The Opera Queen

Tag: Four Seasons Centre

Something New, Something Old

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On January 29, 2017

In audio

The Nightingale and Other Short Fables (COC, 2009) / Photo: Michael Cooper

Right now it’s the season of opera companies revealing their upcoming rosters of productions and casts for the following season. Each year these announcements are met with breathless excitement from opera buffs like me; very often we plan our lives around this stuff, though just as often announcements are also met with eyebrow raises, snickers, and/or sighs.

No such reactions, at least from my end, when it came to the Canadian Opera Company’s 2017-2018 season; it’s intriguing and genuinely balanced, and not exactly as safe as it may look from the outset. A revival of a hugely divisive, Christopher Alden-directed Rigoletto (a production that bravely tackles the work’s blatant misogyny) and the Canadian premiere of Richard Strauss’ Arabella (as the season opener, no less) are just two of the notable productions on tap. There’s also another revival, of the hugely successful The Nightingale And Other Short Fables, which, if you don’t live in Toronto, is very worth making a trip for. It’s a very special production involving a flooded orchestra pit, creative puppetry, and some very searing visuals. I can’t think of a better introduction to opera than this.

Just before I left for Europe (where I’m posting from — more on this jaunt in a future post), I had a chance to chat with COC General Director Alexander Neef. It was recorded via telephone, owing to a nasty cold I was (/am) enduring. (I’m still working out the particulars of my fancy new recorder, so please pardon the beeping; it’s not a heart monitor, honest.) Neef is always a good conversationalist, even if he and I don’t always see eye-to-eye in the opera sphere. For instance, I think L’elisir d’amore is far more interesting with older singers; to my ears, Donizetti’s gorgeous score only fully reveals its warm humanity with the timbre of mature voices — though I should add, I am allowing myself to remain totally open whatever surprises may be in the Ensemble Studio-populated production the COC has planned in the fall. Having soprano Jane Archibald as Artist-in-Residence is an equally intriguing prospect; along with performing in The Abduction from the Seraglio, she’ll be making two role debuts — in Arabella and The Nightingale. Archibald was so very affecting this past fall in the COC’s affecting production of Ariodante, and again, if you’re not an opera fan, hers is the voice that may make you a believer. Along with stellar technique, the soprano has a warm, human presence onstage, and she’s a great actor too.

So, without further ado, please enjoy. More audio interviews — and updates from Europe — to come. Stay tuned.

(Photo: Bo Huang)

Finding Grace

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On November 16, 2015

In ballet

Dancer Piotr Stanczk in The Winter’s Tale. Photo by Karolina Kuras.

The recent opening of The Winter’s Tale at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto was preceded by an announcement that the performance would be dedicated to the victims of the Paris attacks, which had occurred just one night before. The National Ballet of Canada’s winter season was off to a sombre start, though the beauty of the Christopher Wheeldon-choreographed piece shone through mightily.

Adapted from Shakespeare’s 1611 play The Winter’s Tale (on now through November 22nd) focuses on Leontes (Piotr Stanczyk), King of Sicilia, who accuses his pregnant wife, Hermione (Hannah Fischer) of being unfaithful with his friend Polixenes (Harrison James), King of Bohemia. Hermione gives birth to a girl, but she faints at the shock of seeing her son, Mamilius, fall dead at her trial. Despite the pleas of Hermione’s friend Paulina (Xiao Nan Yu), Leontes orders the baby girl to be abandoned in a remote place; the child is found by a shepherd and his son, and is raised in Bohemia, where, sixteen years later, unaware of her parentage, Perdita (Jillian Vanstone) becomes engaged to Prince Florizel (Naoya Ebe), the son of Polixenes. The King violently objects to the union, thinking Perdita a mere shepherdess, and the pair flee, with Polixenes in hot pursuit. The couple wind up in Sicilia, where they are sheltered by Leontes, who only learns of Perdita’s identity through an emerald necklace he’d once given Hermione, one his daughter now wears as a gift from her fiance. The two Kings are reunited, and the pair are married. As festivities die down, Paulina leads Leontes to a statue of Hermione, one that proves to be considerably warmer than mere stone.

The work, while categorized as a comedy, is, like many Shakespearean comedies, less of a laugh-out-loud experience and more of a thought-provoking dramatic meditation. The adaptation beautifully, imaginatively captures the heaving emotions that run throughout the original, whether expressed in grand design (Bob Crowley’s sail work, together with the silk effects design work of Basil Twist is especially inventive) or intimate lighting (by Natasha Katz). Wheeldon’s choreography pulls no punches when it comes to portraying Leontes’ rage and suspicion; the King’s wild imaginings are presented in a way that clearly, forcefully implies an unhinged fear sitting at the heart of his character, one that is ultimately very destructive in both the real and spiritual senses. I thought about this rage expressed through movement, as Stanczyk stalked around the stage, expertly tossing Fischer this way and that in a perfectly executed pairing that brilliantly married skill and emotion. He, and his fine colleagues, are just as much actors as they are dancers. This makes the piece as much of a theatrical event as a dance one, as many of the best ballet works often are. In this instance, the seamless marriage of the two is poetic and deeply moving.

What’s more, for all its fantastical elements and outlandish The Winter’s Tale has real-world corollaries. Who among us hasn’t felt distrustful? Or suspicious? Who hasn’t done or done things they later deeply regret? The piece asks us to consider these questions, as we observe the expression of so many deeply recognizable emotions manifest entirely through that frail, entirely vulnerable vehicle, the human body. The choreography presents a clear narrative and even clearer emotional weight, allowing the movement to accentuate the inherent tragedy of the piece, and heightening the emotional gravity of its conclusion.

