Concert Diary

August 22-28, 2010
ORLANDO/LUNAIRE
Presented by:
The Classical Music Consort and Opera Erratica

Performed inside a Storage Shed
128 Sterling Avenue, Toronto

Music by G. F. Handel and Arnold Schoenberg
Reconceived by Patrick Eakin Young
With The Classical Music Consort

Conductor/Musical Direction: Ashiq Aziz
Direction and Design: Patrick Eakin Young
Lighting Design: Burke Brown
Costume Design: Heidi Ackerman
Starring: Scott Belluz and Carla Huhtanen

The second production in the Underground/Opera series. Performed inside an industrial space in Toronto’s West End, Orlando/Lunaire will be a mash-up performance combining the baroque opera Orlando by G.F. Handel with one of the masterworks of twentieth-century atonality: Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Radically combining early and modern music, video projections, avant-garde fashion and opera with an unlikely and raw environment, this unique production promises to be a totally new opera experience.

Cutting-edge Toronto fashion designer Heidi Ackerman will design the costumes. Ms. Ackerman is a rising star on the Toronto fashion scene. Her avant-garde aesthetic is a perfect match for this experimental project, and combined with the industrial setting, promises to transform the production from an opera performance into an art-fashion event.

Admission:
Tickets - $35
Seniors/under 30 - $20

Tickets are available through the following:
Online: Brown Paper Tickets
Phone: 1-800-838-3006
Email: indrit@opera-erratica.org

What they are saying:

“Ashiq Aziz, young firecracker...decided to return home from London, England with big ideas and plans to make Baroque and Classical-era music hip to his fellow 20-somethings.”
- John Terauds,
Sound Mind: A Classical Music Blog,
Toronto Star (December 2009)

“[a] wonderful performance…Opera Underground’s ambitious and passionate interpretation is well worth seeing and hearing…Ashiq Aziz draws stylish playing from the small baroque orchestra.”
- Alexander Neef, General Director,
Canadian Opera Company, on COC Blog In his own words (for Dido and Aeneas, 2009)

“There is plenty to praise…the expert and loving account of Henry Purcell’s score, delivered by a small band of period instrumentalists and startlingly good singers….Ashiq Aziz conducted from the harpsichord with innate musicality…It was impossible not to be drawn into this production, which marks a new level of sophistication for Baroque opera in Toronto.”
- Tamara Bernstein,
Globe and Mail (for Dido and Aeneas, August 2009)

“The playing of the CMC under Aziz is wonderfully crisp and taut.”
- Christopher Hoile,
EYE Weekly (for Dido and Aeneas, August 2009)