I had another look at the Canadian Opera Company’s Cosi fan tutte tonight, a production that I enjoyed even more this time in its closing performance.

Tracy Dahl as Despina & Russell Braun as Don Alfonso (photo: Michael Cooper)

Last time I was content to have so much fun & so many laughs, but this time I guess I’m trying to be a bit more analytical, hoping to understand what’s different from five years ago. There are a few possible explanations

• In this year’s version did Atom Egoyan see the light? Did he decide to be less pretentious? The overbearing images –Frida Kahlo, butterflies & pins to pierce them, and this heavy-handed “school for lovers”—are all still in the design concept, but feel different this time. Or was assistant director Marilyn Gronsdal the real genius behind this incarnation of the opera? (and the reason I like it so much better) If the director was more of a brand-name to sell the production than a real controlling force (as sometimes happens in revivals), perhaps the singers were able to shake off the original directorial concept (as seen in 2014) and bring the opera back closer to its usual tonal colour as a comedy.
• In this year’s version was the change from Sir Thomas Allen to Russell Braun the necessary catalyst for a lighter reading? When I watched Braun high-five the entire chorus in the curtain call, there was no mistaking the joy in the company. They were having fun, whereas last time there seemed to be something more reverential at work, a pompous self-important tone, either with Sir Thomas or the director. Last time my first laugh was an hour into the opera, at the arrival of Despina. This time I was laughing throughout.  While this is a different sort of role for Braun –it lies lower than his usual baritone parts– I daresay he was phenomenal, and the driving force all night.  It was a pleasure watching him.
• In this year’s version the women are funnier. Is this the personnel or their direction, I wonder? Wallis Giunta is a talented mezzo-soprano who was terrific last time. But Emily D’Angelo was turned loose in this version, showing a real gift for physical comedy. Last time I recall that Tracy Dahl was more or less on her own as the comic element of a rather serious reading of the opera; this time all three women were funny.

  (l-r) Kirsten MacKinnon as Fiordiligi & Emily D’Angelo as Dorabella (photo: Michael Cooper)

• The chorus seem to be smiling more this time. Again, I know they smiled last time, but there was an energy this time, a lightness of foot and a sense of delight. They have a huge amount of work to do, as witnesses & students observing the lessons they’re being taught by Don Alfonso. Braun’s school for lovers? It is a fun place, where Allen’s school seemed more solemn, so thoughtful as to be well, boring! Yes I almost fell asleep a couple of times in 2014.  Not this time.

There are still question-marks, but they’re not for Egoyan or the COC. I love this production but I am reminded as usual: of problems I have with this opera, with the libretto that Lorenzo da Ponte handed Mozart. Oh well, two out of three ain’t bad, considering that Don Giovanni and Nozze di Figaro (the other two operas Da Ponte created with Mozart in that miraculous 5 year period) are arguably the two finest operas of the 18th century. I am still waiting to see a production of Cosi that really balances the genders at the end, holding the men to the same account as the women. Egoyan / Grosdal are busy with other issues, and so at the end we listen to the women apologize, while nowhere do the men really apologize for anything. We come as usual to the “funny” line that always rankles, when Alfonso says “Cosi fan tutte”, a line that surely must apply to the men as well as the women. I have seen productions that aim for more balance than this one.  In this one? the quartet of lovers seem  estranged at the end. So while the music is fabulous and the performances mostly wonderful –especially the quartet of Canadians—it’s not much of a happy ending. But I guess that’s normal for 21st century productions of this opera.

There are a couple of oddities in this reading. We have a scene where we watch the young women drinking to excess, a moment that felt especially odd today with the news about R Kelly. Drunks (the women have consumed seven bottles of wine) and under-age persons (their clothing suggests school-age… maybe it’s just a metaphor?) cannot give consent. Happily I must admit that those two women –Kirsten MacKinnon & D’Angelo especially –are very good at appearing inebriated onstage. In the next scene they are suddenly sober, perhaps because the scene would be very troubling if they were still drunk. But that’s a tiny quibble.

And there’s something in the 2019 director’s note that I don’t understand at all, where Egoyan claims that the women have a parallel wager. Maybe he’s as troubled by the text as I am? My big problem is how this 18th century story parallels a 21st century double standard I’ve seen in some men, who think it’s okay for them to have affairs and adventures while holding their GF or wife to a different standard, to point fingers at any straying they do, while feeling completely empowered to have all sorts of affairs on the side. What I think I see in Da Ponte’s libretto is a critique of women without any comparable critique of the men, perhaps symptomatic of a culture (in the 18th century) holding women to a different standard than the men, and being bold & revolutionary in suggesting that women might be as capable of infidelity as men. The big gesture on the male side is to admit that they were playing a game, that they were messing with the women. Oh how kind of them to admit that they were screwing around. But where’s the admission that everyone is really the same? I think that would be a much more important objective than all the images of bleeding hearts and butterflies.

As a man it bugs me that we got off easy yet again.

Stacie Dunlop is a rare artist, a soprano who commissions original new music, some of the most original projects I’ve ever seen.

You can read her bio.

Three years ago I saw a workshop of The Harvester

More recently came Balancing on the Edge, a mix of new music & aerials.

I was especially impressed at the time with the way Stacie explained her work to a young child in the audience. As I eavesdropped I found that I was becoming inspired.

And now Stacie and her team  are re-imagining Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child with an aerial element. Here’s the way it’s described on her website:

A three stage creation project. For the first stage a new arrangement has been created of Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child (originally composed for soprano and chamber orchestra) by composer/arranger Scott Good for singer (soprano Stacie Dunlop), pre-recorded instrumentals, and will be reimagined including theatrical elements and aerial choreography in collaboration with 2 aerialists (Angola Murdoch and Holly Treddenick). A grant has been received from the Canada Council to facilitate the creation of the new arrangement, along with a development period from October 2018 through March 2019.

The project is still in its first of three stages. Next week I’ll be seeing a workshop presentation that I’ll write about  afterwards.

But first? I must ask Stacie a few questions.

BB: Are you more like your father or your mother?

This is a difficult question…my childhood was unstable: I was taken away from my father at age 6, raised by my mother who was more of a child than a parent and eventually found my way back into my father’s life around age 21. I love my father: he is a kind, generous, loving, stable and supportive human being. I like to think I am like him, but I know I am also like my mother. Both of my parents are self-focused, and I know I am similar. Growing up, I was closest to my grandmother. We had a special bond…we were best friends and I think she understood me better than anyone.

Stacie Dunlop

BB: What is the best or worst thing about what you do?

The best thing about what I do is I bring to life my dreams…but the worst thing is that I am also driven to bring my dreams to life and this can be quite stressful, at times weighing on my soul heavier than even I realize, but then the dreams begin to come to life and that weight lifts and it can be truly joyous.

BB: Who do you like to listen to or watch?

Hmmm…funny question: I rarely listen to quality music unless I am researching something…and then I tend to obsessively play the same tunes over and over. When I run outside I like the drone of Indie Chill on Slacker, but when I run inside on the treadmill I like to watch bad movies, usually action or sci-fi, on AMC. This is kind of like white noise for me, but at home, when I am working, I do it in silence…I have never been able to work or read with music playing. I adore movies, especially horror and sci-fi genres, and am currently fascinated with any and all films Scandinavian or Korean.

BB: What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

People who know me will laugh at this question…I have quite a few skills up my sleeve, and like to think that I can pretty much do anything from installing car batteries and bathroom plumbing, to cooking gourmet meals and sewing drapes or knitting complex patterns. I guess I wish I played the piano with more skill, as I still struggle with the basics and can’t seem to keep up my practice. The same holds true with languages.

BB: When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?

I love camping…the outdoors…smelling like a campfire, cooking over an open wood flame and sleeping in the fresh air…heaven!

*******

More questions for Stacie Dunlop about the Lonely Child Project.

BB: Stacie, tell us about your background and how that leads to Lonely Child Project.

In 2016, I was paired with aerialists Angola Murdoch and Holly Treddenick for a show called Balancing on the Edge, an evening of new music and new contemporary circus. We created a work called Ascension, where we took John Cage’s Aria and Fontana Mix and reimagined it theatrically with aerial elements. I mainly worked on the floor, but also worked with Angola and Holly on the ladder apparatus. It was an amazing experience and a truly unique collaboration beyond what I could have ever imagined.

Ascension (Holly Treddenik, Angola Murdoch, Stacie Dunlop, music: Aria & Fontana Mix (1958/59), John Cage) from Balancing on the Edge, November 2016.

When we had drinks after the final show, we were all chomping at the bit to work together again, and that night I presented them with my idea for Lonely Child.

BB: why did you choose this piece?

I can’t remember what year it was that my mentor and dear friend, David Jaeger, took me to the CBC music library and plopped down the score of Lonely Child in front of me to peruse. He said he thought it would be a very good piece for me. Ever since that day, I’ve had it in the back of my mind as a work I needed to know, and also perform, but it was not until I spoke to Scott Good in late 2016 or early 2017 about reimagining this work for a smaller ensemble to be staged theatrically, that I knew in what form this was going to come to life. I just knew that it had to be brought to life by me in some way.

BB: Please talk about how you got the idea to explore Vivier’s Lonely Child in this way.

I am kind of obsessed in reimagining existing works in a new way: In 2009 I was introduced to the Debussy song cycle Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire and knew I wanted to perform them, but they were problematic as the song cycle was quite long, so I had the idea to create a theatrically staged show with these songs as the base and I commissioned 4 more new works by three Canadian composers, Scott Godin, Tawnie Olson and Clark Ross and included other works by Jonathan Harvey, Elliott Carter and Sheila Silver, all of which were either inspired by or used texts of Baudelaire. I called the show Rêve doux-amer: it was about a life lived and loves loved. I am also passionate about the idea of taking an existing large scale work and creating a smaller chamber version of it. I had this vision with my opera project, which pairs a new opera (The Harvester by Aaron Gervais and Paul Van Dyck) with a new chamber arrangement of Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung. I commissioned Canadian composer Aaron Gervais to create both the new opera and the new reduced (10 player) version of Erwartung.

BB: Tell us about the way you’ll be presenting Lonely Child.

This work, originally composed for soprano and chamber orchestra, will be brought to life in a new way that will include the 2 aerialists working on 2 different apparatus (created specifically for this project), the singer, who will also be involved in some way with staging and movement, and it will involve recorded sound. The original score, set for chamber orchestra, will be pared down to string quartet (v1, v2, vla, cello), double bass, percussion and 2 accordions. This first stage process of Lonely Child is being brought to life using a midi-version of the score: that is, the electronic sounds of the live instruments will make up the recording and are set in a way that the tempos will work for the singer, including timed calculated breaths, and will be performed conductor-less. The total length at the moment is around 17 minutes. This is the first stage for the project. The second stage will include working with the 8 live instrumentalists.

BB: Talk about the team of artists working in the Lonely Child project.

There is so much that I can say about this creative team…these people all inspire me: Angola Murdoch and Holly Treddenick are aerialists but really that is just a small part of who they are and what they do. They are contemporary circus performers and the choreographers of this work. Holly has a background in contemporary dance and Angola is currently training as a therapeutic clown. They each run their own companies (LookUp Theatre (Angola) and Femmes du Feu (Holly)) and they are mothers, friends, passionate creators of art and two of the most incredible humans I have ever worked with in this lifetime so far.

Scott Good is an amazing composer, instrumentalist, conductor, and friend. He knows Vivier’s work well and has previously arranged Pulau Dewata for Esprit Orchestra. Sara Porter has been an incredible support as our outside eye for this project as well as for our previous project Ascension. Her experience as a dancer and performing artist has been a huge asset as she gives us important feedback throughout our development of the work. I need to note here that there is no director or outside artistic vision. The work has come together organically through discussion, discovery and experimentation. The evolution of this work has not begun with a pre-conceived idea of what it should be, rather it evolves daily from our research, play and feedback within the group.

BB: do you expect to be working with aerial artists again in the future?

Yes, without a doubt. This project will continue to grow and I certainly would love to work with contemporary circus performers again…definitely with Holly and Angola, but also with other artists if the opportunity should present itself.

*****

I’m looking  forward to seeing The Lonely Child Project in its current version, as it evolves and grows.  Afterwards I’ll share what I’ve seen & heard.

Ivor Novello

When I heard that Toronto Operetta Theatre will be staging Perchance to Dream, an Ivor Novello operetta, I was reminded of Robert Altman’s film Gosford Park.  I dug up the film again last night, delighting in its subtle intimations and implications.

Do you remember this film?  It’s not quite Altman’s last film. That would be Prairie Home Companion, from 2006, the same year he passed away.  I’d be hard pressed to identify my favourite Altman film: because I like so many of them.  Everyone knows MASH.  Have you seen McCabe & Mrs Miller, with its remarkable use of Leonard Cohen’s music? a hauntingly original film.  Nashville is pretty amazing too. And then there’s the bizarre world of Popeye. There’s his stunningly original segment in the anthology Aria¸ employing Rameau, bringing madness & opera into vibrant contact.  And there are three amazing films from the 1990s, namely Vincent & Theo, The Player and Ready to Wear.  There are many more I could mention.  Right now, though I have to think Gosford Park is my favourite, because of what I saw last night.

I was once again hypnotized, totally sucked into the film within a few minutes and hooked for the night.  It’s the 1930s, when we get to see an upper class English household through the eyes of their servants.    Among the house-guests are some tourists who work in film. There’s an actor researching what it is to be a servant, an impersonation that infuriates one of the real servants (played by Richard E Grant, who we saw on the Oscars a couple of days ago), who spills a coffee deliberately onto a very delicate place of his anatomy.  There’s Weismann, fictitious producer of the Charlie Chan mystery series, a charming little Jewish-American.  But in the midst of the fiction there’s Ivor Novello, a historical figure.  We meet the singer, song-writer and famous personality as portrayed by Jeremy Northam.

At dinner we hear a bit about the plan to film a murder mystery.  After dinner, Novello sings songs at the piano, entertaining the guests as well as the servants furtively listening.

His songs make for a gently romantic soundtrack, a dreamy style with more than a bit of crooning from Northam even as we discover more about the family & the master of the house, envied or hated by almost everyone present.  And then in the midst of one of the songs we see his murder enacted, and the tone of the film shifts only slightly.  At one point Weisman jokingly remarks about how much freedom servants have, that the butler really could do it, at least in a film.  But these police don’t take the servants seriously as possible suspects, which is a good thing.  Because if we want the perpetrators to get away with it, we can’t have competent police investigating the murder, now can we?  Sometimes incompetence is useful.

When I looked for a score to an Ivor Novello operetta in the music library I came up empty.  Although at one time Novello was a big star, composer of some of the most popular tunes, he’s beneath the radar at the Edward Johnson Building (at least for a complete score) although I think they must have a song or two in an anthology somewhere.

All the more reason for me to want to go see & hear Perchance to Dream this Sunday. He is arguably an important figure, now obscure after great fame in the first half of the 20th century.

Here’s Novello’s most famous song, written at the beginning of WW I, namely “Keep the home fires burning”.

There was a thread on social media not so long ago about music that gives you the shivers. It seemed like a fun topic, when I was walking along in nasty cold weather, to be able to shiver from a remembered tune heard in my head rather than due to the extremes of climate.

If you have to shiver anyway, why not let it be a positive and even an ecstatic experience?

My current champ is Percy Grainger’s paraphrase of a Richard Strauss melody from Der Rosenkavalier. The Australian piano virtuoso already had a place in my heart with a piece I cited a few years ago that figures in the Merchant – Ivory film Howard’s End, namely the “Bridal Lullaby”. That one was already a guaranteed ticket to spinal chills, but this new one is even chillier.

In fairness the music Grainger is sampling from the Strauss opera is already pretty thrilling, likely to induce all kinds of electricity running up and down your vertebral column. When I recall parts of Rosenkavalier there are several that instantly induce paroxysms. Grainger has the good sense to boil it down to only a very small amount from Strauss. Wonderful as Strauss’s tunes are, the adventure playing a piano vocal score, imagining the complete work in your head is still virtual, because so much is missing. A paraphrase aims to somehow stand alone without the voices & the orchestra. It’s not that we’d ever trade an opera for a paraphrase, so much as the simple fact that if you’re all alone with your piano, it can be an amazing invocation of the larger work.

I made the serendipitous discovery when my friend Jim Fretz shared this on Facebook, namely the “Ramble on the love-duet from Der Rosenkavalier” by Percy Grainger. Here’s the tantalizing clip.

So of course I had to see if I could chase it down in the library. Thrill of thrills, there it was at the Edward Johnson Building library at the University of Toronto’s  Faculty of Music, and once again it’s from the “Schott Virtuoso Transcription Series”, that I’ve already lauded for the three Glenn Gould transcriptions and the stunningly beautiful editions they’ve printed.

A beautiful score from Grainger, Strauss & Schott

Maybe it’s my fading eyesight talking, but if the notes are easier to read, surely that’s a good thing, no?

Grainger’s pianism varies. In some of his pieces (for instance anything invoking a cakewalk style such as “In Dahomey”, subtitled “Cakewalk Smasher”) he demands an extroverted and aggressive approach. What is being smashed if not the piano? The instructions in his score include words such as “clatteringly” or “chippy”, or (for one of his left hand melodies) “clumsy and wildly”.  You can see where Grainger’s instructions specify “LH hammered”.

Full disclosure, before we set aside the loud & boisterous Grainger (or even the perky Percy of “Handel in the Strand”): that “In Dahomey” is much more difficult to play, as you can probably tell listening to Marc-André Hamelin, than his softer pieces.

So yes, there’s another more lyrical side to Grainger, the gentle pianism you hear in this Ramble or in other works such as the aforementioned “Bridal Lullaby”.  Another ramble that he titled “Blithe Bells” based on Bach’s “Sheep may safely graze” resembles this one, in reproducing the famous tune more or less as we know it, but adding decorations.

There’s a festive flair to the embellishments, the melody intact but seemingly dressed up for the occasion.

I can’t help noticing that there’s another dimension to virtuosity that Grainger demonstrates with these pieces, that I was struggling to understand when Stewart Goodyear premiered his new piano concerto a few weeks ago. A species of popularity or some similar concept lurks underneath this conversation, at least as an implication. At the time I was aware that one of the subtexts is the perplexing question: how does a composer gets other artists to perform their work? What if you’ve written something so difficult that other pianists can’t play it? I was very much in awe of what Goodyear had written, wondering just how playable it might be. How indeed does an opera composer get commissions? how does a composer of virtuoso music get other virtuosi interested? I can’t help including this in the conversation. Does one compose simply to make music? Or to re-phrase the old aphorism (about that falling tree-branch in the forest):

If a composer writes a song and no one sings it: is there music?