Dancers Hannah Fischer and Piotr Stanczyk. Photo by Karolina Kuras.

The Winter’s Tale left me with many questions, particularly in light of the previous evening’s horror, one that wasn’t, I suspect, very far from the thoughts of cast, crew, and audience members as well. Witnessing the rage of Leontes, and then Polixenes, the unfounded fears of each, the anger so horribly manifest, was enough to give one pause. Where does it comes from, this rage? Why does it stay? How does it grow? What ways does it manifest and then fester through the ages? These questions haunted me as I sat at the Four Seasons Centre, a mere twenty-four hours after the horror of the bombings, as losses were still being counted and fingers of accusation were being pointed. How do we find grace at such moments? The ballet’s closing scenes, of Leontes realizing Hermione has been alive this whole time, and her actually forgiving him his rage, inspired breath-holding, tear-welling, and finally, a long, deep sigh. Joby Talbot’s jagged, propulsive, Glass-inspired score gave way to Bernstein-inflected romanticism and Debussy-esque impressionism, and Wheeldon’s keen footwork, together with the clever staging of Jacquelin Barrett and Anna Délicia Trévien, made this intimate, holy moment between Leontes and his wife a moment to cherish, both within the piece itself and outside, to carry around like Perdita’s emerald necklace. I want to live in the state of grace Leontes has so clearly found in that moment.

Finding that grace isn’t easy, however. Amidst horror, we can’t simply grab a handful of goo labelled “grace” sitting in a tin on a dusty shelf, stuff it in our pockets, walk out the door, and think that by the stains on our trousers and the trail we leave behind we’re doing any good; that isn’t how grace works. Likewise forgiveness, grace’s nearest sibling: it takes a big heart to admit wrongs done against us, acknowledge them, and move past our pain. One may not fully accept the atrocity committed against them, their friends, their city, their country — indeed, one may never accept, much less understand — and in no way does forgiving mean forgetting; rather, it is a tacit agreement to absolve hurt, freeze it cold, break its giant, Kraken-like body apart into a thousand pieces, and finally brush it away like so much unwanted dust. That hurt, while palpable and needy in its infancy, eventually grows into an unwieldy monster that serves no purpose and prevents forward momentum. Only forgiveness unties its chain, turns it to stone, and breaks it apart; grace is what happens when you can look at your dust-covered hands and smile.

Dancers Piotr Stanczyk and Hannah Fischer. Photo by Karolina Kuras.

The Winter’s Tale feels like the perfect piece for our times; wordless but saying so much, fragile but with so much anger, forceful and delicate at once, it is proof positive that culture is one of the things that makes sense amidst an age bereft of logic. There is no rationale for horror, but there is always a place for beauty. These sharp things we feel and experience as humans — rage, hurt, confusion, fear, remorse — are things culture captures and expresses and explores so well. We would do well to heed the idea that art has the capacity to heal, now more than ever.

Casta Diva

By

On August 16, 2015

In classical, music, opera, personal, remembrance, writing

Tomorrow will mark three weeks since my mother passed away.

It feels odd to write that sentence, and odd to sit and look at it. Those are words I never thought I’d write at this stage of my life, in a blog no less, for everyone to see. There’s something so awfully personal about losing her, and I’ve encountered so many emotions and memories the last while — things I want to keep private, things I want to keep in a sacred space, things said and done and understood that need to exist only in the intimate space that existed between her and me. That may change in time, but for now, there are some doors that are remaining firmly shut.

Still, it’s hard for me to quantify the effect my mother has had (and continues to have) on my life. So much of what I love — music, theatre, opera, art — stems from her exposing me, at a very early age, to culture. It’s become the stuff of folklore to those who knew us well to hear I was in piano lessons at four, an opera gown at five, attending symphonies at six. Much as she complained about and worried over the inconsistencies of my chosen livelihood, she also knew I wasn’t really qualified to do anything else, that writing about (and for) the arts was, and remains, as natural to as breathing, as urgent as scratching a bite, as inevitable as sighing.

And I’ve been sighing a lot lately — over the times we shared, of course, but also over all the things she isn’t here to experience. Bellini’s great bel canto work Norma was on CBC’s Saturday Afternoon At The Opera program today, and I shed a few tears, and heaved a few sighs, thinking back both to my swooning exclamations to her after seeing Sandra Radvanovsky sing the role live in New York in 2013, and feeling horribly sad at the fact she wasn’t here to listen to the broadcast and rejoice in it as I was. Her absence feels like a horrible robbery to me, still — a robbery not solely to me, but to everyone whose life she touched (and there were many), and to the many worlds she moved between: cultural, financial, social, familial. Much as we are robbed by her absence, we were graced by her presence, and no one benefited more from that grace than I did. If I had a sense of gratitude before her passing, that sense has deepened, widened, broadened, become almost all-encompassing, to the point that a piece of music, an aria, even the most brief and beautifully-played phrase, will still me, awe me, set me to tears and sighs and silence. Productivity lately, as you might guess, has been something of a miracle — and yet I carry on being busy, because I know it’s precisely what she would want.

