John Gilks
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operaramblings.bsky.social
John Gilks
@operaramblings.bsky.social
46 followers 38 following 340 posts
Semi-retired arts writer (operaramblings.blog). Cat parent. Can get obsessed about rugby, opera and stuff.
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operaramblings.blog/2025/12/02/m...
Microtonal music for string quartet
The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie …
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December 2, 2025 at 12:43 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/12/01/e...
Exemplary Tales of Hoffmann from the Royal Opera
Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is a rather difficult opera to stage.  There’s no definitive performing edition and there’s a lot of (too much?) material to work with so decisio…
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December 1, 2025 at 12:35 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/30/r...
Robin Hood at the Winter Garden
So, Saturday night I reacquainted myself with pantomime after a gap of sixty years or so.  I think the last panto I saw was Aladdin at the Alhambra in Bradford c.1965.  Well why not?  Much has chan…
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November 30, 2025 at 4:08 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/29/m...
Moonlight Schooner
Moonlight Schooner, by Kanika Ambrose, is currently playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in a production directed by Sabryn Rock.  It’s set on May Day 1958 and a group of Black sailors have…
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November 29, 2025 at 12:40 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/28/o...
Operamania
Wednesday evening at The great Hall witnessed a seminal event in the history of opera; Operamania.  Our beloved art form; courtesy of the indefatigable Opera Revue, mashed up with pro-wrestling; in…
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November 28, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/27/t...
Tapestry announces new main stage production
This season’s main stage production from Tapestry Opera will be Ten Days in a Madhouse; music by Rene Orth, music by Hannah Moscovitch.  It’s based on the true story of 19th century jou…
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November 27, 2025 at 6:29 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/26/h...
Honour is satisfied
Alessandro Scarlatti wrote at least sixty operas but only one of the extant ones is a comedy; Il Trionfo dell’Onore which premiered in Naples in 1718.  Cunningly Scarlatti insisted on an Ital…
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November 26, 2025 at 3:46 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/24/w...
What one calls a happy marriage
Richard Strauss’ Intermezzo is a very strange semi-autobiographical piece apparently dealing with the married life of Richard and Pauline Strauss thinly disguised as Court Composer Robert Sto…
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November 24, 2025 at 2:15 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/23/m...
Mass for the Endangered
Soundstreams’ opening concert of the season at Trinity St. Paul’s on Saturday evening featured Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered and an intriguing selection of 20th …
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November 23, 2025 at 4:11 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/22/i...
In Search of Youkali
In Search of Youkali is a sort of journey through the theatre music of Kurt Weill performed by soprano Mary Bray supported by Murray Grainger (accordion), Marianne Schofield (double-bass) and Willi…
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November 22, 2025 at 4:22 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/21/u...
Unfulfillment
Abe Koogler’s The Fulfillment Centre opened last night in a production directed by Ted Dykstra.  It’s the story of four people in a small town dependent on some sort of giant fulfillmen…
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November 21, 2025 at 2:57 PM
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CD Review | Philippe Jaroussky, Gelosia! Artaserse, Erato - my/maSCENA
Philippe Jaroussky — Gelosia! Philippe Jaroussky, countertenor; Artaserse Erato, 2025 The latest recording of Italian cantatas by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and his own baroque ensemble, Artasers...
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November 20, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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CD Review | Andrew Staniland Calamus, Leibel, Regehr, Chafe - my/maSCENA
Staniland: Calamus Jane Leibel, soprano; Vernon Regehr, cello; Robert Chafe, narrator Leaf Music Andrew Staniland’s Calamus is a setting of four poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. They are sco...
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November 19, 2025 at 1:14 PM
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CD Review | Invented Folksongs, Anna Pidgorna, Ludovico Ensemble - my/maSCENA
Pidgorna: Invented Folksongs Anna Pidgorna, composer & vocals; Ludovico Ensemble Red Shift Records In 2012-13 Ukrainian/Canadian composer and vocalist Anna Pidgorna visited Ukraine to record tradition...
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November 18, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/17/w...
Who’d have thought that snow falls
A few months ago I reviewed a recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices which I had never heard “live”.  On Sunday evening I got the chance to hear Lindsay McIntyre perform it at…
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November 17, 2025 at 3:10 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/16/b...
Blondel steals the show
Opera in Concert opened their season at Trinity St. Paul’s on Saturday with the Canadian premiere of André Grétry’s 1784 opéra comique Richard Coeur-de-Lion.  This is very loosely based…
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November 16, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/14/t...
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…
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November 14, 2025 at 4:28 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/13/t...
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…
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November 13, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/12/2...
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…
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November 12, 2025 at 2:04 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/11/a...
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 …
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November 11, 2025 at 2:01 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/10/t...
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…
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November 10, 2025 at 6:22 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/09/g...
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 …
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November 9, 2025 at 4:11 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/08/d...
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&#…
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November 8, 2025 at 3:17 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/07/t...
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…
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November 7, 2025 at 3:22 PM
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operaramblings.blog/2025/11/05/c...
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
November 5, 2025 at 4:08 PM