If singers find music attractive they may perhaps then sing arias or songs by that composer, thereby promoting one another. If a pianist likes what they hear, likes what they see on the page, ideally they will want to take that music out to the world, sharing their discovery. Popularity isn’t just what the audience likes, indeed that’s totally filtered by what the artist is willing to perform. Maybe we should be asking pianists what they like to play, and whether that’s a factor in their choice of repertoire. How much of what we hear performed is conditioned by what the artist likes to play, as opposed to what the audience wants to hear?  The two are surely linked, but I’m not sure that we’ve spent enough time studying the former, as a factor in what we get in response to the latter.

Grainger’s rambles are not easy but they’re also not terribly difficult.  One doesn’t have to be a virtuoso to play them: because I am no virtuoso, and I can more or less handle these slower works. I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing, only that I feel lucky that I’m not excluded, that I am able to play them and enjoy them. That too is part of the “popularity” equation.

I’ve just seen Perchance to Dream in its Canadian Premiere with Toronto Operetta Theatre.  Ivor Novello’s musical romance was a great success upon its first appearance in London in 1945, although tastes have changed.

I was reminded of Salieri in Amadeus, a once-famous composer who has become obscure, if not forgotten.  I am once again moved to thank TOT Artistic Director Guillermo Silva-Marin for taking a risk in presenting this piece.  Happily the theatre was packed with an eager audience, sharing my curiosity and delighting in the melodious score.

Ivor Novello

Charming as the TOT production was, I can see how Novello has fallen from sight, if this show is any indication.  The tunes are all lovely, but it’s very much like a serenade, the songs and the choruses lilting and delightful.  It might be the prettiest score I’ve ever heard.  As theatre, though, it’s very gentle with few jolts or surprises.

Perhaps I’m born in the wrong era to appreciate it..?

Speaking of which, this is a very romantic story across several generations.   Indeed it’s like something you might have seen from Hollywood, love and loss in different centuries.  But the music is very tuneful, lovely melodies & harmonies. While there’s pain in the story the music is very sweet indeed.

The young attractive cast gave us a semi-staged presentation, although in formal attire rather than costumes, directed by Silva-Marin.

Lynn Isnar was an audience favorite in the multiple roles of Lydia – Veronica – Iris (depending on the year for the scene), singing the show’s big hit song “We’ll Gather Lilacs”.  Isnar’s voice was especially brilliant on top, used to great effect.  Caitlin McCaughey (Melinda- Melanie –Melody) certainly lived up to her character’s name, leading the women in the show’s boldest number “The Glo-Glo.”  Rosalind McArthur’s rich speaking voice was thrilling to hear as Lady Charlotte.

Tenor Cian Horrobin was affecting as Sir Rodney.  Joshua Clemenger and Yervant Khatchadourian both have beautiful voices with several lovely moments, courtesy of Novello’s melodious writing.

The musical direction by Peter Tiefenbach at the piano was perfection, very well-balanced & transparent whether working with a soloist, an ensemble or the entire company.   Unfortunately there’s just the one performance, but I hope TOT will consider presenting another one of Novello’s works someday.  There seems to be a demand for his music, judging from the full house today.

Musique 3 Femmes with Tapestry Opera Announces

The Next Wave Workshop

Presentation of operas by winners of inaugural $25,000
Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes, new prize supporting creation of operas by
emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists in Canada

March 23, 2019 at Ernest Balmer Studio

In collaboration with stage directors Jessica Derventzis,
Amanda Smith, Anna Theodosakis, Aria Umezawa, Alaina Viau

(TORONTO) Musique 3 Femmes presents Canada’s first opera workshop to feature exclusively all-female creative teams in the development of five new operas by women in collaboration with directors Anna Theodosakis, Aria Umezawa, Jessica Derventzis, Alaina Viau, and Amanda Smith. The workshop sees a preview performance on March 19 at Canadian Opera Company’s Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre as part of the Noon Hour Concert Series, and culminates in a staged evening performance in the Ernest Balmer Studio on March 23 at 7:30pm. The performance features Musique 3 Femmes artists soprano Suzanne Rigden, mezzo-soprano Kristin Hoff, pianist Jennifer Szeto, and the participation of mentors JUNO-Award nominee composer James Rolfe and two-time Governor General award-winning playwright and librettist Colleen Murphy.

The project aims to put emerging female creative voices working in Canadian opera front and centre. “It was a thrill for us as an ensemble to uncover so much talent with this year’s prize,” states Musique 3 Femmes’s Jennifer Szeto. “We’re also excited that all teams have seen their works programmed by companies for further development and performances. It’s a testament to their promise as emerging creators in this field, and we’re pleased to create a new spotlight for their work.”

Works presented:

Musique 3 Femmes is a Montreal-based ensemble which supports future female leaders in opera. In 2018, they launched the Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes, a biennial $25,000 award which supports the creation and development of operas written by emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists in Canada. The 2018 prize enabled the creation of five new French and English language operas by teams from all across Canada, which received a first workshop and performance in collaboration with Opera McGill in September 2018, including a featured performance at “Opera’s Changing Worlds”, a national summit co-hosted by Opera.ca, Opéra de Montréal, and Opera McGill. This season, Musique 3 Femmes is an Ensemble-In-Residence at Mount Allison University and Queen’s University’s DAN School of Music. Musique 3 Femmes comprises mezzo-soprano Kristin Hoff, coloratura soprano Suzanne Rigden, and pianist Jennifer Szeto. M3F gratefully acknowledges Canada Council for the Arts and the SOCAN Foundation for their support.

A little over five years ago, I interviewed composer Cecilia Livingston in anticipation of her new opera commission The Masque of the Red Death, an occasion for some marvelous comments about composing & opera (see what I mean? ).

I’m not surprised to hear that she’s to be honoured by the Glyndebourne Festival, the sole non-British candidate. […but Cecilia set me straight, as she holds dual citizenship… okay!]

“Balancing the Score: Supporting Female Composers” is a new development program exclusively for female composers, as their press release tells us:

“The program’s four inaugural composers, who take up their positions in January 2019, are Anna Appleby (England), Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade (Scotland), Cecilia Livingston (Canada), and Ailie Robertson (Scotland). Participants will spend two years immersed in life at Glyndebourne, attending rehearsals and meeting professional opera makers and performers. Glyndebourne is also collaborating with its resident orchestras, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Southbank Centre, to provide opportunities for Balancing the Score participants.“

It’s a happy coincidence that Friday March 8th is International Women’s Day, and Saturday March 23rd is “The Next Wave Workshop” from Musique 3 Femmes, showcasing the work of women in the opera world –directors, librettists and composers—including Cecilia Livingston.

You can read more about the March 23rd event here, but first? the opportunity to ask Cecilia about her experience so far.

BB: Cecilia, congratulations!  How did you find out? What were you doing when you got the news?

It was such a Hollywood moment: I was in London, standing in the great courtyard of Somerset House – which is just south of the Strand, overlooking the Thames – on a deliciously warm, sunny day, waiting for a friend and fighting a bad Wi-Fi signal to check in for a flight on my phone. I was so amazed at the news that I let out this strange loud yelp, loud enough to draw the attention of the security guards! Security down there is pretty tight (this is London) so I had to explain to them that, actually, I just had some wonderful news.

Composer Cecilia Livingston

BB: And so how did the program begin?

It started with an official ‘induction day’, bringing us together at Glyndebourne: an in-depth tour, planning sessions for some of the projects we’ll be working on, and lots and lots of meetings. And important orientation things, like getting swipe cards and finding the company canteen (the food is excellent – amazing meatballs!). We got to sit in on that evening’s rehearsals in the auditorium to get a sense of the space and its acoustics.

(These were rehearsals for Howard Moody’s ‘Agreed’, Glyndebourne’s most recent commission and one of their legendary mainstage community operas.)

BB: Have you met the other three participants yet?

Yes! I had met two of the three other composers at our interview days in the fall, so under, er, slightly awkward circumstances. Happily, this is a lovely group: we’ve been messaging and Skyping since we found out we were selected, so meeting in person again on the start day of the scheme was like meeting old friends. There’s a really nice feeling of mutual support and collaboration already, rather than competitiveness. I think that’s special, and means we can do great work together through the program.

BB: Opera isn’t your only compositional activity.  If you can wrap your head around this question, roughly what percent are you an opera composer, and what percent, other sorts of music? (for instance Wagner & Verdi were almost totally opera composers, even though RW did write other things before, and a few later such as the Siegfried Idyll that’s based on operatic themes; and Verdi, similarly was mostly an opera composer; Beethoven & Debussy wrote one opera each, but mostly other music; Stravinsky, Ravel, Poulenc, wrote a few, but lots of other music too. AND feel free to observe that an opera composer in 2019 is not like one from 1919 or 1819…. Let alone 1619)

That is a really good question, one I think about a lot actually. I’ve felt for a while that pretty much everything I do is headed in the direction of opera, even when it’s not opera per se. I was chatting about this with Elizabeth McDonald a couple of weeks ago: she’s been singing my ‘Penelope’ on tour for the last year or so, with her trio Women on the Verge, and they were here in London in February. And she said something like “well, ‘Penelope’s’ not really art song at all, is it? It’s really a scene.” And I think she’s right about that. Even when I’m writing pieces without voice, I’m still thinking primarily about how structure and pacing, and motivic play and harmonic tension and rhythmic drive all create affect, atmosphere, drama, narrative – just as I would for an interlude or a transition section in opera. And I’ve felt that way for a long time, which has made moving into the opera world feel very natural. Plus I’ve done a lot of writing for voice, and I think that shows. Opera seems to be in my DNA, at some fundamental level.

BB: Is there anything you’d observe that’s different about opera composers, to distinguish them from composers who write other sorts of music? Or is there perhaps a difference in the sort of operas written by someone who doesn’t compose much of anything else?

Well I think there are some differences in skill set, or different skills that are required: understanding how to write for an operatically trained voice, and how to orchestrate to support it and enhance it. How to set text. How to serve story. I’ve been lucky to hear quite a lot of contemporary opera in the last few years (particularly the last couple of months here in the UK) and experience and thoughtfulness in those areas really show. I’ve heard a lot of opera where the composer was, I think, hired because they write great chamber or orchestral music, and the resulting operas often have incredible instrumental music and very inventive timbral languages, but then there’s a voice sort of stuck on top (or in the middle), and it quickly deflates the operatic qualities of the work: character, story, the magic of the singing voice. Opera demands so much, a whole package of skills. It’s a bit daunting.

But maybe the fundamental difference is attitude, or maybe I mean purpose – the reason the composer wants to be composing in the first place, which I think in opera has to be to tell stories. And then everything serves that.

BB: is composition understood to be part of the Balancing the Score experience?

Yes! That’s one of the most exciting parts of the program. And what is great is that, like the whole residency, this is really flexible so that I can choose projects that will help me grow and let me work with the amazing people at Glyndebourne that I can learn the most from.

BB: At this point in time, do you have any projects underway that you can talk about, operatic or otherwise?

I’ve got two on the go right now.

The first is ‘Singing Only Softly’, which is a chamber song-opera I’m creating with Loose Tea Music Theatre and Musique 3 Femmes. The libretto is by Monica Pearce and is inspired by the redacted sections of Anne Frank’s diary. Loose Tea’s Alaina Viau came to me with the idea for a dramatic song cycle around this subject, something that questioned the lines between art song and opera, and encouraged audiences to imagine the more complex Anne that her myth, or legend, tends to flatten. The project won the Prix 3 Femmes, and then a commissioning grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and next we’ll workshop the complete score in Toronto in March. There will be performances of excerpts at the Canadian Opera Company’s Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on March 19 and at Tapestry on March 23, and then the piece will premiere in early May in Toronto. We did a brief performance of scenes-in-progress at the ‘Opera’s Changing Worlds’ conference in Montreal in September and the piece has grown and deepened so much since then: I can’t wait to hear the whole thing.

‘Terror & Erebus’ is my longer-term opera project, for Opera 5 and TorQ Percussion Quartet, which takes as a starting point the last days of the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic. This is a big one for me: first, the full-evening length, but also the challenge of creating opera with percussion as orchestra. I have been a TorQ fan since we were in school together: they have a very special understanding of the theatre of performance, and that’s something I want to highlight – they are a part of the opera, not off in the corner or stuck in a pit. And it’s the first opera project in which I’ve really been able to play with narrative: the libretto is by Duncan McFarlane, and he’s got three story timelines overlapping, which blur the chronology and help the opera move past what audiences might expect (some sort of ‘Pirates of the Northwest Passage? ‘Billy Budd On Ice’? Yikes!) into something that’s more like a dream or a ritual, that’s much more about the experience of Franklin and his crew and their suffering. It’s interesting to me that in the middle of this hugely absorbing, hugely challenging project, I’ve had so many amazing opportunities. Sometimes life gives with both hands. And we’ve been so lucky in the support around ‘Terror’: particularly the Canadian Music Centre’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award, which was such a vote of confidence in me at a moment when, to be frank, I needed that support and encouragement very much.

But clearly a comic opera is what I need to do next to balance this all out!

BB: You pointedly thanked Christos Hatzis in your interview saying
“ I’ve a huge respect for my teacher, Christos Hatzis. His enthusiasm and energy are astonishing – he lives a true musical life.” Can you describe what you would be doing if you were living a true musical life?

Composer & composition professor Christos Hatzis

As I’ve graduated and moved into my professional life, I see ever more clearly now how important my teachers at U of T were to who I’ve become. That’s particularly true of Christos: his enthusiasm, his curiosity, his sincerity, his complete commitment to his work – those inspire me every day. And the way he thinks about musical structure… I hear him in my head a lot! Once when I was in my Master’s someone came up to me after hearing a piece of mine in a concert and said “are you Christos’s student?” And when I said yes I was, this person replied “Aha! I thought so. Every note in its right place.” Which is also almost a Radiohead quote, so I was doubly delighted.

I think being a composer requires this absolute commitment, because it is such a brutal artistic path. For me, that commitment and the focus it demands is helped by finding a state where everything one is doing feeds into the work. It’s really, really difficult to find ways to nurture that kind of focus, but also, you know, eat and pay rent. In many ways it’s actually easier when you are in school, which can offer a sort of artificial bubble of time and concentration – or it should. It’s terrifically hard to protect that in professional life, and I think we’re only just starting, as a society, to recognize how exponentially more difficult this is for female composers, for example, and for composers who face significant financial or other personal challenges. Too often those things are hidden, and for solid reasons, but it creates terrible loneliness and terrible struggle. The romance of the starving artist in the garret is such nonsense – it’s only ‘part of being an artist’ because of the way certain artists are treated. What a handy narrative to justify not supporting artists while continuing to benefit from the ways they make our society livable. It’s like the myth of genius: a great way to ignore the dedication of craft and labour that goes into the ‘great works’, trivializing the very creations in question. Sorry, I’m being sarcastic because these things make me genuinely cross.

By some amazing coincidences of good luck, and feeling emboldened by the support of people around me, I’ve found myself in a place where I’m able to really focus on music – both the music itself and the professional life that makes creating it possible. So I’m lucky to say I think I might have found my way to my own musical life.

BB: When you wrote about Masque of the Red Death you wrote the following, which sounds astonishingly prescient as a description of a certain politician:

The Prospero of the story is a sort of hubristic peacock, strutting around his quarantine. The immediate question for us was why someone would behave this way. If a ruler has the presence of mind to institute a quarantine – and this was a brand-new civil technology in the 14th century – and in particular, a very modern inverse quarantine that attempts to preserve the leadership while leaving the population to fend for themselves, would he really be this callow? The only plausible answer, I think, is that Prospero is attempting to distract his courtiers from the realities of the plague. His bizarre performance in Poe’s story is exactly that: a performance, designed to keep everyone’s mind on the party and off what is happening outside the walls.

….[so to now ask the question:]
Do you have any thoughts about the operatic potential of any politicians or public figures, any stories that perhaps need to be told?

Ah, the question of the CNN opera! Politicians and public figures are human beings, and opera is – essentially – one of the ways we tell stories about the human experience. The concern for me, as a composer, is what weight the audience’s pre-knowledge hangs on the work, and how that is or is not useful to the experience I would hope my opera might facilitate. Let me put it another way: ‘Nixon in China’ is, quite possibly, my favourite opera ever. It encapsulates what a wonderful form opera is for satire and the satirical, and for good old comedy too: but more broadly, that opera excels at undermining the two-dimensional. ‘Nixon’ does all these things – plays with recent history using the satirical and the elegiac, the elusive and allusive – in very broad, and very subtle, very sophisticated ways that go far beyond Nixon as a historical figure. The character becomes a means to the opera’s ends. But that opera is a freak to me: how often do creators of such skill come together?

BB: If you could have written any pop song, which one would it have been?

Radiohead’s ‘Decks Dark’. Let’s not look at the play count in iTunes…

BB: I just watched Wes Anderson’s  Isle of Dogs again last night, one of my favorite films of the year, alongside Ralph Wrecks the Internet.  The boundaries between art for adults & children is getting blurry these days.  I want to ask first, are you more of a cat person or a dog person? And more seriously, given the phenomenal number of animals we see these days in media (social especially), do you see any animals or stories for children in your operatic future?

I just love animals, period. Dogs are good for composers because they make us get up and, you know, move. I think cats like composers because we sit very still for long periods of time.

I know one cat who, I’m convinced, thinks I AM a cat for this reason.

I think both children and animals are rich sources of stories for opera, despite the old saying that neither should be on stage or you risk mayhem. Opera for children is actually a subject on which I have very strong feelings. My condescension-radar kicks into high gear. I have very little patience with opera that is purely didactic (be it for whatever audience), and I loathe opera that patronizes kids.

‘Peter Grimes’ is, at one level, an opera ‘about’ bullying. And yet it is so, so much richer than that. Why should opera for children be any less complex or nuanced in its storytelling?

So I’ve got pretty exacting standards there: opera for children and with children should have the same artistic integrity as any other opera.

And I think this might indeed be in my future: one of the wonderful components of my residency at Glyndebourne is getting to work with their education department. They have a remarkable record of commissioning very strong work for young people: Howard Moody’s ‘Agreed’, which I just heard earlier in March, is exactly the best kind. Well crafted, inventive, lots of children involved in the production, and while there is a message or point within the story, the opera is so much more than that.

