Tag: TSO

Essay: Thoughts On Sound, & An Announcement

On December 27, 2022

In announcement, classical, COVID19, education, Europe, music, opera, programming, voice, work, writing

Sound in and of itself is neither good or bad; it simply is. But more than ever, sound, and the way it is delivered and experienced, is tied up in commerce. The various sources of revenue and concomitant connections to money within the classical world often provides silent framing of a vast and under-discussed reality. Recently The Metropolitan Opera announced they would be performing 10% fewer works next season, drawing on their endowment, and focusing on new works for next season. This year’s new works – Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones – drew near-capacity audiences, while old chestnuts (like the Italian version of Verdi’s epic Don Carlos) barely filled the immense auditorium by half. Similar challenges with audiences in post-pandemic life resound internationally, and organizations need to rethink their over-reliance on both starry names and ossified presentational styles. The challenges are less related to “rubbing people’s noses” in current issues (as a famous tenor recently mused) than to organizations attenuating to ever-unfolding realities (including pandemic) within a media ecosystem ever more reliant on the machinery of hype and ad tech which polarizes audience experience (/ inexperience) and expectation, often screwing in unconsciously-held cliches around opera in the process in a breathless bid to please sponsors and conservative board members. Whither sound? Does it matter when there are no camels in Aida?

Exposure, education, and cultural curiosity have everything to do with receptivity of sounds, and in building the critical thinking structures needed for reception of their live realization. More than once this year I have written about (and linked to) the precipitous drops in educational standards, particularly across North America. If Europeans groan at hearing the word “privilege” and roll eyes at the mention of culture wars, it is worth remembering the basic cost of things across the ocean. (Various American contacts of mine living in Europe are aghast at the sheer cost of groceries in visits home for the holidays, as one immediate example.) This seems an issue worth shouting about, repeatedly, even if people want to stick fingers in ears and continue rolling eyes. The Met is not The Royal Opera Covent Garden is not Bayerische Staatsoper is not Oper Zurich is not Opera de Paris is not the COC is not ENO (alas…). Different strokes; different horses. As I discussed with Mark Williams (the new CEO of the Toronto Symphony) this autumn, one city cannot simply be grafted onto another. One culture cannot be grafted onto another. One educational system cannot be grafted onto another; one set of ideas and living experiences cannot be grafted onto another. We cannot wish x was like more y; x may be devolving back to m but it is its own m, in its own place, and this is worth remembering. Blithely accepting what various levels of government cut or mete out or hype without a peep of protest, pause, or media scrutiny does not make for a healthy arts ecosystem, or for healthy artists.

Thus do the educational systems in various locales – along with social safety nets, levels of (non-corporate) funding, culture, history, infrastructure – contribute to respective classical atmospheres and moreover to the perceptions of sounds, and their direct experience within specific environments. In classical within a North American idiom, some of those sounds are treated as a decimal in the equation of style, performance, and digital bragging rights. Marketing departments often dictate programming choices; risky sounds are placed straight in the bin unless those departments are very sure they can create an online buzz that directly translates to ticket sales – the unicorn goal of classical marketing rarely achieved with any reliable consistency. Of course sound is, at its core, represented by dots on a page, but sound is much more than dots, symbols many people can’t read, let alone hear in their heads. It matters how/where/when/within what circumstance one experiences them, or does not experience them, where and how one learns them, from whom, in what atmosphere. Absence is as importance as presence, something musicians of all genres know. Contributor Tori Wanzama experienced Bizet’s Carmen for the first time this past autumn – in a highly individualized way and certainly different to those who grew up hearing the music throughout childhood. Context is everything, and it ought not – especially now in a war that so affects cultural arenas – to be ignored in favour of romantic notions which do not contextualize (let alone acknowledge) the role of privilege in the listening/live/learning-about experience.

