Review: (Toronto / Opera) Falstaff

l-r  Russell Braun, Gerald Finley (photo by Michael Cooper)

You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog
by Shannon Christy, Senior Contributor

According to Webster’s Dictionary an “appetizer is a small dish of food meant to stimulate your appetite”. If Falstaff is the appetizer then Toronto is in for a spectacular season at the Canadian Opera Company. Falstaff, Verdi’s last masterpiece, is a light show done with ribald humour, superb performances and amazing sets.

The Abominable Showman, November 9, 2013

(photo by Denis Rouvre)

Diva with a Heart

CharPo sits down for a revealing tete-a-tete with contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who is reprising the role that earned her accolades and standing ovations last year at The Royal Opera at Covent Garden, Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s classic opera Falstaff

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

French composer Claude Debussy once famously said, “In opera, there is always too much singing.” Of course, he never heard Marie-Nicole Lemieux, the first Canadian to win the First Prize and the Special Prize for Lieder at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium.

To hear Lemieux tell her own story – with her amazing charisma and bubbly personality – you  know she’d be able to convince Debussy he was dead wrong, and without her even singing a note.

That is how utterly convincing and invested Lemieux is in her craft.

“I never asked myself if I could sing because singing was always natural for me,” says Lemieux. “I could always sing. I only studied music later. But I could always sing. It was like breathing. Then when I discovered opera when I was 10-years-old, it was like a dream, untouchable. It really was the start of my passion.”