It’s funny you mention film: I’m really interested in composing for film. I just keep getting asked to do concert music and opera. But it seems like a very similar set of attitudes to the ways music tells story, illuminates character, creates atmosphere. Plus, the same need for collaboration and team work.

BB: What’s your favourite opera (meaning fun / enjoyment) and what’s your operatic ideal (meaning, the one you most admire)?  When you’re composing might either of these in some respect embody your objective(s)?

For fun and enjoyment? The first scenes of ‘Nixon’, every time. Mozart. I have a huge soft spot for ‘Madama Butterfly’, though I’d hesitate to call it ‘fun’! Operas I admire… ‘Nixon’, all of Britten but particularly ‘Death in Venice’, ‘Written on Skin’ for sure, ‘Invisible Cities’. Those would be my top four. ‘Nixon’ for its incredible shadings of emotion, its moral imagination. ‘Death in Venice’ for the sheer beauty of the music, the impeccable text-setting. ‘Written on Skin’ for the best vocal writing, the best orchestration around the voice, and such clear-eyed understanding of dramatic economy. ‘Invisible Cities’ for its inventiveness, its intimacy, its imagination.

BB: Operas have often centred on a female’s suffering and dying.  Please speak for a minute about opera in context with the feminist project of Balancing the Score.   How you feel about opera’s past and its future?

Opera has a very challenging canon, for sure. I’ve eye-rolled my way through many a death aria (love those high notes with one’s dying breath!) just as I’ve eye-rolled my way through yet another rom-com heroine waking up in full hair and makeup. Because opera gets under my skin so much, I’ve had some truly uncomfortable experiences. (The ‘whip her to death’ scene in ‘Nixon’ – I can hardly bear to listen to it, though I know why it’s there.) There are more sophisticated, historicised answers to why these tropes have arisen and are perpetuated but as a creator, I must move forward. Not despite these issues, but in recognition of them. In defiance of them.

What I love about Balancing the Score is that it identified a problem, and proposed a practical, flexible opportunity as a solution, and distributes that solution beyond one individual: it’s a shrewd approach to talent investment. There are so many schemes where one early-career composer gets one shot: that’s a set up for failure and disappointment all-round. Glyndebourne’s is a much longer-term support system, one that is keenly aware of the important of access to opera’s networks and what a huge challenge that can be for female creators.

BB: Opera is many things, but it’s an industry, artists & artisans & pedagogues, musicians & writers and composers, and many others besides.  Talk for a moment about the women in the business and why it’s important to get more women involved.

Kaija Saariaho put it pretty succinctly: half of humanity has something to say.

BB: Is opera dead, or dying? Can it be saved?

Oh, opera’s been dying since it got started. Mark Adamo addressed this nicely:

“I was lecturing at a music school in February, and during a Q&A with the opera students, one asked me, ‘Is opera thriving? Collapsing? Mutating?’ To which I answered, ‘Yes’.”

He’s right. Though I do see a fundamental problem when it comes to renewing the genre, to creating new work. The ways that the industry supports creator-development is totally incoherent, and examples of thoughtful talent investment like Glyndebourne’s residency are so rare.

If we support people and help them learn how to create compelling opera that audiences want to hear, then they’ll ask for it, and houses can stop insisting that to sell seats they can only program ‘La bohème’. But these are very long projects. And I think it’s important to recognize that there are people who want their art to be entertainment, who do not want to be moved, or shaken, or challenged in any way, ever. They are the most truculent audience members. But that can’t be all that there is, because that is only one audience group, and it means that one group never gets a chance to change. I love ‘Bohème’ – I just get nervous when we start restricting the range of experiences art can offer us, and blame the new work for why we are restrictive.

A lot of contemporary opera is terrible – sure. I just get cross when people complain about both ends at once, saying that opera is a bunch of old chestnuts with too many dead women, but also that new opera sucks. As I get older I’m getting bolder about asking them what, exactly, they are doing to support new creators as we learn our craft. Because it takes a lot of learning, and learning costs time and concentration, both of which cost money. So the funding for new creators, and our trial-and-error, has to be there. Lab-style, festival-style, small-theatre opera where we can learn our craft: then follow through and build those mainstage opportunities for us when you’ve seen the work is promising.

BB: In your interview you spoke admiringly of singers.  Some composers write difficult & virtuosic music, while others are more (musically) plain-spoken and direct in their style.  If you’ll forgive me for sounding simplistic, I wonder if you know your preference between these two poles?

Myself, I lean towards what I think you mean by ‘plain-spoken’ and ‘direct’. But there’s a time and a place for both polarities you’ve identified. As a listener, I’m annoyed when I can’t hear what is being sung and I can’t discern why that is the case – like, there’s no aesthetic or dramatic justification for that choice. And I’m concerned when I suspect that the composer is imposing unhealthy or unsustainable vocal practice on singers, particularly when those are early-career singers who may not feel they can speak out.

Singers are the best guide here: they know what they do best and what they want to experiment with. I remember a masterclass (actually, one for instrumentalists) and a young composer said “but I want it to sound laboured” and the clinician-composer just looked at the guy and said “they can act that. All you are doing here is asking them to hurt themselves.” I want singers to want to sing my music. If they don’t, they won’t, and it will sit in a drawer, and for me that defeats the whole purpose.

BB: The writer Slavoj Zizek in Opera’s Second Death spoke of the function of opera before the time of Freud, as psychotherapy (and opera’s death he would ascribe at least partly to therapists, now supplanting opera by performing the same function).  Would you rather write something that gets into someone’s head obsessively making them a bit crazy (I’m sure you can think of examples of composers who did that) or instead do you want to create something that is the cure?

I want to do both, because I think ‘both’ is what art can do. I think good opera creates these moments that haunt the imagination, that play out on the mind’s stage over and over again – an afterimage burned into the retina, etched on the eardrum. And I think those are the moments that also point to opera’s cathartic opportunities – and I use that word ‘cathartic’ deliberately. Which are deeply bound up in opera as a live performance medium… clearly, we are going to need do another interview!

BB: While you’re in Britain, Balancing the Score, do you miss anyone? Do you want to say hi to anyone here?

I miss everyone! It takes a village, this composing life. So let me say a huge thank you to all the people who have helped – you know who you are and I hope I have made clear how much I treasure your support and faith in me. You give me the courage to dream big!

*****

And speaking of “it takes a village” I refer you to  The Next Wave Workshop from Musique 3 Femmes.  For further information please look at their press release. to know more about the upcoming presentation on March 23rd at Ernest Balmer Studio.

Stephen Walsh’s recent book Debussy: A Painter in Sound from Faber & Faber, is a welcome addition to the literature concerning a man whose star continues to rise, a composer respected & loved more in the 21st century than ever before.

And yet has anyone yet really captured this artist in a single book? I say that as a former grad student who read everything about Debussy in English plus a whole lot more in French. While his compositional output is comparatively small, especially for someone held up as such an important influence, there’s a great deal about him to know.

There are his compositions (for piano, for voice, for orchestra, an opera, plus a few remarkable fragments), his critical writings (perhaps not the equal of Berlioz but still a substantial body of work), his correspondence, and a fascinating life story.

Musicologists rarely manage to get all of that into one book, indeed they usually must place their emphasis on one aspect. Arthur Wenk’s Debussy & the Poets is a wonderful multi-disciplinary study of the songs and their texts. Roy Howat’s Debussy in Proportion is a study of the scores testing a hypothesis concerning the composer’s use of mathematical principles in his music, literally exploring the aspects of music that his title would suggest. James Briscoe’s Debussy in Performance brings scores to life in order to explore them in the most practical sense. Robin Holloway studied one of his key influences in Debussy and Wagner. Robert Orledge wrote of Debussy and the Theatre.

And –more pertinent to what Walsh did—there are also several biographies.

Walsh sets off in a very original direction, proposing to write a biography framed within the language of visual art. I am now looking for the second time at his introduction, which reads very differently after one has finished reading the book.

In the introduction to his book on French music, Martin Cooper had provided a lucid explanation of the differences between the French and, for example the German views of art. After quoting a remark of the critic W. J. Turner that ‘it is the sublimity of the soul that makes the music of Beethoven and Bach so immeasurably greater than that of Wagner and Debussy’, he pointed out that ‘to seek in French music primarily for a revelation of the composer’s soul or for marks of the sublime was to look for something which the French consider a by-product… The French composer is consciously concerned with the two data which no one can question—his intelligence and his senses.’ And Cooper added, ‘The regarding of a piece of music as an artefact—a thing of planned shape, dimensions, colour and consistency—rather than as an expression of an emotion whose end is in itself, brings the French composer nearer than any other to the plastic artist.’
This strikes me as a perfect description of the attitude of Debussy to his work, and indeed of the work itself.  (Walsh)

That’s really a preamble to the key relationship that’s to be articulated.

In rejecting Wagner, Debussy was thinking a kind of music that prioritised what he saw as the virtues of French art, ‘its clarity of expression, its precision and compactness of form, the particular and specific qualities of French genius’…he not only discarded the heavy northern gloom of The Ring and Tristan, he threw out most of the grammatical infrastructure that had supported Wagner’s immense narrative frameworks. Suddenly there is a concentration, a focus on particular ideas and images that is, as Cooper implies, somewhat painterly. This is not a question off taking sides in the whole tormented issue of whether Debussy can or cannot be called an Impressionist. It has more to do with the way in which any painter handles the motif within the limits of the picture frame. In much of his music, Debussy seems to work like this with motifs and frames, rather than with the evolving, novelistic discourse, not only of Wagnerian opera, but of the whole symphonic tradition of nineteenth—century music.

He manages to stay true to this way of thinking and more. When, near the end of the introduction, Walsh describes his goal for the book, it reads like a critique of the other books that have gone before. And why not, he’s a music critic, and he likely had to read those books that he’s critiquing, when he says this:

What follows is a biography of sorts but it is a biography with the difference that is sets out to treat Debussy’s music as the crucial expression of his intellectual life, rather than, as one finds in many Lives of Composers, a slightly annoying series of incidents that hold up the story without adding much of narrative interest.

That is exactly how the book reads, an example of how a biography should be done.

And I celebrate what Walsh achieved. As far as telling the story of a life, it’s a wonderfully readable version that manages to locate the major compositions within believable contexts, so that they become the inevitable outcome of the incidents of the composer’s life.

While it’s not perfect I often found myself wishing as I was reading that I had written it.  I admire the book. The prose is skillful, fluid, accessible. It’s a good first book to read about Debussy, indeed if you’re only ever going to read one book about the composer this would be the one.

There are a few places where I pushed back against Walsh, unsatisfied with what he was saying.  I’m one of those petty people who thinks the whole impressionist – symbolist question matters. I’m not happy with the evidence I see for Walsh knowing what a symbolist is. It’s not enough to drop some names, you need to have an understanding of the process, how a symbolist writes or paints or composes and what they seek to signify. But perhaps that’s an indication of how insignificant that topic has been in the past that a book can be satisfactory without adequately addressing Debussy the symbolist, which to me should be one of the central concerns of the study. It’s still a revelation to dare to be multi-disciplinary in this way about a composer, although the invocation of multiple disciplines usually signals a crossover by someone from their area of competence into an area of lesser competence, sometimes with mixed results. Maybe in a generation or two we’ll get the multi-disciplinary study that gets it completely right.

I was very impressed with the way Walsh spoke of different songs, analyses that brought in poetry & Wagner deftly and with total agility, and without bogging down. Most of the book hangs together really nicely between the story of a life and the compositions that fill that life. I have to reconcile the book’s goal and my love of certain compositions that I wanted explored and unpacked in greater detail. But that’s not a flaw, especially when it’s precisely what the author set out to do. I’m like a passenger on the tour-bus, upset that we’re sticking to the schedule and not stopping longer at my favourite locale.

I wonder too if Walsh read Howat’s theories proposing that Debussy used specific proportions such as the Golden Mean in the construction of his scores; Debussy in Proportion is conspicuously absent from the bibliography, especially considering that Walsh would consider Debussy through visual art. Did the “painter in sound” (as Walsh calls him) use the golden mean to assemble notes on the page? I doubt I’m the only one asking the question, but perhaps there’s just not enough evidence for Walsh to explore the subject; or maybe it didn’t interest him.  Oh well.

This time as a library book I read it cover to cover. I’lI buy it because I need to explore it further. I recommend it to anyone curious about Claude Debussy.

And it’s a fun read.

The new ATMA Classics CD ELLES seems apt for a month when there seems to be a great deal of music, opera & theatre created by women, celebrating female creativity, and perhaps extra noticeable with last week’s International Women’s Day on March 8th. There was Stacey Dunlop’s Lonely Child Project, Sook-Yin Lee’s Unsafe at the Berkeley Street Theatre, School Girls at Buddies, Revisor choreographed by Crystal Pite.  And upcoming we get Next Wave Workshop from Musique 3 Femmes (and Tapestry), and the Toronto City Opera’s La traviata. And those are just the recent/current ones I’m aware of.

So I’ve been listening incessantly to ELLES.

It’s what I do when I get a new CD. First time through it’s a voyage through terra incognita and the sense of wonder at the newness I’m encountering. Gradually it resolves into a series of expectations. It’s rare that I want to listen again after the 2nd time through, but this one is different on a number of fronts.

Sometimes recordings are organized in such a way that the journey from beginning to end makes you want to do it again. I think that’s at least part of it.

The title is a signal of course, although I’m not sure who is to be understood in this plural pronoun. It could be the performers, violist Marina Thibeault & pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone, two women with roots in Québec. It could be the repertoire on the CD: all from female composers.

Or perhaps all of the above?

If I asked you to name some female composers you’d probably include at least a couple of these names in your list, as they’re among the best known. An additional filter is the instruments of course, as it’s all either music for viola & piano or for solo viola.

• Clara Schumann: Three romances Op 22
• Nadia Boulanger: Three pieces for cello & piano, arranged for viola & piano
• Fanny Hensel (aka Fanny Mendelssohn): Dämmrung senkte sich von oben
• Rebecca Clarke: Sonata for viola & piano
• Lillian Fuchs: Sonata Pastorale (unaccompanied viola)
• Anna Pidgorna: The Child Bringer of Light for viola solo

If this were programmed by a man I suspect it would be organized chronologically, whereas this is more purely musical, or dare I say it, poetic, pursuing an emotional logic.
Before I address that, I want to talk about my first experience of the CD, plunging in without really looking too closely at the liner notes. Sometimes when I go to a concert I’ve read up in advance to be fully prepared; sometimes I make no preparation and immerse myself in the pure sonic experience. With a recording I seek the luxury of both, getting to blindly listen and then after looking at the titles & notes, listening again. My first experience of Thibeault’s viola was very disorienting. It’s possible this is simply my ignorance, the disorientation of someone who knows nothing or very little.

But the first time through I was overwhelmed by the tone of this viola, at times thinking I was listening to a cello. Now indeed at least two of these pieces were originally cello pieces transcribed for viola. But that doesn’t explain a rich sound that I’ve never heard coming from a viola.  Before you enter into any consideration of interpretation you’re already in rarefied air, a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before

So I must mention that there’s a Sinfonia Toronto concert coming up Friday April 5th that I will miss because I am already over-committed (I said yes to something each of Thursday, Friday & Saturday!). Thibeault will play the Canadian Premiere of a viola concerto by Peteris Vasks. The beautiful tone I heard on this CD should sound especially rich in the intimate confines of the Glenn Gould Studio.  Oh well. If you should go please let me know what you thought.

[Back to the CD]

We begin in a curiously familiar place with the Schumann. Clara Schumann’s Op 22 romances sound a lot like Robert Schumann’s music.

Amazing! These are magnificent pieces working in many of the same ways you might recognize from Robert Schumann’s compositions. The influence they must have had upon one another is palpable, and perhaps the very quintessence of “the romantic”.

There are some interesting points of divergence that might be due to the female performers, or maybe come from the score itself. I think if it were Robert Schumann’s music played by men, that the piano part would be heavier & less subtle. But recalling the original way that Barbara Hannigan approached Berg in a TSO concert a few weeks ago, maybe this is the gender talking: and in a good way.

Boulanger is not someone I know, and after hearing her three pieces I’m planning to explore further. The last movement is especially thrilling with a bravura piano part that brings out the best in Scarfone.

Hensel gives us the itinerary for a tiny two minute trip back into the dreamiest depths of the romantic movement, a stunning melodic arc that I didn’t want to end. But it did. (another reason to let the CD play over…)

Rebecca Clarke? I didn’t know her work but I will have to explore further after hearing this glorious sonata. Impetuoso for the first movement brings us decisively into the 20th century. But we’re still tonal, modal & passionate. This is a true duet, Scarfone taking the stage at times, at other times more in support of Thibeault’s soaring line.

The second movement is wonderfully playful, a Vivace with all the playfulness of a scherzo. I’m more reminded of the middle movement of Saint-Saëns 2nd piano concerto, that goes back and forth between gossamer lightness and a slower melody (the closest analogy I could think of…not quite the same though). What’s really amazing about this is how I’m reminded of a question I posed a couple of weeks ago, namely how does a composer get people to play their works? The short answer is to write something fun, something you hear and say “wow I want to play that!” That’s what I felt when I heard the Saint-Saëns 2nd concerto middle movement, a stunning ear-worm if ever there was one. This movement too has staying power, amazing textures & sounds.  And Clarke’s last page does sound a lot like Saint-Saëns’ conclusion.

And then her third movement is a soulful Adagio beginning with a piano statement, answered by something mysterious and poignant in the viola, questioning and questing for something, growing and accelerating. From a deceptively simple beginning this piece really shows the gender thing most eloquently, ending without bombast or falseness.

And from there, we’re in alto solo territory for the next four cuts: the three movement Sonata Pastorale of Lillian Fuchs, and the fascinating closing piece from Ana Pidgorna.

There’s a great deal of variety in the three-movement Sonata Pastorale. At times it’s very thoughtful & sombre, but the last movement breaks free for an energetic Allegro. This kind of writing totally suits the viola, a melancholy probing under the surface that you wouldn’t expect from a violin.  Thibeault is fully in control of this piece, taking us for a wild ride to finish.