Sounds are, or can be, loaded; they often carry the heavy ammunition of intertwined histories – personal, professional, political, and beyond. Recently I came upon a unique performance of a German-language version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin led by Michail Jurowski, who passed away in March of this year. Recorded at Semperoper Dresden in 1991, this Onegin demonstrates clearly, how sound is not only sound but can be much more. Yes, this is recognizably Tchaikovsky; no, it is not the recognizable Onegin, at least not for those who are solely familiar with the opera in its original language. The famous “Letter Scene”, for instance, features Czech soprano Zora Jehličková performing Tatyana’s passionate declaration in an excited if highly knowing manner – she sounds worldly, as if she is about to set Valhalla on fire. The reading of the score has transformed to reflect the vagaries of the language in which it is being sung. Use all the Teutonic-music cliches you wish (see above) – they apply to Jurowski’s reading, but they don’t quite capture the singularity of this particular sound at this particular juncture. How could they? Think about what was happening in Germany at the time, and you hear it in this reading; the swift tempi, the jaunty phrasing, the acid tone of the strings against the excitable blares of the horns, the way in which the orchestra swells around certain syllables – and how much it all contrasts with various Russian recordings. These divides in sonorities aren’t solely down to the differences between maestros (though that’s a factor) – but time, place, language, people – context.

Sound embodies so many things, if only we would listen. Semperoper is not The Met is not La Scala is not Mariinsky is not Kyiv Opera is not… we are not you; you are not me; one but not the same, and sounds are bigger than both of us, together or apart –the biggest question, the smallest decimal; the hard sell, the soft touch; sound draws in the most tiny details and simultaneously reveals a far broader picture. It is difficult to define because its experience differs so greatly between people and changes through time, privilege, history, locale, and family. This website has tried to reflect such concerns since its founding in 2017, and the past twelve months in particular have brought a reassessment of its purpose. I always resisted definitions for what this website is, or could be, though I was always quite sure of what it was not. I always wanted my work to be more than hyperbolic PR – to be a meaningful (and yes, critical) engagement with an art form I love in all its facets. I aimed to share authentic, unedited (mostly) conversations with people whose work genuinely inspires curiosity, and in so doing provide a forum for the sorts of exchanges mainstream media has neither the bucks nor the bandwidth for. I aimed to float somewhere between the heady and the populist, the intellectual and the everyday, and to firmly keep my own voice intact, as someone who floats in that netherworld herself, and probably always will. This is, at least, what I had hoped. Have I achieved these aims? Have I contributed anything of worth to conversations around classical music? Should I worry about legacy brand media, and which writers and artists love, hate, or share my work?

2022 has been a year of learning to live with and accept open questions that may never have answers, and to stop worrying about the ones that really don’t matter. This website will exist in the short term; there will be occasional feature interviews – as ever, with people and things not being given the attention or quality of time and detail, let alone the uniqueness of perspective, in mainstream media coverage. But just as practical priorities (paid writing opportunities; teaching) call, so does the living of life, remade from what it was in March 2020. Returning is different, which is just as it should be; it is not returning at all, but remaking. Just as locales cannot be grafted onto one another, neither can experiences, ideas, or notions of normal. I want to have meaningful real-life conversations that won’t be shared online, and I want to experience sounds, live, with people I call friends, and note how those sounds are different now that everything else – that magical context – is too. There are voices, and sights, and (thank goodness) sounds, and all they carry – quietly, loudly, beautifully; the readiness, to quote Hamlet, is all.

Photos: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Szymanowski At The TSO: Shimmering & Sighing

By Catherine Kustanczy

On April 13, 2019

In classical, music, symphony

Christian Tetzlaff performs with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, April 2019. (Photo: Jag Gundu)

There was an air of impatience in the air at Roy Thomson Hall Friday evening, as if concertgoers couldn’t quite settle in when the lights went down. I was reminded of the people who sit at Stonehenge every summer solstice, vibrating with anxiety at the first hints of yellow-orange beams making a path among the stones. Music is perhaps similar to light in some respects, but its path should perhaps not be so predictable. The impatience was owing largely to one thing: the monolithic presence of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (the so-called “Eroica”) in the program’s second half. The Toronto Symphony were on the second of a three-night series of music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Debussy’s symphony poem Prélude à l’après–midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun) opened the program, and was followed by Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No.1 (Op. 35). Both are in no way unusual repertoire choices — but the disquietude was palpable. People wanted their Ludwig, and they were prepared to fidget, sigh loudly, and shift around frequently until they got it. What hooked them (and this was delightful to note) were the twin forces of soloist Christian Tetzlaff’s sheer passion for the concerto, and conductor Hasan’s finely finessed coloration.