Still, there are many moments throughout the day that call for pause. The tickets for this season’s Canadian Opera Company productions sit in their envelope on the refrigerator in the kitchen, where I do most of my work; I stare at them and wonder what will happen the next few months. I couldn’t (wouldn’t) have ever dreamed I’d be without her a few months ago. Now, I find myself looking up from my work and over at the fridge — and I’m hungry, but not for what’s on the other side of the door. It’s going to be painful to enter the doors of the Four Seasons Centre without her, even with all the kind expressions of support I’ve received from fellow opera-going friends. How do you negotiate a world you’ve only ever known with someone else? “Make it your own” is a tidy little saying, but it feels far too trite, and somehow, too limiting.

So much of my cultural life is bound up in sharing what I love with others, in bringing them into the arts world to experience and exchange ideas, insights, inspirations. That’s a big reason I’m an arts journalist: I like to share what I love and think is relevant, important, moving, enraging, beautiful. I think my mother saw and appreciated that toward the end of her life. As I said in my eulogy at her funeral service, I am who and what I am because of her; my world has been shaped accordingly.

Now I face a world shaped by her absence. I will, of course, see and hear her everywhere — on the radio, between the notes, within the sighs, in the opera house — but it isn’t the same. Seeing the spaces where she should sit, hearing the arias she’d swoon over, hugging the people she adored, eating the (rare) dishes she enjoyed — these things underline and highlight an absence that is still, for all intensive purposes, a shock. Art doesn’t help to answer any of the questions I’m left with, or resolve the sea of emotions I’m navigating, but it does remind me of the legacy that lives within me, and within those who’ve checked out a production, a show, a book, a movie, a restaurant, because of our loud, shared cultural passion. This was her gift; it remains her lifetime contribution, one that defies even death, one that I hope will counteract the yawning absence, and become a part of a divine presence that never leaves.

 

Beautiful Nothingness

By

On May 31, 2015

In ballet, philosophy

Translating complex philosophical ideas onto the stage can be a challenge, particularly when that stage doesn’t involve words, but The National Ballet of Canada’s Being and Nothingness, based on the work by Jean-Paul Sartre, offers a riveting expression of the ideas around the nature of existence, done with a definite visual poetry that makes for compelling watching. The work is being staged at Toronto’s Four Seasons for the Performing Arts as part of the company’s spring program (which also includes work by Alexei Ratmansky) and runs through June 6th.

Principal dancer Guillaume Cote turns choreographer for Being and Nothingness, which took shape after fellow dancer Greta Hodgkinson approached Cote about creating a solo. Cote was reading the work of Sartre at the time. As he prepared the solo, Cote says in the program notes that he was surprised by “how many aspects of Sartre’s theory began to come up. There was this idea of creating an image of ourselves, an ideal of what we should be, and no longer living in the moment but rather somewhere between what we’e done in our past and what we’re striving for in our future.”

This “somewhere between,” where the dancers look caught between past and future, is the space where Being and Nothingness derives much of its power. Soloist Hodgkinson performs with just the light of a sole bulb dangling on a long string, her body twisting and contorting, a Giacometti come to life. It’s as if she is in a frantic fight against inertia and vanishing, fending off the darkness but fearful of what the light might reveal. Her arms and legs turn toward, and then away, from light, toward and back from the corners of Michael Levine’s satisfyingly grim set. Cote’s choreography nicely integrates the fluid, spatial elements of Tharp and Balanchine, while deftly maintaining a poetic urgency that perfectly matches the gorgeous panic of the Philip Glass Metamorphosis and Etude pieces that score the work, ones expertly performed by Edward Connell.

If, like me, you can’t quite place Being and Nothingness from your reading past (I did a paper on it in university roughly two decades ago), it’s worth remembering that the French philosopher starts from the point of humans being precisely zero essence; we are not “essentially” good or “essentially” bad, we simply are. In other words, life’s what you make it. Sartre writes that because humans lack any pre-determined essence, they make themselves purely by acting in the world. This “world” is presented onstage through a series of vignettes, many of which feature couples in various circumstances. This reflects the dualism Sartre explores (and ultimately rejects) in his work; to put it simply, what you see is really what you get.

Thus Cote has staged a work with few light spots, though the ones there shine through brilliantly, and are complemented by intense dancing and a forceful theatricality that dips and dives around the abstract and occasionally surreal. Dancers Kathryn Hosier and Felix Paquet share a lovely, playfully romantic pas-de-deux in “The Bedroom,” while Svetlana Lunkina and Brent Parolin bring a strained connection to vivid life, with the help of a carpet (frequently dragged around with someone on it), in “The Living Room.” The bridges between past and present, of sitting in a purgatory of the present, couldn’t have been made more searingly obvious, and the choreography and imagery presented in this vignette was particularly affecting for its visual inventiveness and seamless blend of movement and design. Further along, an ensemble of male dancers, clothed in natty grey suits designed by Krista Dowson, perform upstage (they’re downstage for “The Street”) and remind one of Sartre’s argument that “we, as human beings, can become aware of ourselves only when confronted with the gaze of another. Not until we are aware of being watched do we become aware of our own presence.”

Greta Hodgkinson and Ben Rudisin (Photo by Aleksandar Antonijevic)

This idea of presence makes the solo work all the more trenchant;  Hodgkinson’s intense performance that opens the show,  as well as Dylan Tedaldi’s tormented solo performance in “The Sink,” add challenging if beautiful layers to what is, at its essence (and yes it has one), a brilliantly inventive piece of dance theatre.  Fully immersing his head in a sink full of water and then throwing his head back, lion-like, Tedaldi gives a controlled and sure physical expression of Sartre’s idea that “the gaze of the other robs us of our inherent freedom” — even if that gaze is coming from a mirror, it would seem. Freedom here looks like a joy and a torment, at once, and choreographer Cote seems to understand this perfectly.