And to close the CD, the Pidgorna, which is unlike anything that came before, barely recognizable as the same instrument. Everything that’s been established to this point –the solidity of tone & tonality—is now up for grabs in this electrifying finale. I’m glad I listened to it the first time without recourse to the notes, as its playfulness is unmistakable. The rhetorical segmentation reminds me of a one-woman show, an attempt to do a soliloquy without words. It helps that Thibeault is so decisive, sometimes attacking powerfully, sometimes more gently.

Here’s a live performance of The Child, Bringer of Light.

… making me want to go back to the beginning of the CD, to hear the Schumann again.

A concert is not a litmus test but even so today’s free noon-hour concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre is an unmistakable sign of health in the community of women creating opera in this country, and apt in the home of the Canadian Opera Company. We saw prize winners of the Inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes: “a new $25,000 award in Canada supporting the creation of operas by emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists.”

And how wonderful that today we heard some of the great things that they’re creating, a preview of the Next Wave Workshop that’s to be presented Saturday night March 23rd by Musique 3 Femmes with the support of Tapestry Opera at Ernest Balmer Studio. The basic template is the same for today as for March 23rd: five teams of librettist, composer & director working on an operatic idea, sung by one or more of Suzanne Rigden, soprano, Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano, Lindsay Connolly, mezzo-soprano, and played by Jennifer Szeto at the piano. Where today’s examples were sung from music stands, Saturday night we’ll get staged excerpts. In addition to the music we also heard different perspectives of composer, librettist and director weighing in on an aspect of their project. Today’s sampler left me wanting to hear & see more.

Here’s how they describe the prize-winning projects, including their projected future productions.

L’HIVER ATTEND BEAUCOUP DE MOI
Composer: Laurence Jobidon (QC)
Librettist: Pascale St-Onge (QC)
Director: Aria Umezawa

Amidst the harsh and cold weather of northern Quebec, Léa tries to reach a safe-house in order to protect herself and her unborn child. She meets Madeleine, a tormented woman who promises to lead her to the end of a road where no one else goes. L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi is a chamber opera that pays tribute to feminine solidarity and resilience, as well as to the strength of the Quebecois territory. The work is led in Toronto by director and former San Francisco Opera Adler fellow Aria Umezawa and will see its full premiere in Montreal in March 2020.

BOOK OF FACES
Composer: Kendra Harder (SK)
Librettist: Michelle Telford (SK)
Director: Jessica Derventzis

“Nothing on Earth has prepared me for life like the Internet…” Book of Faces is a comic opera exploring the world of social media and two millennials for whom the struggle is just too real. The second collaboration between Saskatoon composer Kendra Harder and librettist Michelle Telford, Book of Faces sees a world premiere at Next Wave Workshop led by director and Artistic Director of Opera 5 Jessica Derventzis, and later performances as part of Highlands Opera Studio’s 2019 summer season.

SINGING ONLY SOFTLY
Composer: Cecilia Livingston (TO)
Librettist: Monica Pearce (PEI)
Director: Alaina Viau

Singing Only Softly is a song-cycle opera by Toronto composer Cecilia Livingston, featuring an original libretto by Monica Pearce inspired by redacted texts from Anne Frank’s famous diary. The work explores Anne’s complex adolescence, her growing maturity, and her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Edith. Singing Only Softly is led here by Loose Tea Music Theatre founder and Artistic Director, stage director Alaina Viau, and features guest artist soprano Gillian Grossman. Singing Only Softly sees a full production by Loose Tea Music Theatre in May 2019.

SUITES D’UNE VILLE MORTE
Composer: Margareta Jeric (QC)
Librettist: Naima Kristel Phillips (QC)
Director: Amanda Smith

A woman returns to a place where she fell in love. She finds a piano on a heap of rubble. An exploration of the anatomy of a piano, this work examines the interplay of loss and connection in a world where everything can change in an instant. Based on the play Ghost Town Suites by Naima Kristel Phillips, Suites d’une ville morte is the first collaboration by Phillips with Croatian-Canadian composer Margareta Jeric. The work is in development for Toronto’s FAWN Chamber Creative, and is led here by FAWN founder and stage director Amanda Smith.

THE CHAIR
Composer: Maria Atallah (ON)
Librettist: Alice Abracen (QC)
Director: Anna Theodosakis

“You didn’t even know her name. You don’t even know my name.” With an original libretto by Alice Abracen on a short story by composer Maria Atallah, The Chair explores grief, loss, and friendship through the eyes of a teenager. Melanie loses her best friend in a tragic accident and returns to school to face throng of well-wishers and a mysterious new classmate. For the Next Wave Workshop, the piece is led by COC Ensemble dramatic coach and founder of Toronto’s Muse 9 Productions, stage director Anna Theodosakis.

The sequence for today’s presentation was different.

We began with a little bit of (1) Singing Only Softly, from the team of Livingston, Pearce & Viau, based on redacted texts that didn’t appear in Anne Frank’s diary. It’s described as a “song cycle opera”, a concept I can’t pretend to unpack on the basis of what we heard so far. It’s an interesting challenge to adapt something that is so well-known (the character at least) yet brand new (the text). Livingston’s vocal writing & Pearce’s libretto also with Viau’s direction successfully conveyed the right impression of a girl. I’m not sure if I’d call it an illusion or simply that they did not transgress the bounds of what I expected from such a well-known character.

Jeric, Phillips & Smith took us 180 degrees in the other direction musically even if we were in some respects in similar territory, with another story involving war, (2) Suites d’une ville morte. But where Livingston’s music was gently tonal, Jeric gave us a wildly playful adventure. We’re to imagine that a woman returns to a war-torn city finding a piano on top of a heap of rubble (broken? Perhaps the last vestige and the last remnant of life & culture?). While this might be wonderful staged, what we saw in the concert performance was an invitation to our poetic imaginations. Szeto was playing on and in a prepared piano, at times strumming and making this instrument –that we could imagine as a virtual character in this opera– sing, while the singers tapped their chests and produced all manner of sounds, before they did finally begin to sing too. I found it wonderfully problematic that one could ask who is the instrument and who is the singer. The concept is pregnant with possibilities.

(3) The Chair from Attalah, Abracen & Theodosakis showed us something different again, and had me admiring the jaw-dropping contrasts, in the way they curated this concert. We went from…
1-something straight-forward in its innocent portrayal of childhood to…
2-something wilder & more dissonant, and now …
3-in this the third item the first glimpse of irony & layers between the surface and the interior, all in a brief presentation. So much of our lives is a performance, and here it was wonderful to see the distance between what was being said and what was being felt, shown with such clarity and edge by this team.

For the next one, from Jobidon, St-Onge & Umezawa, we went in a new direction that was in some respects very conventionally operatic –a woman’s suffering—but shown in a whole new way. (4) L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi shows us emotion and pain, in a very beautiful and tuneful package, the piano writing also very powerful. While I understand that the story concerns “solidarity & resilience” (as stated above), I don’t think we were hearing that in the passage heard today. This was for me the most conventionally operatic sounding of the first four excerpts, and given the politics of the occasion I hope that’s okay to say..(?).

The team from furthest away were present to talk a bit about their work. Harder & Telford are from Saskatchewan, and worked with Derventis on a comic opera about social media. Facebook begat (5) Book of Faces. As composer Kendra Harder explained she envisaged oratorio when she composed; the result is somewhat parodic, reminding me of the irony we get in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera or perhaps what we hear in Gilbert & Sullivan, in the collision between the stiffness of a style and the wackiness of Telford’s text. All that was missing was the voice-over “and now for something completely different”. Our finale –an aria titled “Take it to Tumblr”—was the most recognizably operatic display of the day, pushing soprano Suzanne Rigden to the top of her range & her most agile coloratura. It was deliciously silly.

If you want to hear more of any & all of these, you need to get a ticket to Saturday’s “Musique 3 Femmes: The Next Wave”.

Here’s the link for more info & tickets.

Tonight was the first of four performances of the St Matthew Passion from Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, with members of the Toronto Children’s Chorus, all led by Masaaki Suzuki. By coincidence it was JS Bach’s 334th birthday. While there are several compositions that are so well known that anyone can hum the tune (“Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”? or “Sheep May Safely Graze”?) JS Bach’s output is so enormous that there are many compositions that aren’t well known.

And then there are the great works that are simply too difficult to be done often. First & foremost in that category would be the St Matthew Passion. The 2019 version led by Suzuki is the fourth time Tafelmusik have undertaken the work in their 40 year history.
Forgive me that my preamble is endless musing on dates & time. It’s the beginning of spring, something I mused on a few days ago. Spring or the last portion of winter usually coincide with Lent, the season that ends on Good Friday & the Easter Celebration. The Passion stories from the Gospels are a climax to the Lenten season.

I can’t help thinking about the way the text changes in its context, because of course the reception in 2019 is hardly recognizable compared to 1727 when Bach’s St Matthew Passion was composed. While there is an air of authenticity in hearing the work in a church: but it’s a secular world now. We read in Charlotte Nediger’s fascinating program notes about the Lutheran tradition in Leipzig in Bach’s time; yet it may as well be Mars considering the world we inhabit. Rather than being a setting of a text that is universally celebrated (as it was in his time), Bach’s composition is in some respects a wonderful lesson in the most ideal aspects of Christianity, a quaint exposition of another culture, if you’re not a Christian. There are traces of anti-semitism in the story (which hardly makes this one unique, as some go much further in vilifying the Jews), but mostly we’re simply taken through the dramatic narrative of Jesus’s last hours.

For someone who doesn’t know Christianity it’s in some respects a crash course in some of the key moments. Unlike Handel’s approach to the story, which pauses regularly to let soloists have their impressive moments (creating more segmentation and rest points), Bach moves the story along in an entirely different way, creating a great deal of intensity. We are watching characters from the story enact key moments, hearing the Jerusalem crowds react –aka the chorus— and of course it comes straight out of the Gospel according to St Matthew (just as the St John Passion comes from that Gospel).  Sometimes the story is interrupted to hear commentaries from soloists or chorus. At times these resemble homilies, densely abstract meditations on the nature of some part of the story and its meaning.

Here’s one example from the latter part of the work.

Chorale
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden    O head, full of blood and wounds
voll Schmer und woller Hohn,      full of suffering and full of scorn
o Haupt, zu Spott gebunden           o head, bound in derision
mit deiner Dornenkron                   with a crown of thorns,
o Haupt, sonst schön gezieret         o head, once beautifully adorned
mit höchster Her und Zier               with highest honour and grae
jetzt aber hoch schimpfieret,           but now highly abused:
gegrüsset seist du mir!                      Let me hail thee!

Now of course as a believer one listens to this text in an entirely different way from an unbeliever, as these words are admonitions, framed within the injunctions of the New Testament. In Bach’s world (that lived by those rules), this text reads very differently than it does in our own time (when the rules are for many people nothing but quaint relics).

I heartily recommend the performances, especially to anyone with even the tiniest smidgen of religious sensibility. And if you’re an atheist it might be especially compelling to you, to help explain the mysteries of Christianity, what it’s all about and why Christians care about this story.

Suzuki brings a very original approach to this work and likely any baroque piece. His contrasts are razor sharp, the moments when the chorus erupts, totally volcanic in energy & precision, but especially in the commitment of every singer & player. The fact that the observers at any moment –the members of chorus or orchestra who were not singing at a given moment—were enraptured by what they were hearing added a layer.

Tenor James Gilchrist

I was especially entranced watching James Gilchrist, our Evangelist. The role of the Evangelist is enormous, and includes several distinct sorts of singing. At times Gilchrist is telling the story quickly in a very light declamatory recitative, soaring at times to the top of his range. I just pulled out my score, there’s at least one high B, perhaps it even goes higher? Now add in the fact that he’s not just singing but telling the story. Yet that’s the least of it. He’s involved in this story, the way a prophet would be involved in such a report, virtually preaching.  No that’s not the way some people sing it, but Gilchrist isn’t most people.  There are also arias, sometimes sung very sweetly, sometimes in a fiercely dramatic style. Gilchrist was perfectly in tune all night, clearly articulating his text, but most importantly offering genuine ministry in telling Jesus’s story in this musical form. And (as I mentioned) when he wasn’t singing he was absorbed in the music-making all around him.

The other soloists, while asked to sing less often (as soloists, when they were not also singing with the choir in their section), were every bit as committed. Terry Wey, countertenor, showed a wonderful tone, an incisive approach to some of the most urgently passionate texts. Stephan MacLeod as Jesus was a gently powerful presence. Tyler Duncan had several very dramatic moments, as Judas, Peter & Pilate. Hannah Morrison’s beautiful soprano was very welcome whenever she had an opportunity.

As I was leaving I joked with Ivars Taurins –the usual conductor of Tafelmusik Chamber Choir & their music director—that “gee! he really knows how to conduct” (meaning Suzuki of course).  After sharing a laugh, I added that Ivars should be proud. The choir sounded especially good, not just accurate but committed to the occasion. And the orchestra was every bit as good, including several delightful solos.

It’s a very full night’s work for everyone –Suzuki, Gilchrist, choir & orchestra—at about three hours of music.  The St Matthew Passion continues this weekend until Sunday at Jeanne Lamon Hall in Trinity – St. Paul’s Centre.

The question running through my head as I watched tonight’s opening of Opera Atelier’s Idomeneo at the Ed Mirvish Theatre was: “who is the star?”

In this their first performance in a new venue I could say “it’s the space”.  Although it has a slightly larger capacity than the Elgin, from where I sat the acoustics seem far better than at the Elgin, where things always seem to be soft & fuzzy. Tonight things sounded crystal clear in comparison, which is surprising considering the size, bigger than the Four Seasons Centre, at 2200 (or so says the oracle according to Google). But there was a crispness to the orchestral sound, a precision to the voices that we never heard in the Elgin. Everyone sounded better as a result.  And so I’d pronounce the debut of Opera Atelier in the new space as a definite triumph.

It was a curious experience all in all. The nice ladies sitting beside me brought in beer that they sipped after intermission. A seller came around with ice cream bars. Wow! (and of course I ate one!) Before you ask me if I think this is in some sense a violation? No! This is much more in the tradition of opera in the 18th century & before, when you might have wenches hawking oranges, when the lights were up. Arguably it would be entirely appropriate to let people have their mobile phones on (and I say this having heard plenty of buzzes from those nearby). I still dream of someday seeing a Handel opera done with the lights up and the free-and-easy audience deportment that would be an emulation of that time. We are weird, in our 21st century lights out try to keep a lid on it repressed approach to theatre. I wish people would be less inhibited about showing appreciation, as that too would not only be more authentic but a whole lot more fun.  But in other words, letting people have beer & ice cream is a step in the right direction.

There are things about this production that are historically informed and other aspects that are decidedly modern or at least new, brainchildren of the director Marshall Pynkoski. We get a curious mix of the two that might best be understood as the Opera Atelier brand. Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra + the interpretive brilliance of music director David Fallis give their operas legitimacy even when there are liberties taken, extra dance numbers that I can’t find in the score (although perhaps there’s a different version? I wonder); but at least they sound like Mozart. Nobody minds if there is an aura of historicity. And so while there were no strobe lights in Mozart’s time (an effect used several times in the opera), we accept it because the set, costuming and movement vocabulary mostly connote an earlier time. I say mostly because at times dancers of the Opera Atelier Ballet offered some spectacularly romantic moves, particularly in the last hour. But I’m not complaining.

And so, while you’re probably waiting for this review to declare that Measha Bruggergosman or Colin Ainsworth or perhaps someone else was the star, I’m not going to say that. The two biggest stars for me were 1) The Ed Mirvish Theatre, blowing me away with the acoustic, & the intriguing experience of beer & ice cream, and especially
2) Marshall Pynkoski, getting his singers to dance more than ever.

It’s funny, I had the funniest thought, reminded of Robert Lepage. You may recall that he faced a rebellion from his Brunnhilde a few years ago, when Debbie Voigt refused to climb onto the machine in her portrayal, although she did eventually relent. Directors sometimes push the envelope with their performers. Lepage has sometimes asked a great deal of his singers, as Julie Taymor did with the performers in Spiderman. Is anyone revolting against Pynkoski? Not that I can tell. But wow he demands more and more of his singers with every show. A few weeks ago I watched Mireille Asselin—one of the finest young singers in this country—dancing as part of a show at the ROM. Tonight every one of the principals was being asked to dance.

I have to wonder, too, as Measha Bruggergosman seemed to be limping. I wonder if she was injured in rehearsal? My heart went out to her, as it’s hard enough singing the role of Elettra without the additional choreographic challenges imposed by the director, or perhaps in collaboration with the choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg.

Colin Ainsworth was very sympathetic in the title role, showing us more power than ever: or is that just the acoustic of the theatre? I heard an interpolated high C in one of the arias, and it seemed he was bringing a more dramatic sound than usual most of the way, even if he did take something off the sound when he was engaging in fast coloratura. It’s a huge sing.

Wallis Giunta (Idamante) & Meghan Lindsay (Ilia) were a great pleasure to watch, a romantic couple who worked entirely within Pynkoski’s scheme even as they gave us their stunning Mozartian vocalism, perfect intonation, while honouring the physical demands. At one point Ainsworth throws Lindsay across the stage, a bit of stage fighting that was delightfully fluid, and as much a dance move as a real fight. I’ve missed Giunta’s presence on Toronto stages, and it’s clear she’s developed a great deal in her time overseas, perhaps the most cojones of anyone onstage tonight in a swaggering trouser role.

While we didn’t hear as much of Douglas Williams wonderful voice as I might have wished he was arguably the most important figure onstage, unless one includes the massive trident he wielded.  Whoever you want to call “the star”, Opera Atelier depends upon conductor David Fallis, whose baton even commands the gods of this story.  The orchestra, chorus & soloists sounded wonderful, sometimes soft & delicate, sometimes terrifying.

Douglas Williams as Neptune, wielding a bigger baton than David Fallis conducting in the pit: but we know who the orchestra will follow don’t we…! (photo Bruce Zinger)

Idomeneo continues until April 13th at the Ed Mirvish Theatre.

Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus has been promoted on social media as “Canada’s most famous unknown opera.” And Joel Ivany is quoted saying “I think this is Canada’s greatest opera ever written.”

After seeing what Against the Grain did with Vivier I’m a believer.

Composer Claude Vivier

I think I drove Joel Ivany & Topher Mokrzewski a bit nuts talking their ears off after the performance tonight, Kopernikus in the intimacy Theatre Passe Muraille. Joel is the stage director, Topher the music director, and they’re keys to Against the Grain Theatre’s continuing excellence. It’s almost a decade isn’t it, that this young group have been dazzling Toronto audiences. While there have been several moments to identify as highlights, here’s another one that might be the greatest yet, possibly their most ambitious project of all.

