseph So is Professor Emeritus at Trent College and Affiliate Editor of Opera Canada.He’s additionally a long-time contributor to La Scena Musicale and Opera (London, UK). His curiosity in music journalism focuses on voice, opera in addition to symphonic and piano repertoires. He seems frequently as a panel member of the Large COC Podcast.He has co-edited a ebook, Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Tradition, Efficiency, revealed by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group).
