Happy New Year and the Top Posts of '09

Here's wishing you all an opera-filled new year. It's time for the obligatory end of year Top Posts blog post: Here are the top five posts of 2009 - This blog's first year!

1. Scores! All The Scores You Could Want - Free!
2. COC Chorus Audition Time Again
3. The Best Free Options For Listening To Opera Online
4. To Equity Or Not To Equity
5. Working With Living Composers

This site seems to do two different types of blog posts: The agregating of Canadian Opera news (for those of you who just can't wait for your Opera Canada subscriptions to arrive,) and some original posts with either original research or insights into Canadian Opera. I guess it's no surprise that the most popular posts are those that you can't see anywhere else - after all, you can set up Google alerts for content as easily as I can. I guess that this blog's New Year's resolution is going to be coming up with more original ideas for posts where either I find things that people want (like lots and lots of free stuff, or singing grants) or getting off my duff and doing a couple of more interviews, like the TSMAF post where they told me that not all is lost for their opera program (I still have my doubts,) or even the Battlestar Galactica/Vancouver Opera post where I actually asked VO's Selina Rajani to comment on the Twitter posts that lead to a BSG/VO opera rumour (nothing more to report on this yet, btw).

It's been a fun '09 and I hope you stick around to do some reading in 2010. Is there anything in particular that you'd like to see from me next year?

Happy Holidays

It's been a very busy month as I'm sure you've noticed in the volume (but not the quality!) of this blog's posts. Between Messiahs, Hanukkah, and this whole week, it's been a little slow. Things will pick up though after Christmas.

Let me wish you a happy holidays - posts will resume at a regular pace again next week.

And, because I'm a bass, and because it's my blog:

CD/DVDs of Canadian performances/performers on sale

Hey all, an online store that I've blogged about before, Premiere Opera, is having a sale where all of their CD and DVD sets are on for $5/disc. It's a fantastic source for CDs but a really neat source for DVDs as they carry a bunch of stuff that you wouldn't normally be able to see otherwise. Plenty of Canadian content too, with 60 or so Jon Vickers performances on CD and DVD, 40 with Heppner, a handful of COC performances and some of the old Vancouver Opera performances. It's worth checking out, at least.

Premiere Opera

note: I receive nothing from them for this posts. Just like anything I mention on this blog, I post them because I think that they're a good idea, or at least an idea that won't (in all likelihood,) bring you, my readers, harm.

It's not that I'm above such things though, it's just that no one's offered yet.

Vancouver Symphony turns down sham Olympic gig

Bramwell Tovey and some members of the Vancouver Symphony have turned down a contract from the Vancouver Olympics to pre-record music for the opening ceremonies that would have other people mime the performance, including the conducting. From the Vancouver Sun:

“My participation at the opening ceremonies was dependent upon my agreeing that music I recorded would be mimed by another individual and I regarded that as fraudulent and withdrew,” Tovey told The Vancouver Sun."

The worst part in that the explanation that VANOC doesn't even make sense:

"The artists and ensembles at the ceremonies will be performing live and all of them will participate in the recording sessions, but “some sections of the pre-recorded music will understandably feature a larger ensemble than appears on stage,” Atkins said in a statement given to The Sun."

I would sort of understand then why then they would have the whole VSO record the music and then have only some of them on stage, with Tovey conducting, if there were space issues, but there's no excuse to bring in musicians who didn't even play on the recording.

Good for Tovey and the members who refused to be a part of this. This Brave New World of "safe" performances is no fun for anyone involved.

Getting singing grants

Okay, this posting frequency is just getting sad but it's a busy time of year. Hanukkah, then Christmas, then New Year's means lots of obligations and lots of singing. Who wants to count Messiahs with me?

But with New Year's coming up I want to talk about resolutions. I want to start applying for more grants next year and fortunately I've found a site that can help. What's more, it a government site so I know that there's no vested interest in the site. The only down side is that it only covers Government grants (but not just Federal - provincial too).

CultureCanada.gc.ca is the Fed's repository of arts grants. Splitting the grants into a bunch of different categories with a handful of search narrowers, it covers, for us opera folk, not just "Music" but also "Performing Arts." There are some other resources too, and although not all of them (or even most of them in fact,) cover singers/opera, there's enough here to get your search started the next time that you have a project in mind that needs funding.

Happy Hunting!

Wainwright's Luminato premiere gets new director

I had presumed when I saw that Luminato would be hosting the North American premiere of Rufus Waiwright's new work Prima Donna, which we've discussed here before, that it would be a remount of the World Premiere production which got mixed reviews when it came out in July. Today's news, though, seems to dispell that, hopefully for the better. Tim Albery, who will be known to Luminato audiences as the brilliant director behind last year's "The Children's Crusade" for the festival, is going to helm the production for Toronto's festival. Hopefully this pairing will bring everything together for the opera - I can't wait to see!

And the Rat Laughed pictures

Sorry for the slow week folks. We'll double post today to make up for it.

Some pictures of Opera York's And The Rat Laughed have made it up online that I hadn't seen before today. It's just a small sample but they give you an idea of the tone and imagery of the production last month. Take a peek here, via Lance Glitter's PBase site