The idea of freedom as a leviathan-like force, haunting, harrowing, beautiful and terrifying, is examined with quiet intensity in the final vignette, “The Call”, where Hodgkinson and dancer Ben Rudisin wrestle with a phone call (and an ever-lengthening phone cord); it’s as if they are wrestling with their own need for connection, and a repulsion at being defined solely by it, grappling for freedom and pushing against it simultaneously. Such push-pull tension fuels the piece on to a surprising, if nicely contemplative ending, elucidating the philosophical notion that “freedom is humanity’s curse as well as its blessing, and what we make of that freedom is our own.”

It is an awful, awesome, awe-inspiring note Cote has chosen to end on, and it will, like Being and Nothingness itself, leave you quietly contemplating the lights, the shadows, the movements, and the stillness; you may even want to pull out that old volume of Sartre again.

Home

By

On January 24, 2014

In opera, personal

Photo / my Flickr

Of all the challenges I faced this past autumn and winter, perhaps the biggest was trying to keep my cultural writing alive. That I let something go that meant (means) so much to me is troubling, and I’m hoping to amend that in a number of ways as 2014 unfolds.

Embracing opera in a new, far more powerful way than I have in the past, is the first step in this correction. While studying in New York, I found myself missing the Canadian Opera Company’s zesty experimental approach to an old medium, and its fulsome orchestral embrace of many beloved scores. Sure, the Met is great — but it’s not the same. It’s hard for me to have an honest emotional experience when I feel like I’m part of a capital “e” event; attending an opera at Lincoln Center sometimes always feels that way, to say nothing of the itinerant activities around performances. There’s something so big, so epic, so fraught with legend and the baggage of history, that actually sitting in the Met house proper opens up a world of doubt about whether production (and performance) choices are to move the audience, or merely impress us with illusions of artistic authenticity. (There was, refreshingly, a ton of artistry, authenticity, and heart in the Met production of Strauss’ Die frau ohne schatten last month, but that’s for another blog post. I’m still ruminating on it  — something that’s never happened in my almost thirty years of Met-going experience. Surely it must mean… something? Hmmm.)

Despite the few things the COC’s produced that haven’t work for me (both Martha Clarke’s meta-theatrical vision of Mozart’s The Magic Flute from the early 1990s and a stilted, emotionally hollow production of Elektra in 2007, come to mind), some of the best theater I’ve ever experienced — particularly in the few years — has been from a seat in the Four Seasons Centre. From Christopher Alden’s deeply unsettling vision of Rigoletto in 2011 (a favorite production, having sat through many versions of it), to his wickedly smart, sexy 2012 production of Die Fledermaus, to the jaw-dropping beauty of Peter Sellars’ Tristan und Isolde, and the disturbing magic of Atom Egoyan’s Salome, I go to the COC to be inspired and challenged, disturbed and knocked off balance. Opera is more than pretty songs; it engages heart and brain at once, that understands how thinking, feeling, and being challenged need not be mutually exclusive from being entertained. Opera has become less of a diversion than an immersion, a whole-hearted embrace of something both larger than myself, and yet entirely of myself. 
Photo / my Flickr

I grew up listening to opera; it was as much a part of my household as the music of ABBA, The Carpenters, the Bee Gees, and Queen. Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, and Freddie Mercury were the voices of my childhood. “Saturday Afternoon At The Opera” was (and remains) a tradition. Naturally, I went through the predictable teenaged phase of kicking out, rolling eyes, plugging ears, and closing heart: “turn that shit off!” I found my mother’s opera obsession embarrassing and annoying. I wanted my rock and electronic music on the stereo (loud). The many operas I’d go to as a child and fall asleep halfway through out of youth and it being a school night, I fell asleep to out of sheer disgust and outright boredom. I’d heard it all, and I was no longer interested.

But when I moved to Dublin in my early 20s, I found myself missing the opera world terribly — missing the magic of the melody, surely, but missing the drama as well. I have always loved theater; I sought it out as a kid, even running into Atom Egoyan many years ago during a production of King Lear at the Bathurst Street Theatre.  I’ve immersed myself in theater at various points throughout my life: as a writer, an actor, a behind-the-scenes person, a front-of-house person, a PR person, and now, a journalist. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve always run to the theater, for community, familiarity, comfort, yes… but for being challenged, too.

Photo / my Flickr

And over the years, I’ve discovered the opera I enjoy most is that which provides a challenge, but always respects the music. I’ve fallen back in love, in a newer, stronger, more adult way, with the music I rejected as a youth. There’s a strange, intoxicating power when theater and music join forces; it is the best kind of sensory overload. Even when the 2010 Tim Albery-directed Aida didn’t work for me, its score — and interpretation — did. A night at the opera reminds me that theater and music is precisely the kind of holy union I want shaping and informing my 2014.

Coming away from a night at the opera, I am inspired to think more deeply not only about the art itself, but about music, science, technology, history, philosophy… even love… and the intimate connections therein. I want to get back to not only writing, but painting, cooking, drawing… to creativity, to authenticity, with head, with heart, taking small footsteps, but always moving forward. 

Whither Aida?