Furthermore, what made the evening so interesting on a personal level was that the date of the concert coincided with what would have been my mother’s birthday; I couldn’t help but think, sitting in the hall, that she certainly would have been among the impatient Beethoven majority. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but since deepening both the width and breadth of my own musical scope over the past few years, I find the so-called hits just aren’t enough, and I’m not alone in that sentiment. Recently there was more than a little griping online with the focus of the works of Beethoven in various new season announcements; it feels like not that long ago that I would have been horrified by this reaction, but now, I tend to sit in hearty if hesitant agreement. This isn’t of course to imply Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (or any of his other work) isn’t a great and important piece of art — but when’s the last time you’ve heard Creatures of Prometheus or Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II or King Stephen Overture? (The London Philharmonic is doing the latter two next April and did the first last autumn, natch.) Financial realities largely dictate the programming for orchestras and organizations not involved in a broader, government-connected funding model, and even then, there are numerous stakeholders (investors, CEOs, sponsors) who fully expect to see BIS (Bums In Seats) as part of their ROI. That means programming the hits, with some not-so-knowns at the start for good measure.

Conductor Kerem Hasan leads the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, April 2019. (Photo: Jag Gundu)

Yet the Debussy piece performed by the TSO last evening (as well as tonight) is not in the slightest bit unknown, though it is firmly modern in content and style. Premiered in 1894 and based on the work of symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmé from 1876, it’s arguably one of the best-known works within French classical music. An evocative musing from a mythical satyr, the work reflects, as noted in the program, “Mallarmé’s hazy, dream-like ideas with effortless tonal magic.” British conductor Kerem Hasan, newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck and a frequent guest of numerous European orchestras (he’s led the Concertgebouw, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien as part of the Salzburg Festival), makes his Canadian debut with these concerts, filling in for an indisposed Louis Langrée. Hasan underlined the contrasting temperatures and textures within each winding passage: hot-cool; soft-hard; smooth-rough. One could positively see the works of Franz Von Stuck come to life here. Hasan’s opera background (he’s led performances with the Welsh National Opera, the Meininger Staatstheater, and the Tiroler Landestheater) was especially apparent in drawing out sectional relationships, at once lyrical and theatrical. With simple, fluid gestures, the young maestro conjured long, languorous phrases, only to dip, dive, and reshape them anew — round, then triangular; square, then octogonal, then back again, the interplay between strings and woodwinds smiling, serious, sensuous, all at once.

This sensuality transmuted into a considerably more intense and mystical form with Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The piece’s first bars, like fine black eyelashes fluttering to wakefulness, give little indication of the piece’s extraordinary and vigorously passionate progression. Written between 1916 and 1917, the Ukrainian composer once described the work as “a rather lonely song, joyous and free, of a nightingale singing spontaneously in the fragrant Polish May night.” Written with his friend, the celebrated violinist Pawel Kochanski (also the dedicatee of the piece), Szymanowski sought “a new style, a new mode of expression for the violin, something in this respect completely epoch-making.” Indeed, the work not only heralds a new (and very gripping) sonic experience, even now — it slinks, shimmers, shrieks, and sighs, undulating through its varied five sections (or ‘spans’) innately linked through the violin’s nightingale song.

It would have been easy to sit in astonishment at the virtuosity required of the violinist here — indeed, many patrons around me, previously sighing for Beethoven, were captivated (rightly) by Tetzlaff’s mastery. From my perspective, technique was precisely what led to transcendence; it wasn’t there purely for its own sake. Tetzlaff made this journey clear with a clear economy of elegant expressivity. I’d not seen the violinist since his performance of Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto (Op. 36) with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin in 2017, and while there are clear lines between the works, Tetzlaff’s attention to granular detail and appreciation of sweeping grandeur allowed for a range of sonorous textures to shine in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of lustrous atmospheres. Von Stuck’s satyrs were now dancing with Klimt’s water nymphs and Redon’s Buddhas in a grand garden of green-blue delight. This was music-making which was, by turns, fluid, jagged, poetic, pointillist, starkly sexy and richly impassioned.