Any interpretation is a kind of solution to the challenges posed by a text. Any score is a kind of puzzle that can be solved in more than one way. When something becomes part of standard repertoire, when a composer becomes known, those pathways are less mysterious, indeed we may err in forgetting to properly interrogate the page when we may become accustomed to the way others have answered the implicit questions in a piece. But when something is new and/or unknown you are truly face to face with enigmas.

Vivier doesn’t make it easy. On the one hand his music emulates the adventures one might call “modernist”, sometimes tonal, sometimes dissonant or ambiguous.  But on the other hand sometimes he asks his performers to deconstruct that modernist surface, giving us self-references bordering on parody, approaches to vocalization by the singers that might seem to mock the whole process.  Is he kidding?

Claude Vivier

But having died in his mid-30s back in the 1980s, Vivier couldn’t be reached to answer the questions.  The mysteries of his scores will persist.  Indeed his short life with its violent ending is a fascinating additional subtext for his works, especially those such as this one with metaphysical overtones.

How serious is the tone of this work, I wondered, addressing the two creators: who were very polite with my questions. There’s a solemnity to the subject, the passage from the material world to the realm of spirit. I was reminded of Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, another opera raising spiritual questions (and another opera that has been presented by Against the Grain) that is serious all the way through without any humour. Perhaps it depends on the audience, Joel suggested, as to whether they laugh. I recall a comment from the theorist Tzvetan Todorov, who noticed that some works are received with great enthusiasm during one cultural epoch, when that culture is willing to make a special effort to meet the work on its own terms; and without the special effort (corresponding to the beliefs etc of that group) the work fails or leaves people mystified. It strikes me now in hindsight that what Ivany & co. achieved was to bring most if not all of us to a place of commitment, without any requirement that we truly buy into this world or share a cultural consensus.  Indeed I was persuaded without any idea of what it might mean. While much of it is deliberately nonsensical or unintelligible in an invented language yet we buy into it all the same.

AtG’s achievement tonight, building on a workshop of this work at the Banff Centre in 2017, is to make sense of something extremely challenging, a score that problematizes signification with a text that is full of complex sounds to go with the nonsense syllables (I wasn’t sure until I asked them about it, but they confirmed this), a musical inkblot connoting the blurriness of dreams & the surreal.

I wondered about the concluding image, which reminded me of an interpretative choice from Robert Lepage: but Joel showed me that it’s right in Vivier’s score. Powerful as the piece is, its final minute is especially compelling, and might remind you of something you’ve seen; but I won’t spoil it for you by spilling the beans, except to say that it’s very simple and totally remarkable.

The ensemble includes some wonderful talents, all working as a team. I was amazed by the precision of their response to Topher’s conducting. Bruno Roy created a fascinating characterization that seemed like a cross between Cabaret’s Master of Ceremonies and Dracula. Dion Mazerolle had some beautiful moments when his lovely baritone filled the space. There are many more I could name, both onstage and working as part of the creative team.

The main thing is to recognize that this score is full of stunning moments, indeed gorgeous from beginning to end especially in this reading in this tight little space.  The intimacy of the venue magnifies the effect. This gif from their website gives you some idea.

I hope they record it. I need to hear it again and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Kopernikus continues this weekend & next, closing on April 13th.

I’m a great admirer of Sky Gilbert, the playwright, performer, professor, and activist: and I didn’t nearly cover it all. You can read his Guelph university bio here …where they list him as an expert in Canadian theatre, Creative writing, Drag queens and kings, Gay, lesbian, and transgender politics, Noel Coward, Poetry, Queer theatre, Queer theory.

I discovered that Orpheus Productions will present three performances, in a workshop presentation, of Shakespeare’s Criminal: a new chamber opera with music by Dustin Peters and libretto by Sky Gilbert, starring Marion Newman, Dion Mazerolle and Nathaniel Bacon, April 26-28, 2019 at Factory Theatre.

I was thrilled to ask Sky some questions, especially about Shakespeare’s Criminal.

1. Are you more like your father or your mother?

My mother. I wrote a book called The Mommiad, about my mother and her influence on me. She was an amazing person; she ran for political office in Buffalo in the 60s, started her own business and raised two children. But more than that she nourished my creativity — I remember that as a teen I was torn between music and theatre as professions and she had an upright piano installed in our tiny flat in East York just so I could practice. It’s a long story, but let’s just say that her beauty and her wit were what inspired me; her dark sense of humour about the world is probably also mine today.

2. What is the best or worst thing about what you do?

Being alone. Both best and worst. I am oddly misanthropic — I don’t really like people sometimes, but I love being around them, and especially love being anonymous in crowds. I value being alone and need it to write — but that’s also lonely sometimes.

Sky Gilbert

3.Who do you like to listen to or watch?

I’m a narrative junkie, love stories. I see at least three movies at theatres a week, and a few on Netflix. I’ve just discovered Dorothy B. Hughes and Arnold Bennett, two great novelists. I’m particularly fond of late nineteenth and early twentieth century British novels and novels written by women (a real fan of Barbara Pym, my play A Few Brittle Leaves was inspired by her work — as well as of Barbara Comyn).

I love art films, but usually quirky ones with a sense of humour or a dark sort of compassion. I think remaining in the past — old novels and films with narratives — means I don’t feel threatened by modern art and can create my own reality/fantasies of what novels and poems and movies might be. The opposite is true when it comes to theatre. I recently saw Milos Rau’s Five Easy Pieces in New York City, a play that features children acting out scenes from the history of a child serial killer — it inspired me to develop a play called Kink Observed. In theatre I am all about challenge, viewing it and creating it.

4. What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I would say that my imagination fits in the category of something that I love about myself but is dangerous. I have trouble sometimes separating reality and fantasy (I know critics of my non-fiction essays will say — he certainly does!). This means that I can write a novel — I can’t stop imagining. In real life it can be frightening.

5. When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?

Play Emily’s Delicious computer games and watch CNN Trump news. I admit it.

More questions about Shakepeare’s Criminal, workshop performances at Factory Studio April 26, 2019 @ 8pm and April 28 @ 2 pm. And on April 27th the workshop also includes a fund-raiser (more info below…)

1. With over 30 plays, 5 novels, 9 films listed on your Wikipedia page you’re an extraordinarily prolific artist. But I didn’t see any opera librettos listed. Will Shakepeare’s Criminal be your first attempt at an opera libretto?

I have been trying to put together an opera for years. I wrote a couple of finished librettos in the past and started working with composers who dropped out somewhere in the process. I understand why now; working with Dustin I have learned that the composer/librettist process is collaborative.

Composer Dustin Peters

I have written this opera ‘song by song’ with Dustin, and his input has been invaluable; I have learned from it. I’ve been particularly passionate about opera since about 1998 and I’ve always been obsessed with music in general and classical music. I have written many musicals and starting in 1998 when I left Buddies my ‘hobby’ became listening to opera. I went from Donizetti to Massenet to Rossini and Bellini to Verdi and finally to R. Strauss — my interest is in Bel Canto and Romantic. Though how I am listening to Gretry and Wolf-Ferrari — so my tastes are becoming more rarified. I think for me it’s a combination of the two things I have been most passionate about — music and theatre, and also, as I’ve explained above, opera is pretty queer.

2. The press release for Shakespeare’s Criminal includes the following exciting idea:
The structure of Shakespeare’s Criminal is inspired by musicologist Ellen T. Harris’s notion that male composers were able to ground the emotional core of their operas through the wild, uncontrolled female voice (something which eventually led to the tragic romantic heroines of Verdi and Puccini).  Should we expect to see that kind of dynamic between male and female enacted in your opera?

The short answer is yes and no. The opera is about males and females interacting, but even though I am a male writing a female role, I’ve done my best to show a new twist and I’ve tried not to ‘objectify’ the female. True my female lead is something of a sorceress, but she is a desiring woman (as opposed to being a sex object) and also an intellectual and I think, wholly sympathetic.

The only thing that will be challenging for some audience members who are misogynist (and many people are, I think) is that they will have prejudices against a woman who is intellectual, sexual and has magic powers. The play is almost like peering into the brain of one of the ‘witches’ on the heath in Macbeth.

3. What’s the difference as you understand it, between a play text and an opera libretto?

Huge. My favourite thing is dialogue; love writing it, thinking it, imagining it. There is no dialogue in a good opera, in my view. There is only singing, showing off, spinning into emotion — I.e. Massenet’s WERTHER —.
Anyway, I have to think poetically rather than in dialogue, and this is something I have learned working with Dustin. I have written some songs as poems, and others I have written as prose. — but tried to make them as little like dialogue as possible. A couple of comic songs involved ‘dialogue’ but that is me indulging myself.

4. One of the promotional texts for Shakespeare’s Criminal says the following
“Shakespeare’s Criminal celebrates the eternal bond between gay men and the women who love them. As long as gay men have been looking for sex and romance, their best female friends have been supporting them. What’s that about? What is the special relationship between gay men and their BFFs?”
Please talk about that “eternal bond”. Do you feel that it goes far beyond any particular decade or century?

In Ellen Harris’s book the phrase is  ‘rake, whore, catamite’ and it is intended to refer to a straight young man, a sexual woman and a man who desires other men. She suggests that the triumvirate — this friendly gang of three is transhistorical, going back to the 17th century. In other words there is something archetypical, in western culture at least, about a ‘catamite’ inserting himself into a relationship with a man and a woman — as friend. I have switched that slightly in my opera, and there is a song entitled ‘rake, whore, voyeur, in which Shakespeare is the rake, the young man the whore, and the woman the voyeur. So I am fashioning a new variation on an old trope. But I would say that straight women and gay men have a special bond, which I suspect is transhistorical — even though ‘gay’ is a relatively new phenomenon — there have always been men and women who desire men, and that bond they share both oppresses them in a sexist, homophobic society, and liberates them to share their loves, fantasies and desires, in a creative friendship.

5. I always felt there was a natural affinity between gay men & opera divas, because they appreciated larger than life emotions & gestures. I associate the use of the word “diva” in popular culture with the operatic world, a conservative community that welcomed gay people both in the audience & onstage long before mainstream acceptance. When we speak of the phenomenon of the drag queen I feel a natural affinity with the larger than life features of the opera diva. Does anything in Shakespeare’s Criminal draw upon the drag world?

As Susan Sontag says in ‘On Camp’ Bellini has for a long time been accepted by gay men as a camp figure. It’s important to remember that this does not mean that Norma is a laughing-stock, in fact the most misunderstood aspect of camp is that it is as serious as it is funny. Drag queens adore the women they portray, because they have a little bit of women in them, and there is a lot of ‘their mothers’ in them, that they can’t rid themselves of, no matter how hard they try. At any rate, Wayne Koestenbaum has written extensively about the relationship between camp and opera in a book called The Queen’s Throat. Belllini was being quite serious when he wrote Norma. But the fact that she is a tragic sorceress in a kind of prehistoric culture is a little funny — partially only because we have the distance of years to look at that, and also aesthetic distance because we don’t write bel canto anymore in the same reverent way. Camp gives us the opportunity to enjoy melodrama again, as we can be both serious and funny about it at the same time. Dustin has provided Marion Newman with a ‘curse song’ that I think is camp. On the one hand it is all about a woman’s fury at a closeted gay man (ie a ‘straight’ man), on the other hand it is all about two gay men revelling in that fury. And frankly, I think that’s okay.

6. You have been around long enough to remember when homosexuality was illegal & covert, when it was a threat to at least some in the establishment, when many chose to be in the closet for fear of violence, reprisals or worse. Your gay theatre was an activist theatre, perhaps captured in that name “Buddies in Bad Times”, an organization you founded. The word “gay” is safer, less threatening and perhaps a reflection of our times. I read a wonderful comment on your blog, observing the
“mega-musicals that celebrate tolerance. Funny, but I personally have never been very fond of being tolerated.”
Writing an opera in 2019, does your work still seek out edginess, activism & revolution rather than to aim for being tolerated?

I have to take issue with the first part of your paragraph. All of this is not over, we are still suspected of converting people, people are still in the closet, there is still fear of violence, and not only in Brunei. The problem is that young gay men are in a trap; many have turned to drugs as a way out. They have been told the lie (and I am not accusing you of this, it’s out there) that there is no more homophobia. And yet they are still terrified to tell their parents, and eventually some of their acquaintances out in the world, that they are gay. How does one live with that terrifically discomfiting irregularity between truth and the general discourse —with having to pretend that everything is alright with gay men in our culture, but knowing it’s really not? At any rate, I do the antique thing of writing about gay men because gay men still exist and are still oppressed. Period. Up until recently, HIV positive gay men (and others who were HIV positive too) were jailed simply for being a possibly ever present ‘danger’ to society.

The criminal in my opera is an HIV positive young man who loves to spread the liquids around. We are not ‘over’ AIDS. Does any group ever get over a holocaust? I don’t think so. We will never forget that we were blamed and shamed for this tragic illness, and many died overwhelmed with that shame and blame. THAT will never go away.

7. Two of the works in the current Canadian Opera Company season (Hadrian & Eugene Onegin in the fall) came from homosexual composers, but that’s hardly surprising considering how many great gay composers there have been (in the last century: Britten, Barber, Bernstein, Cage, Copland, Adès, Hoiby, Poulenc, Menotti, and before, Schubert, Tchaikovsky perhaps Handel & Lully, and many more I didn’t mention). Will the music of Shakespeare’s Criminal sound anything like the music of a gay composer (listed or otherwise)?

The first one that comes to mind is Samuel Barber. I am fond of his opera Vanessa believe it or not, and the denseness of the quintette in that is not unlike his famous adagio. Here is an intensity of sound and a beauty, of course in the trio for our opera that reminds me of Barber. I think Dustin’s music lives in that area between Barber, and R Strauss and Wolf-Ferrari — he might not agree but that’s my take.

Baritone Dion Mazerolle

8. Please talk about the team presenting the workshop of Shakepeare’s Criminal.

It would be better to ask Dustin this. I am not incredibly familiar with Dion Mazerolle’s work — though I’ve heard him sing and he sings and performs beautifully. I’m eager to start working for him.

The part of ‘The Academic’ was written, to some degree for Marion, that is Dustin and I both had her in mind when we were writing the opera. Of course that means that we have all her technical facility to work with, and the chance to show off her beautiful voice had to be utilized to the fullest.

She also radiates integrity and strength, both qualities which are needed for the role.

Soprano Marion Newman

We decided to cast a musical comedy singer, Nathaniel Bacon — in the role of the Young Man, and I had worked with Nathaniel before. He was in a play I directed My Dinner With Casey Donovan, and a play of mine that was produced at 4th Line Theatre called St. Francis of Millbrook. I only became aware that Nathaniel was a singer when I heard him sing Hedwig so beautifully at LOT (Lower Ossington Theatre). We think the young handsome gay musical comedy singer will be a nice contrast to the more classically trained opera artists and will say something about one of the themes of the play ‘earthy vs arty’.

Nathaniel Bacon

9. What’s your favorite opera (the one you like most) & your ideal opera (the one whose structure / dramaturgy you would put on a pedestal as the best)? In writing Shakespeare’s Criminal would we see anything that resembles or imitates features of either your favorite or ideal opera?

Probably R. Strauss’s Arabella. I think what I love most about that opera is the wistfulness with which he flirts with waltz music. Recently I’ve been trying to appreciate German operetta without much success, and then I realized that it was R. Strauss that led me to this stuff, because the beautiful waltzes that he gives us glimpses of in Arabella and Rosenkavalier that so charmed me. Then I realized that Strauss’s music is nostalgic, and of course camp in this way, it is about wanting to hear beautiful melodies but only getting a taste of them. But Strauss’s flirting with these melodies from operetta is actually more beautiful and compelling and profound than these waltzes in the old operettas themselves. A reviewer of Massenet’s Griselidis once said of one of the melodies in that work that it was not the melody itself that was so beautiful but what how we missed it when it was gone. The last lyric in our opera is ‘gone’ and there is some of this wistful nostalgia, I think , in our opera for the beauty of melody, without always being melodic.

10. Is there a teacher or influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

I want to mention Robert Spergel in this context. When I played in a quartet workshop at the Royal Conservatory back in — oh this would be probably 1970? — our teacher was Robert Spergel. I was playing the cello, badly, in the quartet, and he was always very annoyed with me. He of course had been a child prodigy (his sister was Mildred Kenton) and he had written a quartet and two symphonies — he played the Kol Nidri on the cello with Ernest MacMillan and the Toronto Symphony when he was 10. Anyway when I worked with Robert Spergel I was scared of him, and I thought he was kind of mean, but now I realize — no, he just loved music more than anything else more than people, and more than anything he wanted to see music done RIGHT. I have to respect this in a teacher, however tyrannical! And now that I have seen photos of a young Robert Spergel, it’s especially charming to see that he was at one time a very beautiful, petulant looking young man! Always a surprise, to learn this about the old!

*****

All Tickets for regular performances $35:
Friday April 26th, 8:00pm
Sunday April 28th, 2:00pm
https://www.factorytheatre.ca/what-s-on/

On April 26, 1977 Studio 54 opened in New York City.
On April 27 2019, Orpheus Productions will have a wild fundraising party to celebrate the venerable sex-positive, party-positive New York City hangout from the disco era and honour our new Chamber Opera ‘Shakespeare’s Criminal’.

All April 27th Tickets $80
Includes the workshop presentation, pre-show talk with the creators, post-show cocktail party with disco deserts, and scandalous performances for your voyeuristic pleasure by Hélène Ducharme and Shane MacKinnon! Dress in your favourite 70s outfit and dance the night away Studio 54 Style!

Buy tickets NOW and take yourself back to Studio 54
Saturday April 27th, 8:00pm https://shakespearescriminal.brownpapertickets.com

This is a Canadian Actors’ Equity Association production under the Artists’ Collective Policy.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. Kerem Hasan is 27 after all, and we aren’t supposed to be ageist anymore in the 21st century. The conventional wisdom says that an experienced maestro is the ideal leader of an orchestra.

Conductor Kerem Hasan (photo: Tristan Fewings)

But tonight I saw the best Toronto Symphony concert I’ve seen in a long while, led by a very young conductor. I’m sorry I can’t suggest you go see him because it was the final one in the series. I understand that Hasan stepped in at the last minute, a replacement at the podium for an indisposition.

That seems even more impressive, don’t you think?

