Last night's birthday concert for the Canadian Opera Company was to have been a grand Ben Heppner concert. Poor Ben, and how remorseful he must have felt, had to cancel at a very late stage. The magicians of the COC, led by Alexander Neef, were unperturbed and put together in a couple of days a brilliant alternative program, full of fine singing and, more than that, quite wonderful orchestral playing.
The program was a simple formula - part 1 French, Part 2 Wagner. Ben was replaced by three singers and while one could never say that we did did not miss Ben, there was the generous compensation of splendid singing from Ramon Vargas in Berlioz's Faust, Gounod's Romeo and Massenet's Werther, from Russell Braun as Mercutio in Romeo et Juliette, and the two of them in, yes you guessed it, the great duet in Bizet's Les Pecheurs des Perles. These last two were unprogrammed encores. But clearly well prepared!
The orchestra was scintillating in two staggeringly played Berlioz pieces which showed off the virtuosity and balance of the orchestra, the personality and distinction of the woodwind soloists, and the richness of the strings, above all the cellos led, as for so many years, by Bryan Epperson.
The late Richard Bradshaw built this orchestra painstakingly over seventeen years. This is one of his two greatest legacies, the opera house being the other one on show last night. But the building of an orchestra is a long and unpredictable process - and COC's new extremely gifted young music director, Johannes Debus, is so fortunate to inherit this team from Richard. What a gift!
And he showed again after the intermission the best bit of all - they play Wagner as if they had been playing it for ever. Bradshaw's final great work with the company was the Ring Cycle - the culmination of his life's work. And it lives on for all to hear - and is in wonderfully safe hands with Debus.
Of course we missed Ben - but John Treleavan, one of the few other tenors around who can cope with this stuff nobly flew in from London on Thursday having just returned from singing Siegfried in LA. Good for him and we were cheering him on. And there was a gorgeous lyrical contribution from Russell as well - Wolfram's Star of Eve.
So all in all a great night. Congratulations Alexander Neef - the future of COC is assured. I look forward to the 75th birthday in 2024!
Oh and by the way the dinner afterwards was good too!
Hi, I hope that you were on the terrific Porter flight to downtown Toronto. Unless of course American Airlines is a corporate sponsor and then you ought to be landing on them at Pearson. We were in Toronto for "The Nightingale" (incredible Robert Lepage production with the singing and orchestra leading the way, and "Iphigenie en Tauride" at Opera Atelier (Kresimir Spicer was a terrific Oreste.)
Sir Andrew Davis was our fellow Porter Airlines commuter. We spotted him getting off the incoming flight we were returning on. He is a busy guy with Faust at Lyric and Toronto Symphony concerts complementing each other.
Rick and Louie
Posted by: Rick Boyum | November 09, 2009 at 10:52 AM