Franz Von Stucke, “Faun und Nixe” (Satyr and Mermaid), 1918; Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

Tetzlaff’s performance was marked by meticulous attention to detail and a gorgeous variance in colour. Hasan’s quietly authoritative leadership granted the orchestra a responsiveness that opened the door to a seamless sonic partnership which, more than once, conjured the ghosts of Strauss, Schreker, Zemlinsky, Ravel, and indeed, Debussy. The program note also mentions the work of Scriabin in its reference to the “non-Western sounds that colored the impressionistic music” for the latter two composers, naming Scriabin as well, and I couldn’t help but feel by the close that the swirling, sensuous atmosphere of the evening would’ve been better served by featuring one of his works in place of good old Ludwig. I confess I left early, happily swimming in Szymanowski’s electric, glittering lines, not daring to put on any music once in the car and headed home. Sometimes, souls need to swim; Tetzlaff, Hasan, and the TSO offered a good reminder that plunging into the sea by moonlight is a good thing; one need not wait for the sunrise to gain one’s bearings, but to simply trust the currents. One never knows what might one see, let alone who or what might just take us by the hand and lead us into ever-deeper waters.

On Stravinsky’s Soldier: “We Have To Safeguard The Things That Matter In Life”

By Catherine Kustanczy

On July 15, 2018

In Canada, classical, Europe, festival, interviews, music

Artwork by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

This year’s edition of the Toronto Summer Music Festival has a distinctly Russian flavour.

The festival (initially founded as the the Silver Creek Music Foundation in 2004) opened this past week with a concert by the celebrated Escher Quartet, who performed a program of works which included string quartets by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky, respectively. The following night, members of the quartet joined pianist Lukas Geniušas and TSMF Artistic Director (and Toronto Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster) Jonathan Crow for “Mother Russia“, a concert featuring the music of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Moscow-born pianist Geniušas showed off his considerable technical abilities and a very expressive approach in the (piano-only) first half, his rendering of Rachmaninoff’s Preludes (Op. 32, No. 9-13) a gently modulated collection of lights and colours. Likewise, his work with members of the Escher Quartet, joined by Crow, showed off a considerable lyricism; altogether, the troupe provided a round, even sexy, approach to the jagged angularity of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57.

Audiences can look forward to further concerts with Russian works, including a presentation of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” on July 19th. Composed in 1918 when Stravinsky was facing tough times (including the recent death of his brother and serious financial shortfalls), the piece (“Histoire du soldat lue, jouée et dansée en deux parties” or (Story of the soldier to read, act and dance in two parts”, in full) was written with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, a French-Swiss writer who he’d met as a fellow ex-pat in Paris just before the First World War. The work retells the Faust myth using a litany of musical styles and folkoric elements inspired largely by the work of Russian writer Alexander Afanasyev, one of the most famous Russian folkorists of the 19th century, and a big fan of the Grimm brothers’ work as well. Originally intended as a touring work, “L’Histoire du Soldat” has been produced in a variety of styles and iterations, though most commonly with one narrator doing all the roles, with musical accompaniment. Isabel von Karajan (daughter of conductor Herbert von Karajan) performed the work with members of the Berlin Philharmonic to great acclaim in Salzburg in 2011, and then in Berlin in 2012; it’s also been presented with pantomime elements in 2013, recorded with Jean Cocteau and Peter Ustinov in 1962, and, rather poignantly, by Carole Bouquet, Gerard Depardieu, and (deceased) son Guillaume, in the mid 1990s in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Stravinsky may have written “Soldat” out of basic financial necessity, but the work has proven to be a wonderfully enduring piece of music theatre, one that showcases his changeability and elasticity as a octopus-like composer with a multitude of legs moving easily between sometimes wildly varying eras, styles, sounds, and artistic movements.

Stravinsky in the studios of Colombia Records, 1957. Photo by Dennis Stock (via)

Canadian music artist Alaina Viau is bringing a new production of the work to the Toronto Summer Music Festival this coming week, featuring dynamic Canadian talent including theatre artist Derek Boyes and choreographer Jennifer Nichols. In her day job, Viau is Assistant Production Manager at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, but she’s also the founder and Artistic Director of sparky independent company Loose Tea Music Theatre, which specializes in presenting creatively-staged opera in and around the Toronto area. Viau has worked regularly with a variety of artists in various disciplines (including dance music, cinema, and visual art) to present re-imagined productions of opera chestnuts like Bizet’s Carmen and Gounod’s Faust.

