| Dr. Colin Eatock, composer |
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 Read the small print, above. Opera News is an entirely useful and respectable publication. Over the years, its connections to New York’s Metropolitan Opera have been handled with discretion and an admirable sense of fair play. Many readers may be unaware that it’s published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, which is a fundraising affiliate of the Metropolitan Opera. It doesn’t read like a “house organ.”
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 A scene from the COC's Semele (photo: Michael Cooper). I’d heard that the Canadian Opera Company’s staging of Handel’s Semele was full of surprises. And for this reason, I deliberately chose not to read any of the reviews in the press until I had the chance to see it myself, on Sunday afternoon.
And, yes, it is full of surprises – that probably work best if one experiences them as such. So let me issue a “spoiler alert.” If you haven’t seen Semele yet, and are planning to do so, you may want to stop reading this blog right now.  A scene from Classical Music is Boring. Regular readers may know that I’ve taken quite an interest in classical music blogs. Last year, I created a website called the Big List of Classical Music Blogs (here), in which I catalogued all the blogs on the topic that I could find on the internet. When I launched the BLCMB, it contained over 300 links. Now there are more than 550.
So, to make a long story short, I’ve seen a lot of blogs – big blogs, small blogs, good blogs, bad blogs. But I’ve never seen anything quite like the Classical Music is Boring blog, which was recently brought to my attention.  "The Machine" dominates this Ring. Yesterday I attended an advance screening of the film Wagner’s Dream, by Susan Froemke. Allow me to tell you about it.
This well produced documentary neatly traces the collaboration of Canadian designer Robert Lepage and the Metropolitan Opera from its inception to the final staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  A Florentine Tragedy at the COC (photo: Michael Cooper). Here’s my review of the Canadian Opera Company’s double-bill of A Florentine Tragedy and Gianni Schicchi, still warm from yesterday’s Globe and Mail.
Ever since Giacomo Puccini wrote the three one-act operas in his Il Trittico, opera companies have been mixing and matching them with short works by other composers. |
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