Kooza
Went to Kooza last night, the Cirque du Soleil’s new show playing in Toronto until October 7th. Its fabulous and breathtaking. It’s a return to their circus performer roots of acrobats and clowns, with all the polish and glamour that they’ve gained over the years but no pyrotechnics or anything else to distract from the [...]
Gardiner Museum of ceramics
I finished my week of culture by visiting the Gardiner Museum on Saturday — Canada’s only museum dedicated to ceramics, from early Mesoamerican through the invention of porcelain in early Chinese dynasties to contemporary ceramics. I’ve visited the Gardiner before, but not since the major renovation that added a third floor, considerably more exhibit space [...]
An evening of opera and operetta
In stark contrast to the previous night’s Rocky Horror Show, Friday evening I attended an evening of opera and operetta, featuring Geoffrey Butler, a friend of mine who is a professional tenor. Geoff has a powerful voice, and my favourite memory of him is during one rather drunken dinner party at my place years ago [...]
A Tale of Two Musicals
I often go months — or years — without seeing a musical stage production, but somehow I’ve managed to see two in the last month. The first was We Will Rock You, based on the music of Queen in the same sort of way that Mamma Mia is based on Abba’s music: the songs and [...]
Sex. Death. Siberia.
I had a last-minute invitation to see Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto this week. From their description: The frustrated and lonely wife of a wealthy man falls into a passionate relationship with one of his workers. Fuelled by lust and a need to escape her bleak existence, Katerina risks all [...]
The Emperor’s Children (Claire Messud)
I know that I said in my review of jPod that there are few books that I don’t finish once starting them: The Emperor’s Children is one of those rarities. I struggled through about half of the book, wading through the overly-complex and pompous wording and characters that I really didn’t care that much about, [...]
jPod (Douglas Coupland)
My LibraryThing icon in the sidebar has been pretty busy lately; I arrived home on the 10th after being away for a month and found that three of the books that I had put on reserve at the library had already come and gone, and four more were ready to be picked up. I love [...]
The Robber Bride on film
If you’re a fan of Margaret Atwood, as I am, you’ll want to catch the movie adaptation of her book The Robber Bride on CBC this Sunday. Mary Louise Parker‘s in it. Hey, it’s passive, but it’s CanCon so I’m counting this as part of the arts challenge.
2007 Canada Council Arts Challenge
Back in December, I received an email from Ingrid about the Canada Council for the Arts challenging Canadians to participate in 50 arts activities in 2007. Of course, I just noticed that I missed the registration deadline of January 15th, but what the hell — I’m doing it anyway, and not just because Ingrid’s suggesting [...]
A Viennese New Years
We arrived in Vienna on Friday, after an early morning train ride from Osijek to Zagreb, a stop-over of a few hours spent with friends in Zagreb, then a longer ride from Zagreb through the beautiful countryside of Slovenia and on into Austria. We figured that we’d scout around and find a party to go [...]
