Thursday, June 2, 2011. Four Seasons Hotel, Toronto, Canada.
A fresh current of celebration is flowing through Toronto. The world’s leading opera star, Placido Domingo, singing here tomorrow night, is celebrating his 50th year as a leading tenor.
Metropolitan Opera’s top Verdi soprano, Sondra Radvanovsky, will collaborate with Maestro Domingo in a program featuring arias from Italian opera in celebration of the 150th year of the Unification of Italy. Ms. Radvanovsky will be having her wish-come-true to be singing operatic arias, Zarzuelas, Broadway classics, and ‘some surprises’ with the man who sang Tosca on television and inspired her 11 year-old self to become an opera singer.
This gala event will happen Saturday, June 4, when a high-powered entity, BlackCreek Summer Music Festival, opens its inaugural musical season at the GTA’s newest concert venue—the Rexall Centre at York University—an 11,000 seat outdoor amphitheatre.
Will it be good to hear opera in a ‘miked’ environment, even though the Rexall sound system is by Mark Fisher, designer of The Wall for Pink Floyd, of Rolling Stones and U2 concerts since the 90’s, and the Olympic Games ceremonies in Beijing? Maestro Domingo, who travels with his own ‘extraordinary’ sound engineer, is satisfied that the ‘natural’ sound of their voices will be preserved. Ms. Radvanovsky expects the electronics will permit subtler nuances in the softer levels than are possible in the theatre.
If that turns out to be true, the system will certainly serve the star-studded the likes of the performers in the weeks ahead: James Taylor, Lionel Ritchie, Tony Bennett and Diana Krall, Alan Jackson, John Fogarty, Roberto Alagna, not to mention Academy Award winners Dame Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons, and the London Symphony Orchestra, for goodness sake.
Who are the people behind the scenes of the BlackCreek Summer Music Festival? The Artistic Advisor, Classical Programming, is Lorin Maazel, sometime Director of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Vienna State Opera and Director designate of the Munich Philharmonic.
The Artistic Advisor, Broadway and Pops Programming, is three-time Oscar, four-time Grammy, four-time Emmy (whew!) winner Marvin Hamlisch.
The money is coming from Capital One® Financial Corporation with corporate offices in McLean, Va. Kevin Albrecht, CEO of iSports Concerts Ltd. and BlackCreek Limited Partnership is producing the Festival. The ’embattled’ Garth Drabinsky (remember Livent)? is a potent, but lightly publicized factor in the mix, if only as the connection to Maestro Domingo.
The Maestro gave a very charming picture of how an operatic performance like this one fits into the lives of the general public. He used the word ‘complicity’ for our involvement in the music whose aim is “to make people happy by making us forget about our problems.” He spoke about the simple excitement of hearing there will be a performance, of getting the tickets, of arranging hairdos, of selecting clothing, of arriving at the venue and joining the crowd..
On personal note, this new current of events is especially exciting because it will invest York University, my old workplace, with an unexpected, unacademic, air of glamour.
Please address your comments to StanleyFefferman@OpusOneReview.com