Perhaps the program helped. All three items represent compositions that were revolutionary works in their time.  Hasan brought an urgency to each one, a kind of excitement as if the music were brand new, no matter what century it was composed.

I wonder if Hasan has conducted them before?

• Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
• Szymanowski’s first violin concerto
• Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony

This was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen from the TSO. Young Maestro Hasan inspired the orchestra, drawing committed playing every moment, and intriguing readings, well-thought out and impressive.

It was a fast but tight reading of the Debussy which is how I like it. The ensemble responded to the conductor’s every gesture after allowing the flute solo to unfold.  Every player paid close attention to his every gesture.

The concerto was well played by soloist Christian Tetzlaff. But Hasan kept the orchestra out of the way, never letting the ensemble get too loud when the violin was playing. There was one huge climactic explosion of sound in the leadup to Tetzlaff’s cadenza near the end of the work (a marvelous creation from the soloist), but otherwise this colorful piece was gently expressive.

I wondered as we came to the main work on the program after the interval, namely the Eroica Symphony of Beethoven: what was Hasan’s secret? All three pieces were approached with great energy, care, sensitivity. Inner voices were clear, and the phrasing made everything very coherent.  You would think their lives depended on it, the way they followed the conductor.

Hasan led a crisp energetic reading of the Eroica, among the best playing by the TSO that I have ever heard in all my time attending Roy Thomson Hall.

I wonder if the TSO will try to bring him back? I hope so!

I like the sound of that headline. As I do what it says, pondering wandering, I am a bit lost in the ambiguities. If we knew where we were going it wouldn’t be wandering, would it.

The time of year encourages such thinking, the mind drifting onto certain well-worn pathways as several religions have some of their most important holy days.  I’ve been mulling over some of the things I saw recently, that have taken me on a kind of metaphysical journey.

• Vivier’s Kopernikus in Against the Grain’s recent production at Theatre Passe Muraille (and because it closed I can now blather on a bit more)
• Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust in a live performance on youtube that I played while I stumbled through spreadsheets during a long day at work Thursday
• Mallick’s The Tree of Life, that I watched until midnight Friday night
• The Third Act of Wagner’s Parsifal, that I played through Saturday afternoon

Composer Claude Vivier

I left out certain aspects of my experience of Kopernikus when I wrote my review.  Am I concerned I might foist my particular spirituality upon anyone?  Or is it simply that I wonder if I am just admitting how totally I felt in synch with Vivier, how deeply I identified with his meditation.  But as I went through this little cycle of spiritual and quasi-spiritual works, the parallels and similarities seem so strong I thought I wanted to write about it, both to capture it for myself in this public diary, but also in case this might be illuminating for anyone else in their own journey.

I wish I could see Kopernikus again for at least a couple of reasons. There was a great deal going on in different places in front of us at the theatre. The first time through has a certain magic, but I submit that we really need to be seeing it more than once, given that it’s written (thinking of Vivier) and presented (thinking of Joel Ivany’s direction, Matjash Mrozewski’s choreography as well as the various performances) as ritual. The opera is subtitled “a ritual opera for the dead”, which put Ivany & Mrozewski into a bit of a bind. We don’t get to see it multiple times, so the movement & action needs to somehow signify ritual. Our handouts in the theatre also clued us in to a great deal, although I don’t know that there’s any one way, no right way. It’s wandering, right? That means some are on the path, some aren’t and indeed, those in the bushes may actually be closest to the true way. I think I am having my usual ambivalence, where an invitation sometimes turns me off if it’s too blatant, thinking of this theatre as a kind of temple of the arts but also as a place for Vivier’s ritual celebration.

After the performance I chatted with Joel & Topher Mokrzewski. I wondered about the closing image, which I alluded to indirectly but left out of the review, as I avoid spoilers at all cost. But I realize maybe it would have been useful to talk about this, to in effect give a future audience some idea as to where the storyline goes. Is it a spoiler when they tell you on Good Friday that Jesus rose 3 days later? that we’re saved? That’s the difference between watching a religious epic without any idea of the import or context, as opposed to being a believer who waits for the expected ending to affirm their faith.  Kopernikus’s conclusion at Theatre Passe Muraille was so similar to Robert Lepage’s final image in his Met Production of Damnation de Faust I wondered if Joel & Topher had seen it. I thought of it as an influence and a wonderful one at that, not taking issue with the similarity but admiring its universality.

But they knocked my socks off when they showed me that it’s in Vivier’s score, the most explicit thing in the whole piece. Where everything in Vivier is ambiguous, a verbal labyrinth that is 70% a made-up language (in Topher’s estimation), the ending is clear-cut, as they (or is it Agni only? I can’t recall because I only had a moment to glance at the score that Topher showed me) ascend and walk out a door, a door that shuts with a big sound, to conclude the work.

Bigtime shivers I am recalling at that moment, and surely everyone in the theatre had them too.

The moment at the end of Lepage / Berlioz was elegance itself, and I recall being frustrated at the time. Marguérite goes to heaven. After the massive celebration of the devils in their funny made-up language (uh-oh! another parallel), Berlioz has the angels gently beckoning to Marguérite, inviting her up to heaven. And so we see Susan Graham climb up a ladder, no magic or fancy mise-en-scène. It’s so simple, very much like what we see in the Vivier (and once again there’s Lepage asking his singer to take a physical risk). It turned things a bit upside down to think that, no, Joel wasn’t influenced by Lepage, but maybe Lepage was influenced by Vivier at some level..?   (did he ever come across the piece? I wonder…. No, I would doubt it)

Berlioz figures again in Tree of Life.  I stumbled on this by accident, the day after choosing to listen to Damnation at work, there it was on TV. I hadn’t seen it in awhile but voila, there it was being broadcast and I was irresistibly drawn. I hadn’t noticed that Mallick employs the opening brooding music from Harold in Italy in a sequence of the young Jack, the brooding character we see as an adult played by Sean Penn. How did I miss it the first time through?

And so when in the final ecstatic reconciliation images, the bodies wandering on a beach, reminding me so much of what Joel & Matjash did in Kopernikus, a labyrinth of wandering spirits in a kind of nowhere (whether it’s a beach as in the film, or the brutally blank space Jason Hand made for us in Theatre Passe Muraille), it made sense that Mallick took us from the misery of his Byronic wanderer Harold to the serene affirmation of Berlioz’s Requiem.

I was left alone yesterday (aka Saturday) with the dog. And not just because of the time of year but also because of where my head is at, I pulled out Parsifal. The last act begins with a musical image of wandering that likely resonated with Vivier. I’ve had this conversation in various ways with a few new music practitioners I admire, and whatever their misgivings about opera or romantic music, it’s surprising how often they admit their admiration (that word again) for Parsifal, one of the earliest 20th century compositions, written in the 1880s. That opening is in its way a version of the passage in Harold in Italy, a melancholy wandering lost in a spiritual waste-land.

Redemption in the story and in the typology is to find one’s way: to no longer be lost. The sacred castle of the Grail Knights can’t be found by just anyone but only through grace, through the intervention of higher powers.

It’s very low-key in much of its preaching, letting the beauty of the spring speak to the healing power of spirit in the world, even if the world seems lost. After hours of yard work it’s the most natural thing in the world to sit at the piano and trace that lost pathway, leading to the Good Friday music, and then the angry confrontation between the Knights & Amfortas, before Parsifal appears in the final apotheosis.

Some of us are luckier than others, that the grace finds its way to us, or that we find our way to grace. If you need proof before you open your heart, if you need to see the happy ending, like a movie trailer where they show you clearly how the film ends? That’s what the journey is for, if it has a purpose at all, to get us past the simplistic questioning, to give us the ability to live with ambivalence and doubt.

(afternoon addendum, wandering with the dog in the rain…Wondering if Faust was written by Berlioz at this time of year. He has his Faust in a comparable moment of misery about to kill himself, and he hears an Easter choir (“Christ vient de ressusciter!” they say.) Salvation!? and a moment later, Mephisto appears.  So the tidy ending is perhaps dangerous. Do not be too cocky about your faith, on holy week)

In the meantime, enjoy the spring, enjoy your journey.

Tonight was the opening performance of the Canadian Opera Company’s revival of John Caird’s production of La Boheme directed by Katherine M. Carter. As with their earlier return to Atom Egoyan’s Cosi fan tutte a few months ago, the concept wasn’t as tyrannical the second time around, allowing the opera to get back to what it used to be, to work more like usual.

In other words we were watching star performances vying for our attention, Puccini’s wonderful melodies & a sentimental story that can make you cry.

Much of the action is sophomoric, scenes that could be subtitled “boys will be boys:” that is until romance rears its head with the arrival of Mimi. The opera is so well-written that it can’t miss, each performer getting their moments to shine, with a few variations.

I’ve seen a lot of Bohemes in my life, sometimes more realistic in the characterizations, sometimes more operatic, relying on the music to make the biggest statements. This cast is an interesting combination of both approaches.

In the last act everyone is mostly leaning towards that operatic approach –as you might gather from my headline—in readings that are less realistic than operatic, the voices all quite good. Carter reconciles the performances with the concept, so that the images around the stage don’t jar the way they did when Caird first showed us his reading of Boheme.

Atalla Ayan is the impetuous poet Rodolfo, Lucas Meachem is Marcello the painter. Ayan had a lovely Italianate sound & all the high notes you could ask for. Meachem gives us a commanding Marcello, owning the stage every time he wanted our attention with a powerful presence and a bigger voice than one often gets: although I’ve heard it said that Marcello is almost written like a helden baritone. We had the luxury of lots of sound in our Marcello, allowing for a fascinating contrast between the two men, one commanding the other more of a real poet.

Angel Blue and Atalla Ayan (photo: Michael Cooper)

While I used to focus on the music I spoke of as sophomoric –when I was more of a kid myself—with maturity I’ve gradually changed my understanding of the opera, so that Mimi has come to be my favourite character every time she’s on stage. Angel Blue was remarkably original for two acts, accomplishing that miracle in a well-known story like this one, where you dare to dream of a different outcome (which is ridiculous of course). Hers was a youthful & innocent Mimi, giggling and cheerful in ways I haven’t seen in a long while, when so many play her as doomed and tragic. Even in Act III, when the eventual outcome becomes unavoidable, she made a great deal of her encounter with Rodolfo.

Andriana Chuchman’s Musetta was the perfect match for Meachem’s Marcello, every bit as charismatic as he had been and beautifully sung.

(l-r) Lucas Meachem, Angel Blue (background), Atalla Ayan (photo: Michael Cooper)

You might say that Brandon Cedel as Colline & Phillip Addis as Schaunard were a bit out of step with the others, because their acting was so naturalistic & believable. If this was a problem for me, it was only in the last moment of the opera, when Addis’s response to Mimi’s death totally slayed me, and then the more melodramatic work by everyone else onstage, while normal for this opera, left me cold. But I had tears during Blue’s Act I aria and again in the wonderful duet between her and Ayan in Act III. So it works in some places better than others.  It’s a Boheme with a little something for everyone, gorgeous to look at and beautifully sung.

One other major player had a big impact on the performance, namely conductor Paolo Carignani. I recall once long ago hearing (third hand, quoted from Ernesto Barbini) the assessment that Boheme is the hardest of all operas to conduct, because tempi have to be so variable, sensitive to solos, ensembles, duets, with rubato and nuance and flow. At times Carignani seemed intent on imposing his ego on the performance, leaving soloists scrambling to catch up a few times, and totally hanging the children’s chorus out to dry as though he were a sadistic school-master. So in other words maybe Barbini was right about how difficult this opera is to conduct. The big climaxes were all there, the solos sounded great. In a few a piacere moments he gave a bit more introspective space for the soloists, although this was inconsistent, as in other places the pace was unforgiving. Carignani kept me conscious of the process, keeping me at arm’s length from the story and often unable to really surrender myself to the story: although maybe that’s just me.

I was thinking of Paris, the site of this story and of course the site of the big story in the news this week. Recalling that Victor Hugo said

The greatest products of architecture are less the works of individuals than of society, rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius.

So much of Toronto, so much of Canada is new. Our lovely new Four Seasons Centre is our temple to the arts, where the COC presents its operas to us, one of our greatest treasures. I’m so happy to be there, happy we have this wonderful place to gather and celebrate all that is beautiful.

We are so lucky.

Tonight was the second of three performances of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony by the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall. It’s known as the Resurrection symphony. I’d recommend it to three different groups of people:

• If you’re religious and conscious of the time of year (Passover / Easter)
• If you’re seeking an alternative spirituality
• If you simply want to enjoy a big powerful piece of music executed by a lot of people working together

The last time I reviewed a TSO performance of Mahler’s 2nd I was struggling to be positive, frustrated by the interpretation. While the notes on that occasion may have been played more precisely than this time, what does it matter when the interpretation leaves you cold? I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way, given the rhapsodic response this time, both on social media and especially in the hall.

As with my last TSO concert, there’s been a late replacement at the podium as Matthew Halls was brought in because of an indisposition. And once again the orchestra put in an extra effort.

Conductor Matthew Halls (photo: Jag Gundu)

I have a special relationship with this piece. (maybe everyone does?) I feel it was the piece that led me back to spirituality & religion, in a family who had been regular church-goers in my early childhood but who stopped for various reasons.

No wonder.  This work turns the season upside down. While it’s Maundy Thursday as I write this, on the eve of Good Friday, (the day celebrating Christ’s Crucifixion), in the lead-up to Easter (a festival of Jesus’s resurrection), this symphony is the opposite, and no I don’t mean because Mahler was Jewish. No.  Instead of celebrating one person’s rising from the dead, this text proclaims that we shall all rise again.

There is no hell in this theology. We are all forgiven, accepted, included.

But it’s not at all naïve. The text of the song “Urlicht” is an especially poignant reminder of the real world. While the singer tells of an angel who refuses entry, it’s chilling in its reminder of separations in places such as Auschwitz or border crossings. I played this song in church once, watching a singer who was partially disabled, unable to walk easily, to get close to the piano. As the traffic for the offertory collection rolled along with the singer doing her best, a flood of recognition filled my eyes, that we might all be rejected: just as Mahler himself had been in his time. The inclusiveness of the final resurrection chorale might seem sacred or spiritual, but it resonates powerfully in 2019.

While I may not have agreed with every interpretive choice made by Halls, who cares? He was wonderfully decisive, 100 times better than what we had last time. It was an interpretation, an approach that gave the performance a real edge, true passion.

To open Halls took a pace reminiscent of Klemperer, giving the opening a genuine gravitas. Every note seemed thought out and intentional at this pace, even if the movement unfolded a bit slowly. When I was in my teens this is how I understood the piece, at this stately tempo, fitting for a sacred rite. In due course Halls picked up the pace. Sometimes he accelerated, but slowed down for the restatement of the main theme, or for the dreamy second subject. But one saw such a commitment from this orchestra, a readiness to answer cues. While there may have been a fluffed note or two, it doesn’t matter. This was high drama, the way Mahler would have liked it.

I do wish the TSO would follow Mahler’s suggestion, to put a pause between the first movement and the rest of the symphony. It was on my mind as I listened to a few people applauding after the first movement tonight. If there’s an intermission: let them clap. And there was a great deal of restlessness, coughing, rustling of papers, before the second movement began. I think Mahler meant the fifth movement to be like a continuation of the first, with the three middle movements like interludes or intermezzi. If we are to think of that last movement in some sense being at the end of time, an apocalypse when the dead rise, it makes sense to have something in there, including an interval. I think we should be hearing those themes from a distance, recalling them as though time has passed.

Oh well, maybe next time.

One of the highlights of the concert was both musical and acoustical. Our two vocal soloists were situated in the middle of the choir loft upstage of the orchestra. When Marie-Nicole Lemieux stood up to sing “Urlicht” the voice came floating from the back. Yes she does have an amazing voice that you may recall from the Canadian Opera Company’s Falstaff from four and half years ago (apt as we anticipate Gerald Finley’s return for Otello). But the acoustic worked much better than I expected, her tone glorious, joined in the last movement by the soaring soprano voice of Joélle Harvey.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux & Joelle Harvey surrounded by Amadeus Choir & Iseler Singers, (photo: Jag Gundu)

I hope we will encounter Halls again, as he clearly knows what he’s doing, and the TSO responds to him, including string portamento like you might have heard a hundred years ago, the trumpets positively schmaltzy. The entry of the chorus (Amadeus Choir & Iseler Singers, sounding oh so beautiful) in the last movement was accomplished without requiring them to make the noise of standing (even at the very moment they were singing about rising). Perhaps I’m asking too much, dreaming of a performance without the comings & goings of players for the offstage moments; if the chorus standing up is disruptive, why not brass players commuting on and off the stage? Yes I know it would be expensive, perhaps impossible. But I’m just putting it out there, like my request that they honour Mahler’s request for a break after the first movement. I don’t think it even matters if the offstage trumpets or horns are out of synch or less perfect than the ones onstage. It’s theatre, and a magnificent idea. While Mozart & Verdi & Berlioz –to name three—each had a go at giving us their version of the trumpets of judgment (with the words “tuba mirum” in their respective requiem masses), I think Mahler’s is the most convincing, most heart-stoppingly beautiful. When the trumpets are a bit out of synch –as I suspect they would have been back in Mahler’s time, long before cc-TV—the effect is that much more poignant, like a lost corps of ghostly troops marching into the afterworld. Perfection is less important than meaningful playing, music that connects because it’s shaped into something.

Halls gets Mahler.

There is one more of these wonderful concerts to come, on Saturday April 20th . Go if you can.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I pause to take a breath before I attempt to tell you who Dean Burry is, a man who wears so many hats one doesn’t always know how to address him.

Professor? Composer? Librettist? Maestro?

Across all those different disciplines (and even others I didn’t mention) Dean is always busy. He is arguably the most successful Canadian opera composer given that The Brothers Grimm is the most performed opera ever composed by a Canadian, over 600 performances & counting.

With someone so multi-faceted, you might enjoy reading his biographies, such as

• here (Queen’s University)
• or here (Tapestry Opera )
• or here (Dean’s website)

Students wanting to build a career, impresarios or creators seeking the secret of success should look no further than Dean. In a nutshell: this is how it’s done.

Dean reminds me of an axiom in management. If you want something done quickly and have the choice between asking someone who’s sitting there available to work, and someone who’s busy the answer is counter-intuitive. Because if you want it done quickly you ask the busy person: as they know how to get things done quickly. Dean is a perfect illustration. Although I asked him more questions than usual yet his was one of the fastest responses I’ve ever had.