By

On October 10, 2010

In opera

Two vastly different, but related experiences of grandeur, have got me thinking about the value of big productions, culturally and otherwise. The Canadian Opera Company opened its latest season October 2nd with a startling, strangely unmoving production of Verdi’s Aida. The company, headed by the brilliant Alexander Neef, has seen an upswing in its popularity among younger culture vultures of the city (so much so that local fave Broken Social Scene will be headling their annual fundraising ball) while keeping their vital older subscriber base happy -until now, anyway. The production of Aida on now manages to confuse, infuriate, and perhaps worst of all… bore.

Like any good opera-goer, I’ve seen my share of staged Aidas -mainly at the Met, it should be noted, with live animals & a chorus numbering in the hundreds. Budget?!, you want to shriek when the gold-leaf-everythings are wheeled in alongside blinding elephants and bored-looking horses, what budget? Aida isn’t staged too often precisely because it’s so expensive, and often, the baggage that travels with it isn’t just the kind you can see. And the magic of the romance inherent within the tale gets lost amidst the grandeur. The tale of the Ethiopian slave-princess and her doomed love affair with the Egyptian captain Radames is Big Operatic Melodrama -which is fine -though coupled with Verdi’s stirring, awesome score, means you have the makings of an audience full of expectations: the set should be big, the emoting should be grand, the orchestra should be really, really loud. Right? Wrong, or so says director Tim Albery and COC music director Johannes Debus. Albery has purposely shied away from the Big Everything approach, eschewing grandeur in favour of story, subtext, and even meta-theatrical musings on the nature of performer-audience relations.

So there’s no Egyptophilia here, which would be a refreshing change if Albery’s production wasn’t so intent on going in the contrary direction for the sake of it. It’s a noble instinct to try to re-define an old operatic chestnut, but the idea kills the emotion. Set in some 1980s Trump-like super-state, where the Egyptian politicos are in tailored suits (a la Mad Men) and the ladies are trussed up like gaudy pseudo-Ivana cyborgs, the delicacy and beauty of both the story and the music are nearly lost. Nearly. Thank heavens (make that Isis) for Debus’ stunningly keen musical direction. Never have I heard such a beautiful, stirring, poetic rendering of Verdi’s score as here. It greatly helps that the cast, lead by the utterly awesome Sondra Radvanovsky (making her COC debut) are fantastic. Radvanovsky’s delicate, heartfelt approach to the material is gorgeous.

If only the same could be said of Albery’s direction, which positively reeks of over-stylization and heavy-handedness. While I enjoyed his underlining of the horrors of colonialism during the triumphal march, the gold-lame-come-stripper priestesses and humping skeletons did little to add to one’s understanding or appreciation of Ghislanzoni‘s libretto; the whole concept felt forced, insipid, and arrogant -and playing right into the kind of grandeur it was supposedly turning its back on.

In my next blog, I’ll be detailing the big event that did move me deeply -one that openly embraced largeness, and used it to incredible effect to create a sense of intimacy and wonder. Stay tuned…

Aida Photo Credits: © 2010 Michael Cooper

Across A Crowded Room

By

On August 17, 2010

In opera

What surprised me most about attending the Toronto opening of South Pacific recently wasn’t the smart Bartlett Sher direction, the hot dancing sailors, or the strong, ballsy singing. No, it was the fact that so many people I met and spoke with hadn’t seen either the film or any other stage productions. Just like me! Here I thought I was the only SP virgin in the audience. Guess not.

South Pacific belongs, at least to my mind, to another time and place -one where everyone had a crush on either Mitzi Gaynor or Rossano Brazzi, the stars of the 1958 film version of the beloved Rodgers and Hammstein musical. The story, set on a tropical island during the Second World War, revolves around Ensign Nelly Forbush (Carmen Cusack) and her relationship with Frenchman Emile DeBecque (Jason Howard). Nelly’s all fine and dandy canoodling with a man she hardly knows, until he introduces his Polynesian children to her, and she figures out he’s been with a “coloured.” Remember this musical is set during the 1940s, before MLK and the civil rights movement proper existed, and the ugly spectre of racism was still haunting every part of society.

Dated and yet weirdly timely in its attitudes and portrait of a closed, hypocritical paradise, Sher’s multi-award-winning Lincoln Center production has kept every ounce of James Michener‘s intoxicating, if occasionally uneasy atmosphere from his Tales of The South Pacific collection. There’s romance, there’s boredom, there’s a dangerous restlessness, and the huckster-slickness of island trade. There’s also latent, if noticeable racism; for instance, the black navymen stand apart from their white counterparts in most scenes, even when they’re dancing and singing. This is no never-never-land where supposed “difference” is ever forgotten. Never for one moment does Sher let us forget this is a very segregated, racist society singing those cutesy, toe-tapping songs.

It’s also, at least to my twenty-first century feminist mind, staged to be vaguely chauvinistic -quite purposely. The hummable, weirdly addictive number “There Is Nothing Like A Dame” is sung by the gaggle of bored, restless navy boys, with heavy legs and wide gaits, like they all have the worst case of blue balls in history. The way they shout and enunciate their lines (particularly the pelvic-thrust-inducing “ANYTHING like … a dame!“) is both smirk-inducing and slightly disturbing. I got the feeling watching them that I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a tiki bar near any of them. Sher’s desire to portray, honestly and without the cute, coddling frills, the sort of wild loneliness that’s endemic to military life -a loneliness that transforms into predatory, dangerous energy in such isolated, testosterone-fueled circumstances. You have to wonder what those soldiers would do if they all got to the island that’s across the bay. At the same time, you can’t blame the French Polynesians for locking their daughters away. Yikes.