The latter is especially relevant to Viau’s work with “L’histoire du Soldat”, but so is her interest in and commitment to social justice issues, especially as they pertain to contemporary presentation within the operatic form. I recently spoke with Viau about why this piece is so timely (and perhaps timeless), her decision in casting the lead role with a woman, and how her work as director of production for the TSMF presentation of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” contrasts and complements that with Stravinsky.

Alaina Viau (Photo courtesy Toronto Summer Music Festival)

What’s it like to stage “Soldat” for the first time?

Exciting! I’ve known this piece for a long time and I’m what you’d call a Stravinsky nut! I have a lot of literature on Stravinsky and bought a special edition of Rite of Spring when it came out years ago; I have new book on him, and all his letters and things like that.

How did you come to direct this?

I’d only ever heard it in the way most people hear it, with one person narrating all the roles, and then the ensemble around them. Jonathan Crow and I started talking about this project two years ago — I work for the TSO as well, and the TSO Chamber Soloists (of which Crow is a member) were doing a series of performances of this piece; it was done at Roy Thomson Hall and the Art Gallery of Ontario and at the Hearn (Generating Station), and at that time, it was just with Derek Boyes and the ensemble. It was then that Jonathan and I got talking about how we’ve never seen it fully staged, and what a shame that was, because it was originally written for a touring performance with actors and a set and such, so we said, “Hey we need to see this!”

So TSMF audiences will see a full type of production?

Yes. We have Derek, who is doing the roles of the narrator and the devil — because he does such a great job with the devil! – and we have a dancer/choreographer, Jennifer Nichols. We also decided to cast the role of the soldier as a woman — traditionally it’s a man, but… it’s an all-male show, and Jonathan and I were like, “That’s kind of shitty!” We don’t change the relationships with the fiancee or the princess — it’s any relationship, really. We didn’t feel we needed to harp on that fact; it’s a relationship that exists. I wish I didn’t even have to say that, really. The idea came through conversations on gender parity. There’s a lot of men in the show, and a lot of men in the ensemble, and we were like, “That’s a lot of men on stage! It isn’t fair; I think we can fix this.”

How much were you influenced by what you’d seen and experienced as a Stravinsky fan?

I don’t believe I’ve taken any influences in doing this. I’m sure there are some references to some of the research I’ve done, but what I’ve seen (of Soldat) I haven’t really liked. So that is a thing: I have decided not to do some things. That is an influence of sorts! I knew what I didn’t want. That is sometimes just as strong, if not stronger, than seeing things I do like, so I was able to really think, “Well I want to make this fun, engaging, with great music, and a great story” — it’s a warning story.

… although it can be presented as drily didactic as well. I would imagine as a theatre practitioner you have to be careful not to wave a finger at your audience. “Fun” and “engaging” are the words I’d use to describe what Loose Tea does.

Well it is my style, and my question is always, “Why tell this story now? Why does it matter right now?”

Sketch of Igor Stravinsky by Pablo Picasso, 1920.

So why “Soldat” now?

It’s a story of being too greedy, of consuming too much, of not being appreciative of what you have. That’s something I think we can always relate back to stuff in the US and what could potentially happen in Canada: we need to be aware of what we have, and not be greedy. We have to safeguard the things that matter in life. What the soldier comes to learn is, in fact, the things that matter are things that money can’t necessarily buy, that there is greater value in having some sort of meaning in life. I think that’s a tale that is always worth telling.

It’s timeless and timely and really elastic, not solely in themes but in presentation possibilities.

Yes, and what I really like is that it’s not a happy ending — he gets the princess and then screws it up again. It’s that reminder that you have to be constantly working on that aspect of yourself.

It’s a wry comment on the nature of humanity also, the nature of which seems very Russian in nature.

That too. The question is, how do you tell this story to a Canadian audience, who may not have that understanding of Russian folklore? That folklore is quite brutal sometimes.

How does your work on “Quartet for the End of Time” complement what you’re doing with “Soldat”?

I get excited about it, really. What I’m particularly enjoying is that I did a Masters degree in music, and it’s really nice to geek out and go back to the score, do my research, do my score study — it really helps me come to important realizations.