Dean’s so busy that there are several projects I could (should?) have asked about, except I *blush* didn’t know about all the others. I approached him on this occasion, fascinated by one project in particular, namely Shanawdithit, a co-production of Tapestry Opera & Opera on the Avalon, under development for months with librettist Yvette Nolan, workshopped last fall: and to be world-premiered May 16 here in Toronto, before being taken to Newfoundland in June.  I had so many questions.

Composer Dean Burry

1. Are you more like your father or your mother?

That’s usually not a clear cut question given the way genetics work. I certainly look a lot like my father…the spitting image in some photos. But I’d say temperament-wise I’m more like my mother. I’m honestly not a huge believer in astrology but we are both Pisces and from what I understand, our sentimentality, sensitivity and creativity (she enjoys writing poetry) all come from being a couple of fish.

2. What is the best or worst thing about what you do?

I’m going to cheat and comment on TWO of the best things about what I do (and I do a lot of different things so let’s focus on writing opera). I want to do two because when you asked this question I immediately thought of two things that are polar opposites.

In no particular order…I LOVE the community of people that it takes to make an operatic production. I love hanging with stage managers, and set designers and singers and instrumentalists, conductors, directors, PR, marketing, education. You get the idea. It is a tremendous amount of collaboration and all of that interaction is nourishing.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is AMAZING to create an imaginary world that you get to live in for a period of time. So many of my projects involve stories and world-building. You really get to know these characters and these places in a very deep way. I get to the same moment in Shanawdithit – first while working on the vocal score and later while orchestrating – and I find myself crying. Honestly it’s a little escapist. I suppose one serves the extrovert in me, the other the introvert.

The WORST thing about what I do? It is damn hard to make a living as a composer. Hard to even find a way to claw through enough to make your art, let alone thrive. There have been lean years where I questioned if I had gone into the right field and those moments can be very low. I know many composers go through this but you are forced into putting on a brave face and pretending like everything is fine. It can be a real struggle. Composers and writers can have a massive impact on our world…it would just be nice if we could, as a society, find a way to acknowledge that.

3. Who do you like to listen to or watch?

This is one of those questions where I think “should I make something up to sound more sophisticated”? Honestly, I’m a big nerd. Bring on the Star Wars, Superheroes, Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. My wife Julia and I enjoy cooking shows as well. When it comes to concerts I’d say I’m pretty eclectic. Last night I saw a wonderful production called Seven Deadly Sins given here in Kingston (my new home) by Soundstreams. Very contemporary yet totally relatable. Julia is the principal second violinist with the fantastic Kingston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Evan Mitchell, and this is the first time I have ever had a symphony subscription. It’s been years since I sat down for dedicated concerts including Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart alongside more contemporary work…so happy to be experiencing this repertoire again. As a composer in the new music scene I tend to always find myself, logically, at new music concerts. And going to the symphony every two weeks is all the more special because my daughters Blythe and Maeve are sitting with me. The older patrons sitting around us always say “Oh they are so good in the concert” and I give a smug little smile and say “thank you, they have seen a few concerts”. I held Blythe as a one-month old for the world-premiere of my opera Isis and the Seven Scorpions. They haven’t really had a choice.

Dean Burry

4. What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

You know, I wish I could play the violin. I can play a lot of instruments and I find one of the great joys of life is to pick up (or make) some (preferably weird) instrument and try to figure out how to make music with it. I don’t know if it’s my stubby fingers or what, but I just can’t get my paws around that thing. Julia, the girls and her family all play string instruments, so I guess I’ll just leave that to them.

5. When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?

I love nature and that only intensifies as I get older. As I mentioned we just moved to the country (a little town just outside Kingston called Elginburg) and I can’t tell you how much I love seeing the wide array of birds at the feeder in the morning. The wild turkeys that our dogs Felix and Annie love to bark at and the rabbits hopping around everywhere are wonderful. We even have a “House Toad” that shows up every night in the dog yard. So just being close to nature is a big thing for me.

In the last five years I’ve also found a new passion with a Renaissance ensemble I play with called The Gemsmen. We play recorder-like instruments made out of horn called gemshorns. They were made by a good friend, Hall Train (who also created the projections for my symphonic work Carnival of the Dinosaurs) and when I put two-and-two together and realized some of my best friends, Trevor Rines and Ken Hall were flute players, a quartet was born. We play a lot of period consort repertoire including a set of music from the court of King Henry VIII that we are currently working on, but it’s also a great chance to arrange a wide variety of music including pop music like the Beatles and sci-fi movie themes (we joke that we are the “Big Bang Theory” of the 16th century.)

I’ve also played in a Celtic band called Merasheen with a group of fellow Newfoundlanders for almost twenty years, so I guess the real answer is that when I’m not making music…I make music.

*******

More questions about Shanawdithit, being presented at Imperial Oil Theatre in Toronto from May 16-25, and then going to Newfoundland in June.

1. With a dozen operas listed on your website you’re an extraordinarily prolific artist including The Brothers Grimm, arguably the most performed opera ever composed by a Canadian, at over 600 performances & counting. As I write this question I’m anticipating seeing La boheme tomorrow. Can we talk about that dirty word “popularity”, dirty because critics & scholars haven’t fully reconciled the great music of a Berg or a Ligeti with the harsh reality of box office. Tuneful composers such as Puccini or Richard Strauss were the most successful opera composers of the first part of the 20th century. If you don’t mind me asking, how do you feel about popularity? What’s your secret?

I couldn’t be happier that my music is getting heard. The whole reason I do this is to connect with people…to communicate. Over a hundred-and-fifty thousand kids have seen The Brothers Grimm, usually as their first opera, and if I accomplish nothing else, that at least feels like I have had some impact. The other children’s opera I wrote for the COC, The Scorpions’ Sting (originally known as Isis and the Seven Scorpions) is also travelling pretty well at over 300 performances. I keep encouraging composers to consider writing children’s opera – and the 45-minute small cast with piano model is still really in demand. A main stage opera may get 5 or 6 performances, but companies that tour this type of opera tend to do between 20 and 40 (like the recent run of Scorpions’ with Lyric Opera of Chicago). It’s hard to imagine an artist that doesn’t want their art to be wanted, appreciated…and popular (the definition of that word could be debated). I think what you are getting at is the idea of “accessibility” in modern music. I think there is room for so many different styles of music in the world. And I love so much new and experimental music. But honestly, it really bugs me when people talk about accessibility in contemporary music as a bad thing. “Relevance” is another one some people seem to have a problem with. My question is what’s the alternative, “Inaccessible, irrelevant music”? I think it is vital to realize that you can be accessible without pandering and you can be relevant without being trendy.

My secret? Striving for clarity I suppose (my credo). And yes, trying to consider the effect a piece will have on an audience.

Dean Burry

2. Let’s talk about being prolific again. Wagner & Verdi each wrote a few turkeys before they really hit their stride. Could you talk about the first pieces you wrote, what you learned that served you later and the process of getting comfortable as (dare I say it) an opera composer?

I really became serious about composing when I was 12. A piano teacher named Don Boland (in my hometown of Gander NL) saw that I was getting tired just playing the standard repertoire and that my dictation book was starting to fill up with little things I would write to keep interested. He fostered that as he was a songwriter and we worked on chords, bass-lines and “comping”. Billy Joel became a big influence at that time and I started writing pop music. That very process of music creation led me back to the world of classical music as I started to see the magic behind what Beethoven and Bach were doing. My first opera was a piece called Unto the Earth: Vignettes of a War. It was about the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in WWI and premiered during the third year of my Bachelor of Music degree at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. I had just come off premieres (an oratorio and a musical) in the previous two years that really taught me the skills of not only composing but producing. I remember enlisting a friend to go around to the businesses in Sackville and sell advertising in a program so we could buy costumes from the second-hand store Frenchy’s (Maritimers will know what I’m talking about). My time at Mount A taught me what I needed to know about making opera happen. At times you need to be the composer, at times you need to be the janitor who sweeps up after rehearsal so you don’t get yelled at by administration. As far as what I learned…that comes back to the idea of collaboration. Yes it is “Wagner’s” Tannhauser or “Verdi’s” Rigoletto but the number of people required to make something like that happen is staggering. It is such a team effort.

Hot tip – give everyone love but save a little extra for your stage managers and percussionists.

3. One of the most exciting things about Shanawdithit is how the story has been with you for so many years in different ways. Could you explain your history with the project?

People often ask me how I became interested in opera coming from Newfoundland. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when people think of The Rock. NL is music…drama and stories. I’ve written a number of operas based on NL history but one story, rooted in central NL where I grew up, kept calling to me. The story of Shanawdithit – the so-called “Last of the Beothuk”. So about 20 years ago as I had always done, I dug into my research and started writing an opera about this indigenous woman. That’s what traditional European opera composers and librettists do after all, take stories and cast them in a new light. An opera called Shanawdithit was actually my Master’s thesis at the University of Toronto – a school that I have been very connected to having just finished my doctorate there in June. Back in 1996 Michael Albano, Head of the Opera Division offered his students to stage a concert version of the opera. I imagined that piece being the seed of a full grand opera.

But not all stories are free for the taking. I think that is a concept that is slowly dawning on many Canadians and something that I myself came to acknowledge over the ensuing decades while this opera refused to take flight, yet refused to stop calling to me. I was attempting to follow in the same colonial mentality of artists before me. And while my aspirations were in the right place, they were still from a perspective that stories belonged to everyone.

4. Please talk about your changing understanding of the story especially in your work with librettist Yvette Nolan.

Over the years, I began to realize that if this opera was going to happen, it needed to be driven by indigenous voices, with a core indigenous leader to shape and determine the story.

I immediately thought of Yvette Nolan, someone whose work I had long admired and approaching Michael and Tapestry (who then contacted Opera on the Avalon in St. John’s – a logical co-commissioner), a company who has worked with advancing equity in opera for many years. The process has been completely unlike anything I’ve done before. I have never written an opera inspired and enlightened by so many collaborators. The composer is usually the leading force in an opera, but in this case I feel like I have been guided by so much sharing and community it is unlike any other project with which I have been involved.

Yvette Nolan

The tragedy of Shanawdithit’s story is the fact that the Beothuk as a cultural nation cease to exist. Normally in creating an opera like this, you would talk to elders of the nation, but in this case it isn’t possible. However, during the last six months of her life, the time period of our opera, Shanawdithit created a number of sketches to describe historical events and cultural elements of Beothuk life. These sketches are HER voice and an incredible insight into a vanished society. Yvette had the brilliant idea to ask various Canadian Indigenous artists to interpret these sketches and this collaboration has become a core of the opera and a vast inspiration for the score.

Aria Evans

Visual artists Jordan Bennett, Meagan Musseau, Lori Blondeau, Jerry Evans, choreographer Michelle Olson, dancer Aria Evans and our Shanawdithit herself, Marion Newman have all been so open to this project. And I’m so grateful for what they have shared.

Soprano Marion Newman

6. A big part of this project concerns the contact between cultures. I couldn’t help noticing that your understanding of the story has deepened over the years, in some ways like the learning of a settler culture in the conversation that might lead to reconciliation. Do you see yourself, in your conversation with librettist Yvette Nolan & the process of creating this opera to tell this story, as enacting a kind of cultural reconciliation?

I sincerely hope so. There are times when you want to tell a story. There are times when you want to entertain. But there are times when you know that the project that you are working on has the potential for a greater meaning….a greater impact. If nothing else, as a result of this project, many more people will know the story of Shanawdithit and the Beothuk, and because of an opera (considered by many to be the most colonial of art forms!) no less! Here we can again insert that word “relevant”. I haven’t met one person who has an easy time saying the name of this opera (there are variations, but the safe one is shaw-na-DITH-it) I grew up with this story all around me, yet told in such a sad and misinformed way. We did a workshop in Toronto in October and all I could think was “we have an amazing collection of professional artists from across the country in downtown Toronto discussing the life of this incredible yet ignored indigenous woman.” I think I counted it as a win right there and then. If reconciliation is truly going to happen, it is going to require a thoughtful coming together to reveal the right way to move forward…together.

7. In the opera Louis Riel a key feature of the story-telling is the ugly racism we sometimes see presented, for instance when the crowd cries out for Riel’s blood. How do you reconcile history with the sensitivities of audiences?

I really stand by the idea that “Art is a reflection of life”. If it isn’t then it loses all its power and magic. Again, if you are considering your audience, you realize that not “anything goes”. You want people to stay engaged to the end. There are aspects of this story which are brutal and trying to sanitize that story would be perpetuating exactly the same travesty which has happened in colonial re-tellings of indigenous history. But in opera we have many resources ( he smiles and winks). Music has an incredible ability to make you FEEL. Hopefully, with the score of Shanawdithit I have been able to portray both the horror and yes, beauty and life of her story. You have to be able to show everything because that’s life…but in opera “showing everything” can be accomplished in a number of ways.

Aubrey Dan

8. I read in one of your bios that you have written musicals, including at least one when you were still in school. As a composer of both opera & musicals, how do you understand the difference between the two? And while this interview concerns Shanawdithit, knowing you’re at the Dan School (meaning in the vicinity of Aubrey Dan, producer & impresario): are you feeling any desire to write another musical?

Oh absolutely. Back when I was in university and starting a career I imagined I was going to be a Musical Theatre composer – this was the age of Les Miz and Phantom of the Opera. When I graduated from high school, I was just as likely to go to theatre school as music school. Musical theatre and later opera was the way for me to live in both worlds. I feel like I’m living in a dream right now as I have been appointed the Artistic Director of the Music Theatre Creation Program at the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University. It’s a program which really embraces the entire spectrum of music theatre including opera, broadway musicals, cabaret and everything in between. We’ve got too many labels and divisions in our community and I love what they have started here. When I was younger, I really approached musicals and operas differently. My hockey musical with Charlie Rhindress, Home and Away really riffs on the jock rock of bands like Queen and Meatloaf, while my one-woman musical Sweetheart: The Mary Pickford Story really digs into the music of Tin Pan Alley. But the older I get, the more I realize that stories told through music, drama, design and dance are all part of that spectrum I spoke of. As I write this, I think the bottom line is that I love so many different styles of music and if I have the opportunity to explore them all, I’m happy. I would say that in recent years, I’ve been more active in the opera world. But there’s no question I will be back to the musical world – it’s just a question of when.

9. You’ve served an apprenticeship or two along the way. Your time in the Education and Outreach Department of the Canadian Opera Company and as Artistic Director of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company remind us that you’re not just a composer but also an accomplished practitioner. Do you think composers should be practitioners, and could you give an example or two of what you’ve learned as a practitioner?

To each their own, I suppose. There are brilliant composers out there who are destined to just be composers. Thankfully there are all sort of people in the arts community to cover the other jobs- there are people who love doing public relations, there are people who love designing costumes, there are people who love finding donors and people who love BEING donors (like the incomparable Roger Moore who we just lost – incredible supporters who always say “well I’m no singer or composer” but are so vital to the process, not just financially but for their thoughtful and committed support. I’m sad that I won’t be able to share a conversation with Roger in the lobby after a performance of Shanawdithit). But there is no denying that composers need to find creative ways to get their music out there. Unfortunately, a lot of the new music scene is still curated by a select group of people and if those few people don’t “get” your music, you have a choice to make – accept their judgment and find a new career/passion or fight to MAKE an audience for your music. There are so many examples of this even in Toronto, from older established groups like Arraymusic and Continuum to new organizations like the Toy Piano Composers, Caution Tape Sound Collective, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Fawn Opera and so many others – all started by hungry artists determined to make a place for their art.

10. What advice might you have for a young composer, considering writing their first opera or musical…?

That’s a big question, but I will go back to something that I mentioned early. Opera is theatre. Opera is collaboration. The more a composer understands about every element involved in creating an opera the stronger and more integrated the score will be. Opera is not just a concert and is so much more than the stereotypes we are shown in pop-culture. It isn’t a genre to be approached lightly but it can be a wild ride.

11. First: 
what’s your favorite opera (meaning the one that makes you smile & feel good inside) what’s your ideal opera (the one you admire for its structure / dramaturgy etc)?
So:
having said that when you compose which, if either, do you think you aim for?

Ha. When you usually ask that question people coyly say “well I couldn’t possibly pick just one” (there’s something to be said for that – there are so many wonderful and varied examples). But I think I can pinpoint two, and I think both satisfy your two questions above. The first is a warhorse of the traditional canon – La boheme. I know many consider it overdone but it so accurately reflects the experience of those starving young artists ( maybe I can relate). It’s playful, deep and devastating and Puccini achieves that most elusive of aspirations – perfect pacing. The second opera I’d mention here is Britten’s Peter Grimes. I have always identified with Britten…I’m sure our mutual connection to the ocean has something to do with it, but I also really admire his efforts to write fresh new music while still providing that all important clarity. I find his music strikingly original and evocative yet amazingly accessible (oops, there’s that word) all at the same time. Perfectly paced, evocative, accessible, fresh, clear…yes I aim for these at all times.

*******

The new opera Shanawdithit with music by Dean Burry and words by Yvette Nolan premieres May 16th at The Imperial Oil Theatre.   Tickets | Performances:

• Thursday, May 16, 8:00 pm
• Saturday, May 18 4:00 pm
• Tuesday, May 21, 8:00 pm
• Wednesday, May 22, 8:00 pm
• Thursday, May 23, 8:00 pm
• Saturday, May 25, 8:00 pm

The official bio says that
Molly Reisman is a Canadian writer, producer and performer who is endlessly curious about how humans connect, empathize and interact with the world around them, that Molly is a graduate of NYU Tisch’s MFA Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, and she completed her undergraduate studies at Toronto’s Ryerson University where she majored in acting with a minor in business entrepreneurship.

I encountered Molly in a show at Ryerson, where teacher Cynthia Ashperger gave her the tough assignment of playing a quirky older lady. It’s funny because I think Cynthia & I both sensed that Molly is an old soul, mature & professional beyond her chronological age.

Her bio continues, telling us that her writing credits include: “3 Dresses” (LaMaMa 2019) “Electric Circus” (Pepperdine University 2019), “Heartbeat” (NYU Tisch 2019), “Keaton and The Whale” (NYU Tisch 2018), “Cow is Me” (LaMaMa Puppet Festival 2018), “TEDQUEST” (LaMaMa Puppet Festival 2017, NYC Summerfest), “WE WROTE THIS” (Ryerson New Voices Festival & Winner Best of Atlantic Fringe Festival, 2014), “The Other Side of The Curtain” (Canterbury Children’s Theater Festival, 2009).