Standing out as the pirate-like ringleader of this band of un-merry men is Luther Bellis, played with sexy aplomb by Matthew Saldivar. With his tattoos, bead necklaces, open shirt and goatee, he’s like Captain Jack by way of New Jersey, and, to my mind, is absolutely magnetic whenever he’s onstage, even if he isn’t talking. He’s just as good demonstrating his player attitude as he is conveying a boyish awkwardness, particularly in his scenes with Nelly. There’s a beautiful vulnerability at work in those scenes, as we sense that, behind the aggressive boys-club aplomb is a truly good man who is all too aware of his position, both in and outside navy life. In short, it’s a star-making performance, and I’m curious to see more from Saldivar in future.

The other notable performance comes from Anderson Davis as straight-arrow Lieutenant Cable, who comes to the South Pacific island as a Princeton straight-arrow, but is soon fumbling to find a center to the spinning madness. Davis is mesmerizing in conveying Cable’s entrancement and accompanying panic with the new world the island shows him, notably in the form of Liat (Sumie Maeda), daughter of souvenir hawker Mary (Jodi Kimura). Sher brilliantly plays up the opportunism and exploitation at work in both Cable and Mary’s machinations; the former, delivering a gorgeous, blistering “Younger Than Springtime”, brings to mind vague, troubling hints of pedophilia, while Kimura’s throaty, if hypnotic delivery of “Bali Ha’i” is sung like the huge, musical sales pitch it’s supposed to be. She’s played as a desperate mum eager to give her daughter a better life, and immediately recognizes Cable as just the man to do that. With her crooked grin, low-lidded gaze, and slow, deliberate walk, Kimura delivers a nuanced, fascinating performance that could easily fall into racial stereotype, but never, ever does.

As to the leads, Jason Howard (as Emile) has an amazing, beautiful full singing tone, and really fleshes out the emotional undercurrents of his character in his numbers (especially “This Nearly Was Mine”), but his French accent is sometimes more Pepe Le Pew than Paris, and his acting feels a bit too “Big Romantic Lead”-hammy at points. I don’t want to see Emile trying to romance Nelly -I want to know he can (and does), and I wasn’t always buying it. Maybe it was opening night jitters, or to much Wagner (Howard just came off of playing Wotan in the German composer’s ring cycle in Strasbourg). As his love interest, Carmen Cusack is solid and reliable, with a beautiful, clear soprano tone. But… she’s weirdly distant; her hot-blooded Southerner seems strangely Polar, and it takes away from the character’s essential, unpretentious earthiness. The famous “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” is staged with inventive choreography and props (including a vintage tropical shower), and the chorus of Nurses around her is certainly vivacious but there’s something insincere in Cusack’s delivery. I got the feeling she’d be more comfortable doing a solo show of R&H hits than getting her hair wet.

Perhaps most importantly, Cusack and Howard lack the crucial to make their scenes together really sizzle. A bit more consistency with the leads and a little more sincerity (though really, you can’t fake chemistry) might make for a more moving experience, especially considering the theme of the work -racism -rises or falls based on the characters’ sincerity. When her character finds out Emile’s first wife was, as she put it, a “colored”, she says it as though she has something unpleasant affixed to her shoe; never for a moment did I believe Nelly harbored a massive racist streak , one that serves as a huge symbol of the deep conflict at work within both the musical and it earlier forbear. Thing is, I needed to feel her utter disgust and repulsion -however uncomfortable -to really feel the full force of the work. I found it more with Cable, the sailors, and Bloody Mary than with the leads. Maybe I was just looking too hard for meaning, but I also believe Sher fully intended for the horror of racism to be keenly felt by audience members, and, certainly it is, at least in some scenes. It just isn’t consistent, especially where it needs to be.

Still, there’s no doubting the musical chops -of the leads, or indeed, anyone – for one minute; the ensemble belts out all the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein hits like they were born to do it, and, in the end, I suppose that’s what many -most -people come for. Between the Catherine Zuber’s lovely costumes, Christopher Gattelli’s sprightly musical staging, and Michael Yeargan’s super-inventive sets, this is an evening of musical theatre you won’t soon forget. And you might just look at the sunny film version a bit differently, too. Sometimes darkness amidst the sun and sand is a refreshing change. And sometimes, across a crowded room, you’re smacked in the face with something ugly you didn’t expect. It isn’t always a bad thing, even if the sunshine is awfully nice.

You Can’t Catch Me

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On November 3, 2009

In opera

In keeping with my contemplations about images of women in popular culture lately, a couple things from the last few weeks have been sticking and bear a bit of examination. Opera was, for many moons, the pop culture of its day; not solely the denizens of the upper classes, it was the place where music, entertainment, theatre and play melded together and foisted into onto a wider social milieu. Images of swooning heroines and brave men abounded, based, as many pieces were, on classical tales from Mediterranean mythologies. A time passed and the world shifted its attention to more current concerns, opera began to reflect what I’d call World Politics Lite; that is, librettists and composers would bring in contemporary themes and ideas reflective of the wider world, but include elements of yore to make the whole thing a bit more palatable. Opera was already a place where questioning the norm wasn’t quite (cough) allowed; making its characters -especially its women -safe, predictable, passive, and victimized allowed for a greater audience catharsis, however insincere and overwrought it may have been.