Olivier Messiaen (Photo courtesy Toronto Summer Music Festival)

For the Messiaen, all I’ve been doing for months is consuming a lot of research, which I love doing, and really trying to think about how Messiaen saw the piece. He had synesthesia, and we wanted to explore not just what he saw but what role this plays overall: why do we care about “Quartet for the End of Time”? Why do we care about the visual aspect of it? And how can we make it make sense to us? Because he was very religious, and in the context of the Toronto Summer Music Festival… religion is not a really strong (theme), it’s not the strongest point to bring out in this piece.

But it’s unmissable in the music.

Yes. Although he wrote it with religion in mind, something that really inspired him, and what I think may inspire many people, is a commonality of hope of this piece.

That sense of hope contrasts with the ending of “Soldat”quite strongly.

It is what got him through his internment in the camp; he couldn’t escape physically, and the more difficult things became physically, the more he escaped into his brain. You hear it in this Quartet — because he did have a strong sense of hope and of things working out, even in an internment camp.

Vision over visibility.

Yes, it’s a good fit with the festival.

Frédéric Antoun: From Verdi To Adès, And Beyond

By Catherine Kustanczy

On December 5, 2017

In audio, classical, festival, interviews, opera, voice

A scene from Act III of Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel.” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

(A quick note: I posted my thoughts about the Met Opera in a separate post.)

Composers like Philip Glass, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Brett Dean, and Thomas Adès, to name a few, have been instrumental in blowing the doors open on preconceived notions of opera.

The work of British composer Adès has been particularly in the news the last little while, what with his opera adaptation of Luis Buñuel’s surreal 1962 film The Exterminating Angel recently making waves at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The film, which revolves around a post-opera dinner party during which guests find themselves unable to leave, has accurately been described as a “a surreal, black comedic-horror film.” Film critic Roger Ebert called it a “macabre comedy.” The heavily symbolic work notable for several reasons, among them, as Vulture’s Justin Davidson writes, it “resurrected the surrealism of the 1920s and anticipated the psychedelia of the ’60s.” Having seen it in film school years ago, I remember it being, by turns, hilarious, bizarre, and very unsettling.

A scene from the 1962 film “The Exterminating Angel” by Luis Buñuel. (Photo via)

The opera translation is no less effective. Having premiered at the Salzburg Festival last year, the opera (with a libretto in English) went on to be staged at the Royal Opera in London this past spring and, when presented in New York last month, inspired waves of strong reactions, from high praise to brutal dismissal. As classical writer Joseph So rightly noted, “(a)udiences do appreciate contemporary operas when given fine singing and thoughtful staging.” Love it or hate it, The Exterminating Angel is a work that can’t be ignored. A work based on a movie that goes back to being filmed is interesting in and of itself; what would Buñuel make of it? I wondered this at news of the Live In HD Broadcast of The Exterminating Angel. The Spanish director might, I suspect, have been very amused to have noted his film had been translated to the stage, only to be translated back to film again. The meta nature of it all is enough to make one run to the work of French theorist Roland Barthes (almost).

Frédéric Antoun as Raúl Yebenes in Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel.” Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

The Exterminating Angel (the opera) repeats in cinemas throughout December and January (and in Canada too) in case your saccharine silly season needs spicing up. The broadcast is not the first time Frédéric Antoun has been on the screen this year. The Quebec-born tenor appeared earlier this summer as Cassio in the Royal Opera House production of Othello, which was broadcast live (and in various repeats) internationally from Covent Garden in London.

A graduate of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Frédéric has an impressive resume that includes performances at Opéra de Paris, Theater an der Wien (Vienna), La Monnaie Brussels, the aforementioned Royal Opera House Covent Garden, a number of regional French houses, as well as Opernhaus Zurich, where he’ll be returning to perform early next year in Ravel’s lovely work L’Heure espagnole. Before that, he’ll be in Toronto, performing as part of the Toronto Symphony’s annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah. He has performed in works by Massenet, Mozart, Donizetti, Bizet, Verdi, and Handel; I particularly love this clip of him from a modern production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, directed by Pierre Audi from 2011. Concert repertoire includes work by Berlioz, Handel, Schumann, and Bach, to name a few.

As you’ll hear, Frédéric is extremely familiar with the work of Thomas Adès, having already been in his operatic adaptation of The Tempest. With movie-star looks, rich-hued tenor, crisp diction, and a complete magnetism in both modern and not-so-modern productions, Frédéric is a singer to watch, both live and on the screen — either way, it’s a memorable experience.