I heard she won The Weinberger Award, which led me to ask her some questions.

1. Are you more like your father or your mother?

I am for sure more like my dad.

My mom is very cool-headed and logical, and in my spiraling moments of anxiety, I do try to channel her as best I can, but my default setting is dad.

My dad has always played guitar as a hobby and growing up around live music has always been important to me. Both my mom and dad decided to put my sister and me in piano lessons, and my dad would sometimes play guitar when we would practice piano. I always found it very interesting how much depth is added to even the most basic songs when just an additional instrument / sound is added.

My mom is musical too, she used to play piano (and I think has been picking it up again lately!) and used to try to help us with our piano lesson’s homework at home. She, however, is a terrifying teacher and I would usually end in tears under the piano. I’m also a notorious baby and drama queen, and I would always end up doing the damn homework, come hell or high water.

Molly Reisman

2. What is the best or worst thing about What You do?

To me, the best thing about writing musicals as part of a team is collaboration. It is so helpful to not be writing into a void, and to have a partner who is willing to go down as many wrong-idea- rabbit holes as you are. Working with a collaborator has also meant that I am constantly surprised by what we create. Usually, when I write a lyric, I have a sound or melody or even a basic motif in mind, and 9.5 times out of 10, my collaborator will come up with something a million times more interesting than anything I could ever come up with. It is so rewarding to create something with another person this way.

Collaborating also means you usually can’t get away with bullshit. I’ve been blessed to work with composers who are far more interested in creating a compelling story with dynamic characters than sparing my feelings, and I feel the same. When working alone, it is very easy to get precious with your work and to be hesitant to cut or edit because you like the way a song sounds, or you think you wrote a clever lyric. With a collaborator, you are able to keep each other in line and sort of pull the thread of: “is this necessary?” or “this is kinda boring and makes me not want to hear from this character.”  It can be hard, but ultimately, it will create a stronger piece.

At NYU I have learned 2 mantras that have saved me from (or revived me from) numerous meltdowns:
1. There is no such thing as a musical theater emergency
2. There’s always more where that came from.

The WORST thing about what I do is probably the terrifying instability of living as an artist. It’s obvious, I know, but as I said, I’m an anxious person down to my core, and being in an industry (with a degree as marketable as an MFA in Graduate Musical Theater Writing) that is so elusive and based so much on luck and network, it makes me wish I had the passion and interest I have in writing musicals in something like accounting or tort law.

3. Who Do You Like to Listen to Or Watch?

Right now, I’m obsessed with the soundtrack to Be More Chill. Joe Iconis is an alum of my grad program (NYU Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program) and I’ve always been a big fan of his work. The show is so funny and weird and refreshing and it’s just a lot of fun to listen to.

Since moving to New York, I’ve also been obsessed with anything and everything Dave Malloy. Ghost Quartet and Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 are some of my favourite shows (to watch and listen to) at the moment; I think it’s because Dave Malloy finds a great deal of vulnerability in characters or situations that at first blush can seem didactic or heady. He has a new show, Octet, that is opening off-Broadway soon, I can’t wait to see it. He’s also working on a Moby Dick musical, and since I am also working on a musical about a Whale, it is nice to keep tabs on him.

I’ve also been working as assistant to lyricist Mindi Dickstein and librettist Kirsten Guenther for the Paper Mill Playhouse Production of Benny and Joon (A new musical based on the early 90’s movie with Johnny Depp), which recently transferred from the Old Globe in San Diego.

Getting to listen to a large-scale piece throughout a rehearsal process has been unbelievable. Mindi Dickstein is faculty in my program (which is how I got the job), and Kirsten graduated from my program a few years ago, and it has been phenomenally inspiring to watch 2 female words-people from my program not only be exceptionally talented and endlessly focused on excellence, but also to see them run the space in the rehearsal room, and to a certain extent, their industry. It’s good to have role models.

4. What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

Oh, so many.

I wish I could:

• Tap dance (well)
• Play guitar
• Have my shit together enough to actually do meal prep every week
• Fall asleep at a reasonable hour
• Have the ability to live and work in America for the foreseeable future (fingers crossed on a pending O-1 visa application)
• Do yoga for like, more than 2 weeks
• I wish I could read music at more than an incredibly basic level. It’s something I’m working on, but being at school with capital C Composers who have been studying ear training and composition for years and years is really great inspiration to crack those very boring music theory books once again.

5. When You’re Just Relaxing and Not Working, What is Your Favourite Thing To Do?

• I love dogs. I love looking at pictures of dogs, watching videos of dogs, dogsitting dogs, dreaming about fostering / adopting a dog… Last year I went to the Westminster dog show and watched Flynn, the Bishon Frise, get crowned Best in Show, it was a big moment in my life. I am currently working on a dog-centric musical which I am VERY excited about.

• It’s not as easy as it was when I lived in Toronto, but I love biking. I live in Brooklyn, close to some very nice waterfront bike paths, so my boyfriend and I sometimes rent bikes and make an afternoon of it. We can bike from our apartment to Coney Island- we haven’t done that yet, but that’s for sure something we want to do before this end of this summer.

• Seeing whatever Musicals I can. It used to be a lot easier when I was in school and did not have 3 jobs and 4 musicals on the go, but whenever I can get rush tickets, watching a show is still the most magical experience to me. I’m pretty sure I have become notorious in my circle of friends because, even though I have spent a good amount of time studying musicals, and even though certain aspects of being part of an audience of musical theater has been stripped of it’s magic because we’ve spent so long exhaustively studying all of the mechanics, I still weep openly during most musicals I attend.

Okay here’s my cheesy musical theater rant: I really do believe there is no more special experience than musical theater. A lot of people shit on musicals as pedestrian and basic, but, as NYU faculty member Michael John LaChiusa likes to say, when an audience buys a ticket to a musical, they are entering a contract to leave reality, suspend their disbelief and open themselves up to a very different kind of universe. That level of vulnerability from an audience and that kind of openness to go on a journey (whatever it may be), to a world that is so full of live music, and live actors, and to do so with a bunch of strangers, is something so special to me. I love musicals, and I love writing them. Okay rant over.

6. What is The Weinberger Award, and how did you, the graduate from Ryerson U, happen to win it?

This is the very first year of the Eric. H. Weinberger Award. It was given to me from Amas musical theater, which is all about supporting new musicals and diverse stories. At Ryerson University, there is a class for all students in acting and dance called Creative Performance, and as a final year project, students are invited to write and produce their own pieces. I think I owe a lot to Sheldon Rosen, the teacher of that class, as well as Mani Eustis, a very talented classmate and fellow Canadian writer, who suggested we write a musical together. Mani and I ended up writing a three-person show called “We Wrote This”. It was 1 hour long, we both wrote words, we both wrote music and we both acted and played instruments during the show. I think this opportunity from Ryerson with literally no rules and no structure let me jump into the deep end and let my voice be as weird and goofy and gross as it wanted to be (and it was very goofy and gross.).

I think coming into writing in such an open way let me approach all future musical theater writing in a very fearless way. I remember at one point in Creative Performance, Sheldon told us that he once wrote a stage direction where the roof was taken off of a building (or something to that effect) by the hand of Someone, and that it was something of a joy for a director to have to face the challenge of the fantastical. This is something I thought about a lot when working on my thesis project- a 90 minute musical called Keaton and The Whale (Book and Lyrics by Molly Reisman, Book and Music by Emily Chiu) , which would eventually win myself and my collaborator / co-bookwriter Emily Chiu the brand new Eric H. Weinberger award.

Molly Reisman and Emily Chiu

One of my very best friends (and roommate for my first year living in NYC) is Stephanie Sardelis. She was finishing up her Masters in Marine Biology at Columbia when I moved to New York to attend NYU. At some point in the middle of my first year, Steph decided to create a TedEd entitled “Why Do Whales Sing?”. I remember watching it and thinking about how interesting Whale song is, how diverse the sound system is, and how little humans know about it, and how advanced Whales are (and how old and ancient and mythical they are / appear) and I think I posted it on Facebook and my brother commented with a link to a Wikipedia article on the 52 Hz Whale– The only whale of his kind, he sings at a frequency of 52 hertz, which is about 3 times higher than any other whale can hear. Scientists call him the loneliest whale in the world.

I don’t know about you, but when I read that, my heart hurt. Immediately I knew this was something I wanted to write about.

I asked Steph about this whale and she showed me some more research on the 52 hz whale, how he has been tracked by scientists, and how, although he was very mysterious, rarely seen and even more rarely recorded, he seemed to be, by all accounts, a happy and healthy whale. We both sat on our couch and talked about how quickly humans project onto animals.

It was at this point that I knew I wanted to write about this for my thesis musical. But how the hell would I find someone willing to write a musical where one of the lead characters is a Whale?

In my first year at NYU, I was lucky enough to work with some of the second years, singing for various labs / phases of their thesis musicals. One project, by Emily Chiu and Ellen Johnston, was called Apollo, which was about a fortune telling octopus, among other things. I had been a huge fan of this piece and its writing team, and I took a shot in the dark and asked Emily Chiu if she would come back to NYU as an alumni collaborator to work on another ocean themed musical, this time about the loneliest whale in the world. Lucky me, she said yes and we began working on Keaton and The Whale.

Emily and I talked about The Whale, about loneliness, and about isolation. The character Keaton is based on one of my favourite musicians, Keaton Henson. I love him so much, he is so full of FEELINGS. Emily and I were often asked questions like “But How does the audience know there is a whale on the stage” or “Can you do this on stage? This feels more like a movie to me”. These were brutal to take, but we were in it together, and we could both see the piece so clearly as a trunk show, with an ocean ensemble that also functioned as the band for the piece.

Emily Chiu & the work in progress

When it came time for our thesis presentation, which is a 29 hour staged reading with equity actors, a Music Director and a Director, we were BLESSED with an unbelievably talented cast as well as the most imaginative and wonderful director we could hope for, a fellow Canadian, Leora Morris.

Leora is an amazingly imaginative director, while also keeping her dramaturgical ear to the ground. She asked us lots of helpful questions, but also saw the piece as we saw it, and had no problem creating a world where a blue sweater indicated that someone was embodying The Whale.

So the reading happened on May 1 2018, for an audience of our peers (and family and friends) and Emily and I were both happy with how it went. Leora mentioned to us that she thought it would be interesting to see how young audiences would receive the show. NYU graciously gave us the opportunity to do a second reading this past February, this time, aimed at young audiences. The edits we made helped us focus our story and figure out whom we were talking to and why.

Sometime in the midst of these edits, Emily sent me the link for the Eric H. Weinberger award for Emerging librettists and suggested I apply on behalf of the both of us. I looked up Amas musical theater and saw it was interested in engaging with young audiences as well as diverse stories, so I thought what the hell. I sent in our most recent libretto and some demo tracks, and it was judged by a double blind panel, and a few months later it was announced that Emily and I had won the award, as well as a production of Keaton and The Whale with Amas musical theater sometime in the 2019-2020 season.

I think that coming into musical theater with the idea that anything is possible on stage as long as it has emotional resonance with the audience is something I learned at Ryerson from Sheldon, and from working with Mani, and carried with me to NYU, and was strengthened by working with the genius that is Emily Chiu on this musical that was inspired by my best buddy Steph and my brother’s Facebook comment.

7. I hear you’re in Malibu, for a commission through Pepperdine. Tell me about it.

I am writing these responses on the plane coming back to New York from Malibu! It was my first time ever being in Malibu, and I can’t believe how gorgeous it was. It’s all beaches all the time. This commission from Pepperdine was a great honour and an unbelievable opportunity, but also, the very best mini-vacation ever.

The commission came about because my collaborator, Clayton Daniel Briggs, graduated from the composition program at Pepperdine University, and the head of the composition department, Dr. N. Lincoln Hanks, wanted him to present something he was working on. Clayton came to me with this news and we were both so excited. I had approached Clayton with the idea for Electric Circus about 2 years before this, while we were thinking about possible concepts for thesis musicals.

I stumbled upon an article about “The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein”, who inspired Mary Shelley to write her epic novel. His name was Dr. Giovanni Aldini, and he was the nephew of Luigi Galvani, a physicist and the father of Galvanism. Aldini worked for his uncle in his lab and seemingly idolized the man until Galvani’s theories of “Animal Electricity” were disproven by Alessandro Volta, and Galvani was shunned by the scientific community. Aldini took it upon himself to restore his uncle’s name by following up on his uncle’s research, specifically in sending electrical currents through frogs (which the late 1700’s onlookers thought of as re-animation), and eventually, working on a human subject, George Foster, a recently executed criminal, who was the subject of a live demonstration conducted by Aldini, which was an extremely well-attended event by the general public.

I thought there were a few interesting things about Dr. Aldini:

• After contacting scientific historians across the world, and thorough online research, very little is known about Giovanni Aldini following his experiment on George Foster.
• He was part of a scientific movement to take science to the public- to salons and to the streets, to more common folk, more than just the scientific community. This was at a time in history (the late 1700’s) where Science was still in a weird place of facts-based researched with a sprinkling of occult interference.
• This got me interested in the idea of science for consumption and for entertainment as opposed to science in the pursuit of answering questions and solving problems.

Electric Circus is essentially the story of Giovanni Aldini, his desire for power, to right his family’s name, and the lengths he would go to get it.

So we wrote a draft of the show to fit the needs of Pepperdine (45 minutes, accommodating to a cast of x people, can be performed in a small space). We Skyped in for auditions and got to put in our two-cents as far as casting, and months later we flew down to Malibu to watch the final week of a 4 month rehearsal process.

While attending rehearsals, Clayton and I got the opportunity to teach some classes on collaboration, working with lyricists and what it’s like to be in the musical theater industry.

It was wonderful working with composers from all different backgrounds and watching our show come to life. The performance was a lot of fun and we both learned a great deal from the reading, and even on this flight home I have pages of notes for our next rewrite. Hi-Ho the glamorous life.

Clayton Daniel Briggs & Molly Reisman hit the road in service of their art (although I hear it was a lot of fun) 

8. You had a “Kids puppet musical produced at La MaMa experimental theater club a few weeks ago, What was your objective when you were beginning to write?(was it a plot outline or something else that led you into it?)

I have had two short musical theater puppet works that were featured as part of the 2017 and 2018 LaMaMa Puppet Slam (“TedQuest” with Composer Andrew Lynch and “Cow is Me” with composer Clayton Daniel Briggs, respectively). I have always loved working with puppets, and recently, I have been very interested in writing for young audiences. Jane Catherine Shaw, the curator of the La MaMa Puppet Slam as well as an artist in residence at La MaMa, approached Clayton Daniel Briggs and me with an idea to do an interactive puppet musical for kids.

Again, Clayton and I were curious about writing for young people, and getting a show produced at an institution like La MaMa is an honour and a great opportunity. Clayton and I wanted to make the show as accessible as possible, to audiences of all ages (but probably between the ages of 3-5).

9. You’re writing the book to a musical. Supposedly, music says what words cannot say. In your way of working, does the writer decide where the songs should go, or the composer? Or maybe is it more fluid than that and you both have a say?

Writing book for a musical is a thankless task. Usually, the only time anyone talks about the book to a show is to say that it sucks. That is to say, when a bookwriter is doing their job, they should be invisible. To me, the big thing when writing the book to a show is figuring out the structure and the natural arcs of the characters. In terms of where a moment is musicalized, yes, it is usually the most heightened moments of a character deciding to change, or to take action to pursue a goal. That being said, in my experience, it changes for every collaboration. Sometimes the book writer is in complete control of where songs should go, other times it is a group decision. I like working with the composer to figure out what moments are sung. It’s also interesting when the story tells you where the songs should go. You can look at a moment and say, Okay, this is this character’s big number where they finally take that step or do whatever, and you’ll find you’ll write it and edit it and edit it a million different ways and it still doesn’t feel right. Usually that means that you’re not writing the right moment, and to re-assess where the character is in the moment and what is really happening in the story.

10. What else have you written? (Novels, poems, songs, plays without music?)

I wrote a pretty bad angsty novel in middle school. I used to write poems and I have written a few short plays. I mostly write songs and musicals at the moment.

11. Would it be fair to say you’re living your dream? (are you doing what you hoped to do, the writing, going to NY and California, context with what you expected when you were young)

I am absolutely living my dream. I am so very lucky to be doing what I’m doing. It’s a hard way to live and I’m always exhausted, but when I’m reaching breaking point and looking at my 100 page to do list, I remind myself that I’m doing the thing I love to do most in the world, and I can write whatever I want. Musicals have always been my deepest yearning in life- to watch them, to act in them, to write them, so to be here in the sky, enroute from a performance in Malibu to an upcoming performance of another 29-hour equity reading in New York at the end of April, I am overwhelmed, terrified, and so grateful and happy.

I think the weird 9 year old me who used to sit in the car reading the lyrics of “If I Can’t Love Her” out of the Beauty and The Beast Original Broadway Cast Recording CD jacket over and over again in her spare time would be happy about where I’ve ended up.

12. Is there a teacher or influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

Truly, every faculty member at NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program is an inspiration. Sarah Schlesinger, the chair of the department, cares so much about all of her students and has created the best faculty ever to support them, and offers her students opportunities to grow and learn around every corner.

Donna DiNovelli was my thesis advisor for Keaton and The Whale. She’s a brilliant librettist, film writer and film director and she constantly challenged the way I look at theatrical structure and form, and when I grow up, I hope to be brilliant like her.

Rachel Sheinkin, bookwriter extraordinaire (Tony award winner for 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee among other things) taught our book-writing class and, among the many gems of wisdom she has bestowed upon me, reminded me that book-writing should be engaging for the audience, but also fun to write.

 WE’RE ALLOWED TO HAVE FUN! 

Finally, Mindi Dickstein (lyricist for Benny & Joon and Little Women) is my mentor, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Her writing is beautiful and so smart and so funny, and she is an unbelievable force to be reckoned with.

Basically, I’m so grateful to all of the strong bad-ass women who surround me.

13. Plugs for upcoming:

Keaton and The Whale will be produced with Amas Musical Theater sometime in the 2019-2020 season

Electric Circus is planning on having a staged reading in NYC Halloween 2019, probably at the Pit Loft.

Heartbeat, my second thesis show (book and lyrics by Molly Reisman, book and music by Nathan Fosbinder) will be receiving a staged reading at NYU GMTWP blackbox April 30^th 2019.