While browsing in my local antiquarian and secondhand bookshop, Condor Fine Books, I happened on a nearly 40-year-old volume entitled Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie.

Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, by Suzanne Massie.

Leafing through it, I was delighted to find that an entire chapter was devoted to one my favourite Versailles Century (1682-1789) characters: Elizabeth Petrovna, Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias.  An able ruler, she was also a great beauty and a woman of prodigious appetites.

The Marriage of Figaro is one of Mozart’s most popular works.  Opera Atelier, Canada’s — nay, North America’s — premier early music opera company, is currently regaling Toronto audiences with it.

Opera Atelier’s 2017-2018 poster. Credit: Opera Atelier.

A small company, Opera Atelier mounts only 2 operas a year, although sometimes an older one is revived for special performances.  The Marriage of Figaro is the fall 2017 production, while Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses will hit the stage of the Elgin Theatre in April, 2018.

I attended the matinée performance of Figaro, which is performed in English, this past Sunday, 29 October.

This week’s musical monarch, Frederick the Great, was not only a music lover, but a proficient flautist and composer.

Frederick the Great.  Credit: Wikipedia.

Prussia’s future third king developed his musical tastes and talent early.  In the little Crown Prince Frederick’s household was one Rentzel, who was not only Frederick’s drill master but a flautist.  Nancy Mitford, in her biography of Frederick, says of Rentzel that “it was he who started Frederick on music and taught him to play the flute, an accomplishment which was to mean so much to him.”  Frederick’s father, King Frederick William I, was not keen on the flute playing, which he regarded as effeminate, and at times attempted to ban his son from pursuing this past time.  He was not successful.

It’s well known that Louis XIV was an avid and accomplished dancer in his youth.  In 2000, the Belgian filmmaker the Gérard Corbieu memorably depicted the young king’s dance spectacles in the movie Le Roi Danse (The King is Dancing).

It’s also quite well known that the Sun King was surrounded by music from morning till evening.  Indeed, he was rarely out of earshot of one group of musicians or another.  Even while he was hunting there would have been horns, after all.

At HMV Canada’s going-out-of-business sale at its flagship store in Toronto, I purchased this boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

Les Menus Plaisirs de Louis XIV de Paris à Versailles (Harmonia Mundi), a 10-CD boxed set of music from Louis XIV’s court.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet: I didn’t like this production of Handel’s Ariodante.

The program for Ariodante.

Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas is my favourite opera.  Normally clocking in at just under an hour, it’s a perfect jewel of operatic theatre.  When I bought my ticket for the 28 October performance of Dido & Aeneas by Opera Atelier (OA), I assumed that it would be the same production I had seen in Seoul some years before when OA was on tour in East Asia.

It was only a few days before Dido and Aeneas‘ run started that I found out that a half hour of new material had been added, thus bringing the total time with an intermission to 90 minutes.

The program for Dido & Aeneas.

VC is back home after a long weekend in Toronto, having digested 2 Baroque opera performances, not to mention visiting Canada’s largest museum.  This post is just a quick update about what’s coming up on the blog later this week.

Here are the receipts for the 2 operas:

The Elgin Theatre in Toronto, home of Opera Atelier and venue for Dido & Aeneas.

The Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, home of the Canadian Opera Company and venue for Ariodante.

As promised in the previous post, I will review both performances on the blog.

I also managed a flying visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), of which I’m now an out-of-town member.

The protuberant glass structure in the middle distance is the main entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM ) in Toronto.

The ROM has a significant collection of furniture and other objects from New France, which fits nicely into VC’s period frame.  I will dedicate the last post of the week to the museum’s collection of rustic Rococo furniture from old Québec.

Please check back in a day or two for the review of Dido & Aeneas.  I loved it, but I do have one quibble.  Stay tuned for details!

It’s true, dear friends.  Versailles Century, which is to say, I, David, am going to the opera.  And not just one opera, but two.

I should point out that this is a major outing for me.  It’s a 3-hour drive from my little town on the shore of Lake Huron, where I’ve been settled for the last 6 months since my return to Ontario after nearly 20 years’ residence in East and Southeast Asia, across the southern Ontario peninsula to Toronto.  To add to the fun, there will be probably be snow flurries during the drive.  No matter, though, because a full-scale blizzard wouldn’t stop me from getting to Toronto.

This weekend, you see, TWO baroque operas will be staged in Canada’s largest city.  The Canadian Opera Company is presenting Handel’s Ariodante, and Opera Atelier is mounting a new production of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas.  We at Versailles Century are very excited about both because of course we prize the baroque opera above all others.