TonyV
Senior Member
I should have checked here first! And you would have met my much better half, too!!! We are hearing the Berlioz at the TSO on the forthcoming Saturday, will you be there?
T.
T.
I've meant to ask the regulars that contribute to this thread about their thoughts on the renovation of Roy Thomson Hall. It's a project that's rarely mentioned when people talk of the "cultural renaissance" that's happened over the last few years in this city. Have the acoustics improved? I can speak only of the vocal performances I've heard there and, frankly, I wish they'd been held at the new Opera House instead. With orchestral works, have you noticed a difference?
If the opera house offered a vocal recital series I'd subscribe. I haven't been to any of RTH's vocal series, ever, because I don't think it's a great hall to hear the voice. .
A dear friend of mine (now deceased), a serious concert goer, observed the renovations carefully. His opinion about the final product was that the effort smacked of gun-shyness (edit) and that the hall should have been reduced in size much more.
The irony of this is that Cecilia Bartoli was engaged to promote the fundraising effort for this fix!
Thanks, gentlemen. I agree with your sentiments, Urban Shocker; if I had my druthers I'd go to hear song sung in the only hall worthy of it. However, Battle, Bartoli, Cabell and Fleming are warbling at Roy Thomson and there I will be. I suppose if they were singing at the sewage treatment plant I'd go there too. Crap! (LOL) To out myself as a complete homo (as if that were necessary) I will admit to following Ms. Streisand to the AC Centre, a basketball/hockey rink complex that I've never been to before or since. Obsession has its price.
TonyV, thanks for sharing your late friend's observations on the renovations. The hall to me looks half finished, as if they'd run out of wood and/or money before completion. It's a vast improvement over what it was but no where near what it could be. I didn't know about the Bartoli connection and find the irony....delicious.
I just watched on BRAVO (for the fourth or fifth time) "Raising Valhalla", the documentary on the building of "The Four Seasons Centre". I'm still thrilled that it was ACTUALLY built and that it's so GOOD and that I get to sit in it.
A music lover can’t keep hearing just the “old chestnutsâ€. I feel compelled to close by saying that the TSO has become a hugely impressive orchestra, they really put on a gorgeous concert Thursday night.
Dear Gerald triumphantly resurrected himself - in his 40s and 50s he worked as a gay prostitute.
I don't mind seeing old chestnuts ... as long as they're done in a new way. L'il Pekka did that at the TSO earlier this season with the Vivaldi. But, yes, it's exciting to see something totally new that you can't prepare for. In that light, I keep meaning to hear the Esprit Orchestra ... but haven't, yet.
Never a dull moment in our town.
Did you go to the Colloquium last Friday? I caught the last two talks - how early Peruvian cultures are defined through their influence as much as by the land they occupied, and the historical context and conservation of the Book of the Dead that's now on display.
Then Alexandra Palmer gave this year's Vaughan lecture - on Christian Dior ( a potboiler for a book she's written that's coming out later this year, apparently ). She gives good lecture.