All of this bubbled up to the surface following a recent visit to the opera. The Canadian Opera Company’s production of Madame Butterfly (closing tonight at the Four Seasons Centre) is beautiful in its simplicity; Brian MacDonald‘s solid direction and Susan Benson‘s dreamy design provide a poetic austerity amidst the washed-out shades and colourings. Adina Nitescu‘s soprano is full, throaty, and lovely, and her acting is keenly felt, and as such, entirely moving.

Yet there is something that has always troubled me about the opera; Cio-Cio San (or “Butterfly”) is so terribly naive, her blind, passionate infatuation with Pinkerton and all he represents is maudlin in the extreme, and her willingness to throw over her culture and historical heritage to win validation is deeply unnerving. Along with these troubling notions, there’s the patronizing, stereotypical portrayal of Japanese culture itself. “Isn’t it cute?” the libretto implies, “aren’t these such nice simple people?” The atonal, rhythmic qualities of the music imitates this patronizing attitude; it’s about as Japanese as the teriyaki stand in your local mall’s food court.

The opera is a reflection of Puccini’s awareness of the colonial reach of the U.S. -and, by extension, Italy -but it absolutely reeks of White Privileged European Male-ness. As if to balance all this vitriol, I was struck, in sitting there watching it for the umpteenth time recently, of the sheer gorgeousness of much of the music. Somehow, I reconciled my extreme discomfort with Butterfly’s chauvinistic, colonial underpinnings with Puccini’s genuinely beautiful, dreamy score. It didn’t make any of the issues I have easier to bear, nor did it lubricate the suspension of my disbelief over the next two hours; it did, however, remind me that sometimes it’s better to shut your eyes and listen to the notes, not the words. Of course, once I opened them again, I was hit, strongly, by the pretense of theatre cushioning us, so we can sigh over scenarios that would be anything but romantic in reality. There’s a patronizing, reductive archness to it all that renders Butterfly’s choices insincere and too easy to excuse: “well she’s just a kid… ”

This same frustrating sense of reduction happened again with the musical version of Debbie Does Dallas (running to November 8th at Toronto’s Theatre Centre). The musical is based on the tacky 70s porn flick of the same name. Presented by the newly-formed Ghost Light Projects, the work is cute, bouncy, and empty -kind of like Debbie herself. Lead Jamie Robinson is likeable and certainly an ebullient presence onstage, but the premise -Nice-Girl Cheerleader Turns Into Wholesome Whore To Chase Her Dreams -is tiresome and dated. I enjoyed director Penelope Corrin injecting a bit of social commentary in small drims and drams throughout, questioning the outmoded idea that equates selling sexual favours with liberation. There weren’t enough of those moments, alas. More brazenly unzipping the trousers of chauvinism parading as liberation might’ve made for a more powerful piece, even within the admittedly-small corral of the musical itself. Debbie Does Dallas may be all puffery and pom-poms, but it holds a darker, decidedly unpleasant undertone that isn’t funny at all.

Hedwig & The Angry Inch – Origin of Love
by disastr2000

A much better example of liberation in action was Ghost Light’s second, so-called “complementary” production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The punk rock musical features some kick-ass tunes along with a juicy lead role -uh, for a man. Still, Seth Drabinsky’s angry passionate portrayal of the East German rock diva icon -not fully male, not fully female -nicely encapsulated the claustrophobic rage at the masquerade of societal gender stereotypes. He was backed up by the incredible sonic power of local Toronto band The Vicious Guns and actor/singer L.A. Lopes, who director Corrin cleverly placed in a beard and drab garb; the ensuing confusion, between Lopes’ masculine appearance and high, searing soprano vocal was a kind of delicious confusion -and possessed a kind of manic, gorgeous opera all its own. The fact Hedwig spits out her memories of living in communist-era Europe also has a delicious timeliness, considering this week marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. It’s as if the zeitgeist of that moment of liberation found expression in Hedwig’s manic energies, sexual and otherwise.

The production itself nicely mixes the busy confusion of sexual politics with the more tender aspects of love, never slipping into the maudlin or saccharine. Corrin innately understands the snarling energy of punk rock and its transformative power in both epic and intimate ways. You change yourself; you change the world around you. That isn’t necessarily a punk ethos either; it’s a human one. Reducing one’s self to bits and pieces reduces the world, and our capacity to move freely in it. The wall’s fallen; the web’s mental. Leave your mark, Hedwig urges, and move on.

The Nightingale: Fluttering Simplicity

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On October 19, 2009

In opera

Igor Stravinsky has never endeared those who crave traditional melodic lines. His music is raucous, rough, and challenging –not the kind of thing you can hum or whistle to.

So it was with a mix of trepidation and curiosity that I took my traditional-opera-loving mum to see the new production of his 1908 opera The Nightingale, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fable. She’s always thought of Stravinsky as “weird” (you might too, if your favourite music is grand Italian opera) and I know she was never a fan of the Russian’s challenging, difficult, definitely non-hummable music. His infamous statement, that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,” has been assessed and analyzed, criticized and derided, and yet I suspect he may’ve been onto the same kinds of thing as Marcel Duchamp, or even later, Brian Eno. Stravinsky’s work isn’t about making you feel comfortable, and indeed, that isn’t the point of what I’d consider good art. Spoon-feeding is atrocious; it takes a keen director, respectful of the material but strong in their own sense of individualism and craft to bring a vision that might express something through the myriad of sounds and effects Stravinsky laid throughout his scores.

