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Browsing: Classical Music

TSO Invites Listeners to Discover a World of Sound in Globe-Spanning 2025/26 Season

By Newswire on 20 February 2025 Classical Music, Newswire, Orchestral, Toronto, World Music

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is excited to announce its 2025/26 concert season—an array of extraordinary musical experiences featuring works and artists from across the globe. For what promises to be a year of unprecedented international attention on Toronto during the World Cup, Music Director Gustavo Gimeno has crafted a season that broadens cross-border creative connections. This diversity of programming is reflected in the TSO’s wide-ranging concert series—showcasing orchestral gems, new creative voices, widely played hits of the past and present, entertaining entry points for young audiences, and sweeping cinematic soundscapes—designed to appeal and speak to everyone. Highlights include the return of megastar pianist Lang…

COC’s 2025/2026 Season Blends Iconic Operas With Bold New Visions

By Newswire on 20 February 2025 Music Competition, Newswire, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company has announced its 2025/2026 season today featuring bold new productions, blockbuster audience favourites, and landmark works from two of Canada’s leading creative visionaries. The exciting mainstage season, to be presented at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, includes a new-to-Toronto staging of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, an all-new co-production of Massenet’s Werther, Verdi’s always popular Rigoletto, Rossini’s family-friendly The Barber of Seville, as well as Robert Carsen’s haunting adaptation of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Robert Lepage’s captivating take on Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung. “The Canadian Opera Company has long established itself as a global leader in artistic excellence,” says COC General Director David C. Ferguson.…

Les Violons du Roy conducted by Nicolas Ellis. Photo: Florence Geneau

Review | Kerson Leong Dazzles in Lopsided Les Violons du Roy Program

By Heather Weinreb on 18 February 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Orchestral, Strings, Violin

For Valentine’s Day, Les Violons du Roy presented a program full of pathos at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall. On the program were iconic excerpts from J.S Bach’s religious choral works, as well as the rip-roaring premiere of Found in Lostness, a piece for solo violin and string orchestra by Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy. Bach and Murphy couldn’t be more different; the disparateness of their music was tied together with two Mendelssohn pieces. Mendelssohn’s earliest piece, the Symphonia for Strings composed when he was 14 years old, started off the concert. His last complete work, String Quartet no. 6 in F minor,…

Shown left-right: Elisabeta Cojocaru and Kimly Mengyin Wang (photos submitted by the artist).

Pianists Elisabeta Cojocaru and Kimly Mengyin Wang Join COC’s Ensemble Studio

By Newswire on 18 February 2025 Classical Music, Piano, Toronto

Toronto – The Canadian Opera Company welcomes Elisabeta Cojocaru and Kimly Mengyin Wang to the company’s Ensemble Studio as pianist coaches for the 2025/2026 season. Cojocaru is currently a pianist with McGill-Université de Montréal Vocal Arts Residency who has recently participated in festivals across North America and Europe including l’Académie vocale internationale de Lachine in Montréal, SongFest in Nashville, Opera Nuova in Edmonton, and Exzellenz Labor Oper in Germany. Wang’s extensive career spans solo recitals, chamber music, and opera performances across North America, Europe, and China; recently she served as a vocal coach at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and as a répétiteur for opera productions at the Boston University Opera Institute.…

Introducing the New Artists of the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal!

By Newswire on 18 February 2025 Montreal, Music Competition, Opera, Piano, Vocal

Montreal, February 18, 2025 – The Opéra de Montréal is proud to announce the newest members of the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal, selected following the National Auditions finals at the annual Talent Gala on November 20. This year marks a significant milestone for the internationally renowned professional development residency with the introduction of a specialized training program for stage directors. The 2024 cohort will welcome five singers, one pianist, and one stage director for an intensive one- to two-year training program. – Tessa Fackelmann (mezzo-soprano – ON) – Ellita Gagner (mezzo-soprano – ON) – Colin Mackey (baritone -…

Festival Classica announces the programming of its 15th edition!

By Newswire on 17 February 2025 Classical, Classical Music, Montreal

Montréal, February 10, 2025 — Held over 24 days in the Longueuil urban agglomeration and also in Montréal, Festival Classica has since 2011 provided top-quality programming both in ticketed auditoria and large outdoor free concerts. Its newly minted slogan, “Classical unlimited” perfectly defines the identity the festival has forged over the past few years: with its many commissions of new works from Canadian composers (operas, concertos, chamber music), its grand symphonic rock concerts, its eco-responsible policy, its involvement in digital art, its digitalized scenery, its original programming and its international alliances, Festival Classica embodies and represents the age we live…

Benjamin Appl and Eric Lu. Photo 1: David Ruano

Review | Benjamin Appl & Eric Lu’s Schwanengesang at Bourgie Hall

By Amanda Wong on 17 February 2025 Art Song, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Piano, Vocal

A German-born baritone like Benjamin Appl is certainly no stranger to Schubert’s work. I can only assume that the Austrian composer’s impressive list of over 600 songs offer much to Appl’s repertoire, who himself is largely a Lieder singer. Accompanied by American pianist Eric Lu, Appl presented Schubert’s Schwanengesang—his ‘swan songs’—as well as Beethoven’s song collection, An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved), at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall on Feb. 13. What you missed Though one’s swan song is typically a final piece or performance before retirement or death, Schubert’s Schwanengesang is a collection of Lieder compiled and shared by…

Opéra national de Paris’ Castor et Pollux. Photo: Vincent Pontet

Review | Peter Sellars’ Unhip Castor et Pollux in Paris

By Ossama el Naggar on 14 February 2025 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Nothing is less hip than a strenuous attempt to be hip. This is how polite society would describe Paul Sellars’ take on Rameau’s Castor et Pollux (seen Feb. 7). I’ll leave it to your imagination how less charitable souls would describe it, or you might prefer to check your social media. The story of Castor and Pollux is somewhat reminiscent of Orpheus and Eurydice but with fraternal love instead of marital love as the motivation. Castor and Pollux are twin half-brothers born to Leda. Castor was her son from Tyndareus, King of Sparta. Pollux, an immortal demi-god, was her son…

Lila Dufy (Dircé) and Joyce El-Khoury (Médée). Photo: DR Stefan Brion.

Review | Joyce El-Khoury Triumphs as Médée in Paris

By Ossama el Naggar on 13 February 2025 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Premiered in Paris in 1797, Cherubini’s Médée was originally presented with a French libretto, based on Euripides’ play from Greek antiquity. It’s this version that is currently onstage at Paris’s Opéra Comique (seen Feb. 8). The opera was tepidly received at its premiere and mostly forgotten for over a century, until Maria Callas revived it in the 1950s with an Italian libretto conceived especially for her. The original French version is in the style of Gluck, the great reformer who believed opera should be a perfect blending of music and text. It is also an opéra comique in which spoken dialogue alternates with…

Vancouver Opera’s 2025 production of Flight. Photo: David Cooper Photography

Review | Vancouver Opera’s Flight: Laugh Until You Cry

By Kaitlyn Chan on 12 February 2025 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vancouver, Vocal

On Feb. 8, Vancouver Opera presented the local premiere of Jonathan Dove’s 1998 opera, Flight. This opera—inspired by the true story of an Iranian refugee stranded in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years—is an emotional rollercoaster ride from the comedic to the heart-wrenching. The production originated at Pacific Opera Victoria in early 2020, just before the pandemic shut down. Stage direction was entrusted there to veteran Canadian theatre legend Morris Panych who has revived his retro-1960s vision for Vancouver Opera. At the start of the opera, Ken MacDonald’s set design looked quite simple with a tall control tower…

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