Carnival Revels with the Toronto Consort

The Toronto Consort looks to the lively carnival celebrations of Renaissance Italy for the inspiration behind its Carnival Revels concerts on February 28 and March 1, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, Jeanne Lamon Hall. Guest actors Gabrielle Houle, Neil Babcock, and Stephen LaFrenie , who specialize in the commedia dell’arte performance style, join the Consort for these performances. For tickets and information, visit www.torontoconsort.org or call the box office at (416) 964-6337.
For Carnival Revels, Artistic Director David Fallis has assembled a program that draws on the Italian carnival tradition. Music selections include Cucagna (The Land of Cockaigne), the imaginary Carnival land where there are rivers of wine and sausages grow on trees. Other sections of the programme are devoted to imitations, commedia characters in music, a group of songs from Orazio Vecchi's Selva di varia ricreatione (Forest of various recreations), excerpts from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, and excerpts from Adriano Banchieri's "commedia madrigalesca" called Il Festino nella sera del Giovedi Grasso avanti cena (The Party for Fat Thursday before dinner).
Guest actor Gabrielle Houle trained with Italian commedia dell’arte master Antonio Fava, at the Odin Teatret in Denmark, and the Dell’Arte school in California. She also studied with the renowned Italian mask-maker Donato Sartori, and at the school of Commedia Dell'Arte VeneziaINscena, in Venice. Houle has a Master’s degree in Commedia Dell’Arte from Laval University, and is working on her Doctorate in Commedia Dell’Arte at the University of Toronto.