Enter Robert Lepage. The Nightingale marks his return to the Canadian Opera Company after a sixteen-year absence. Just as he brought a bold, striking vision to the 1993 production of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung so he brings a playful, if equally visionary sense to this latest work. Stravinsky was the musical revolutionary of his time; LePage is his contemporary theatrical equivalent. Neither artist has ever taken the safe road with regards to their respective arts, so it came as no surprise when it was announced last year that the Quebec born, multi-award-winning theatre director would be filling the orchestra pit of The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts with 67,000 litres of water as part of his vision for the piece. That’s a whole lotta water, and people like my mother (a longtime COC subscriber) wondered if it was also a whole lotta waste-of-time.

But the idea -in its audacity, grandeur, and sheer weirdness -intrigued her, and I would imagine, many of those in attendance at Saturday’s opening. Opera is meant to be big and bold and ballsy; there’s no such thing as subtle opera in the larger scheme of things. The adjective “grand” is attached to opera (or at least some styles) for a reason, and it’s always this sense of “the big” that pervades popular notions around the artform. I’ve sat through more than one production of Aida that featured live animals, including elephants, horses, and even -once -a zebra. So why not fill up the orchestra pit? Why not have puppets? Why not embrace the grand-opera mystique and majesty?

But even majesty is best used when it’s done with simplicity, class, and most of all, awareness. To be big just for the sake of it smacks of narcissism; to go large without an overriding artistic idea feels simplistic. And the line between “simple” and “simplistic” is fine but it’s important. Too often in the arts world -of high culture and low culture equally -the “large” aspect is blindly presented and unquestioningly embraced. Lepage doesn’t offer any solutions for this modern artistic conundrum but he does have the visionary mindset to look behind and around him for clues as to how to solve it. In the program notes, he offers his theory theatre’s origins: “Man was sitting around a bonfire in a cave telling stories and one day he stood up and used his shadow to illustrate his tale. Theatre was born using nothing more than light and imagination.” It’s this sense of childlike play that the director transfers onto the complex musicality of Stravinsky, making for a unique opera-going experience that both pays homage to the roots (or suspected roots) of theatrical performance, and opens the door to a new way of seeing an old, frequently-stodgy artform. In other words, he reinvents the way we perceive opera and its relevance to theatre, performance, and music itself. he also make it personal, by injecting elements many of us recognize from childhood. They’re simple elements, but not simplistic. Lepage trusts and respects his audience -their capacity for creation, imagination, comprehension and invention -and this abiding love of humanity shines through every aspect of the production. Clever, creative use of light, shadow, water, and the human form tease out the the complexities of Stravinsky’s work, revealing its inherent playfulness and its gentle parody of the foibles and follies of human nature.

In so doing, the composer’s seemingly-barren, cold modern music is infused with a new richness. In The Fox, a Russian folk tale based on Russian Folk Tales by the writer Aleksandr Afanasyev, he creates a world where we see folk tales being literally shared -told, re-told, re-interpreted and recycled -with choruses of singers dressed in traditional Russian garb standing on side platforms. Fables about wily foxes, proud roosters, crying babies, and curious cats are shared, expressed, and laughed over. Another layer of theatre is literally grafted on top of this via a large, cinematically-shaped screen running the length of the stage, over top of the orchestra. Using shadows made by hands and later bodies (thanks to puppeteers), we see a cat’s tail swishing about, a rabbit’s eyes dancing to and fro, a rooster guarding his hens; each movement matches and accentuates elements in Stravinsky’s score. Here is a whole new way of experiencing the Russian composer -as well as the operatic form itself : as mischievous, theatrical, imaginative, perhaps even fun. Opera? Fun? Hell yeah. Even my mother said as much at intermission.

For The Nightingale, Lepage has taken Andersen’s fable about the golden-throated bird and the Chinese Emperor who covets her and turned it into a magical metaphor about the relationship of man and nature. As the singers control their puppets, with the aid of five talented puppeteers, I couldn’t help but notice the near-identical dress between the performers and their doll-like counterparts. Puppet designer Michael Curry has fashioned a series of creations that gorgeously complement their human counterparts in both appearance, and, thanks to choreographer Martin Genest, movement. Each puppet is like a child, with a larger grown-up version of itself controlling, manipulating, sounding, and speaking for it. It reminded me a bit of when my own mother would take me to the opera when I was very young, in fact. There was something sentimental and touching about the way each singer cradled and carefully controlled their smaller, ornately-dressed selves.

With lights from the orchestra musician’s music stands reflected in the water, I found myself musing, amidst the swirling raucousness of the music: art is reflected in nature; nature shows art what is truly is; nature reflects but has its own qualities one can’t totally control -and that is a good way of approaching (if not describing) the best sort of art. All this, from filling up an orchestra pit, though the genius was in the design. The reflections (intensified at the opera’s end by Diwali-eque floating candles) were not incidental; Etienne Boucher‘s specific, focused lighting strongly recalled the work of Bill Viola, with all of its spiritual, simple-meets-challenging aspects, encompassed within a live performance presentation.

The Nightingale involves so much more than mere, simplistic effect; it is a wonderous, child-like vision of an eternal dance between the natural world and the constructed one. Via the shadowplay of the first half, and the waterplay/puppeteering of the second, we’re reminded again and again to re-connect with our own playful instincts –ones, it must be said, that are as ancient as those first stories he refers to in the notes. Sometimes it’s via the most unexpected and challenging means that we come to find our own common humanity, and come to recognize our own nightingale, singing, flying, just waiting to be heard.

As to my mum? She’s still not a Stravinsky fan. But she adores Lepage. Bien sur.

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