Halfway

I am most impressed.

The Toronto Ring (as we shall be calling it in future) is quite brilliant so far. Great singing, good sets, good orchestra - with a few truly awful fluffed notes in the deeper brass, I hope that they are getting their arses kicked. If it continues in this quality, it will be as good as the Mariinsky Ring. It's Siegfried tomorrow and Götterdämmerung on Sunday, and I am already disappointed in advance that the Ring will soon be over.

The first act of Die Walküre last night was just perfect, could not have been better. Adrianne Pieczonka - a fine Canadian name - was brilliant as Sieglinde, gamely hopping about on a broken ankle. Frances Ginzer as Brünnhilde is good but not great, which is unfortunate as she is the central character of the remaining two operas. She has the unfortunate habit of rising to tiptoe as she belts out the high notes; she's young and somebody will teach her not to do it. The Amsterdam Brünnhilde, Nadine Secunde, was a much better singer. The planned Wotan, Pavlo Hunka, is ill so we have had John Fanning in the role: quite good. I disagree with the portrayal of the character, Wotan is not a whiner, but that is hardly Fanning's fault.

The Toronto Opera House is also excellent visually and acoustically, a large but intimate space with marvellous (clear, crisp, warm) acoustics. We are sitting in the middle of the fourth of five balconies, not exactly the cheap seats but also nowhere near the top of the price scale. I would recommend this area and the third balcony to readers who may visit Toronto, the fifth balcony would have a worse view and the orchestra seating and lower balconies would surely have different (worse) acoustics. [This was confirmed by a friend who was sitting in the orchestra level: muddy, unpleasant sound.] The "front of house" area is fully glazed to the street, with layers of balconies and stairs and a lecture area on the second level, and manages the trick of appearing small and intimate while still accomodating three thousand people.

Let me read you the surnames of the singers: Forbis Pieczonka Ens Hunka Bullock Ginzer Németh Makerov Vilsmaier Phillips Baggott Stannard Szabó McHardy Yang. Typically Canadian, the lot of them.

In other news I still hope to find a way to get online at a reasonable speed, I don't have the patience for blogreading on this dreadfully slow connection. It's hard to imagine that people (myself among them) actually used to do business at this speed.

In other other news we are watching Six feet under on DVD. Brilliant, wonderful stuff. Highly recommended - but have a large box of tissues and a good friend handy.