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John Gilks

@operaramblings.bsky.social

Semi-retired arts writer (operaramblings.blog). Cat parent. Can get obsessed about rugby, opera and stuff.

46 Followers  |  38 Following  |  323 Posts  |  Joined: 17.11.2024  |  1.6597

Latest posts by operaramblings.bsky.social on Bluesky

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The silliest Donizetti? Viva la Mamma (also known as Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) may be Donizetti’s most intentionally silly opera (though some of the “serious” operas rival it for sillines…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/14/t...

14.11.2025 16:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Christmas Market works on several levels Kanika Ambrose’s The Christmas Market opened on Wednesday in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Philip Akin.  At one level it’s a much needed critique/exposé…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/13/t...

13.11.2025 15:23 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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21C 2026 The line up for 21C for 2026 has been announced. This is always one of the city’s best programmes of contemporary and related music. Details…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/12/2...

12.11.2025 14:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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A couple more interesting things this week I’ve only just found out about a couple of events this week that may be of interest. Soulpepper has a free showing of Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal.  It’s on …

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/11/a...

11.11.2025 14:01 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Comeuppance comes up a bit short Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ The Comeuppance is playing at Soulpepper in a production directed by Frank Cox-O’Connell.  It’s an enormously ambitious play.  It takes the relatively bana…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/10/t...

10.11.2025 18:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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GGS double bill This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School was a double bill of short chamber operas.  It played at Mazzoleni Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings with Liza Balkan directing …

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/09/g...

09.11.2025 16:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Dissonant Species isn’t on my wavelength Theatre Gargantua’s Dissonant Species opened at Factory Theatre on Friday night.  It’s written by Heather Marie Annis and Michael Gordon Spence and directed by Jacquie P.A Thomas.  It&#…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/08/d...

08.11.2025 15:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Telling Tales This year’s Wirth Vocal Prize winner, Kate Fogg, gave the now customary recital in the RBA on Thursday accompanied by Nate Ben-Horin.  The recital was titled Telling Tales and covered soprano…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/07/t...

07.11.2025 15:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Composers who fled the Nazis Äneas Humm and Renata Rohlfing’s new album Sehnsucht features songs from four composers whose careers were derailed by Nazi persecution of the Jews.  Three of them; Arnold Schoenberg, Alexand…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/05/c...

05.11.2025 16:08 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Julie Boulianne and friends Last Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a showcase for the collaborative pianists of the McGill-UdeM Piano Vocal Arts programme.  Each of the five pianists on show got to accompany mezzo Juli…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/04/j...

04.11.2025 14:39 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Like Flesh So another rather interesting chamber opera from Europe has come my way.  It’s Like Flesh; music by Sivan Eldar and English language libretto by Cordelia Lynn.  It’s 80 minutes long and…

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/03/l...

03.11.2025 18:35 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Far Side of the Moon The Far Side of the Moon opened at Canadian Stage on Saturday evening.  It’s a Robert Lepage production; written, designed and directed by him.  It’s very Lepage with the strengths and …

operaramblings.blog/2025/11/02/t...

02.11.2025 14:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Judita Frano Parać’s opera Judita is unusual in at least one respect.  The libretto is in Old Croatian and is based on a 1501 epic poem by Marko Marulić, in turn based on the Book of Judith so the s…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/31/j...

31.10.2025 13:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night In my review of Opera Atelier’s production of The Magic Flute I had this t say about Rainelle Krause’s Queen of the Night… “Her coloratura was powerful and pinpoint, and as …

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/30/r...

30.10.2025 14:48 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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L’Empire Étrange The first concert in Soundstreams’ Encounters series took place at Hugh’s Room on Tuesday evening.  It was a presentation of Andrew Balfour’s L’Empire Étrange which is a sor…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/29/l...

29.10.2025 14:25 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Sky of My Heart New York Polyphony are a quartet of singers; Geoffrey Williams – counter-tenor, Steven Caldicott Wilson and Andrew Fuchs – tenors and Craig Phillips – bass.  On Sky of My Heart th…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/28/s...

28.10.2025 20:38 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Lohengrin with a twist Sometimes opera directors come up with a twist to a plot hat is illuminating without requiring pretzel logic to actually align it with the libretto.  I think Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabit’s…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/26/l...

26.10.2025 14:30 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Mikado revisited Toronto Operetta Company’s season opened with a run of a “modified” version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.  It had the by now traditional updates predictably featurin…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/25/t...

25.10.2025 17:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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An exploration of Irish song On Thursday evening at the Canadian Music Centre soprano Maeve Palmer and pianist Jialiang Zhu gave a recital that explored Irish song in many of its aspects from traditional sean-nós to English la…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/24/a...

24.10.2025 15:12 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Coming up in November Here’s what’s coming up next month as best I know. Canadian Stage’s presentation of Robert Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon opens at the Bluma Appel Theatre on November 1st…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/23/c...

23.10.2025 13:28 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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A valuable rediscovery Miecysłav Weinberg’s The Idiot, based on the Dostoevsky novel, was composed in 1986/7 but didn’t get a full premiere until 2013 in Mannheim.  The neglect of Weinberg’s music in US…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/22/a...

22.10.2025 14:25 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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What Brings You In on stage Some time ago I reviewed Leslie Ting’s CD set What Brings You In; noting that it was music “that was composed for performance as part of an art installation or a site specific performan…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/21/w...

21.10.2025 14:20 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Matthias Goerne and Daniil Trifonov do Winterreise It’s always interesting when a top notch baritone (especially a native German speaker) and a first rate concert pianist get together to do Schubert’s Winterreise, which is, I suppose, t…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/20/m...

20.10.2025 22:03 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Opera Revue (alcohol free edition) Regular readers will know that I’ve seen my fair share of shows by Opera Revue but pretty much always in a bar or pub and as the band always says “The more you drink, the better we soun…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/19/o...

19.10.2025 11:43 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre.  There are eleven sketches in…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/18/t...

18.10.2025 15:30 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Opera Atelier | The Magic Flute | Opera Canada Opera Canada Opera Atelier | The Magic Flute | Opera Canada

operacanada.ca/opera-atelie...

17.10.2025 14:37 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Frustrating Gambler in Salzburg I don’t think I’ve been as frustrated by a video recording of an opera since I watched the 2007 recording of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.  This time the culprit is a recordin…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/16/f...

16.10.2025 18:42 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Salzburg’s Hoffmann is hard to decode Mariane Clément’s production of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann recorded at the 2024 Salzburg Festival is not the sort of production that one dismisses as pointless and/or ill c…

operaramblings.blog/2025/10/14/s...

14.10.2025 13:25 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Elegant, restrained, excellent revival of Orfeo at the COC

bachtrack.com/review-orfeo...

13.10.2025 12:19 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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CD Review | Alice Ho Dark Tales, Duo Concertante - my/maSCENA Ho: Dark Tales Duo Concertante Navona Records, 2025 Alice Ho’s Dark Tales is a set of five pieces for violin and piano, each based on a Newfoundland ghost story from poet Tom Dawe’s story collection An Old Man’s Winter Night. They are played on the recording by Duo Concertante—Nancy Dahn (violin) and Timothy Steeves (piano). Alice Ho’s Dark Tales is a set of five pieces for violin and piano, each based on a Newfoundland ghost story

myscena.org/john-gilks/c...

12.10.2025 13:34 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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