barczablog

My second time through the Canadian Opera Company’s Ariodante yesterday raised more questions in my mind.

There are the vocal questions, ones that aren’t new.  I have long wondered about the way we perceive operatic performance, that a perfect performance is sometimes less sympathetic than one that shows more of a struggle.  I used to contrast Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland in this regard, that one singer’s vocal production was itself a drama, compared to the other, who never seemed to have a struggle creating the sound.  I don’t want to add any layers of judgment to this, as I am not even sure I am reading this correctly, but some timbres and/or interpretive approaches work better for some roles than others.

But some of the singers in the COC Ariodante sang a performance that was mostly free of drama, while others made their vocalization another layer of the interpretation.

Jane Archibald as Ginevra is at the centre of the story, singing Handel with a near-perfect approach to every phrase, an ease that reminded me of Joan Sutherland.  There was never a moment when I wondered whether she could sing the part, never a phrase that seemed difficult. That effortless style is perhaps a good match for her role, as the innocent princess blind-sided by slander: plus a mysterious liquid someone slips into her drink.

Alice Coote as Ariodante (photo: Michael Cooper)

I would contrast her delivery sharply with that of her betrothed, Ariodante, as portrayed by Alice Coote.  They’re not only in different vocal categories of course but portraying different genders.   Yet Coote undertakes something very different.  In her coloratura she lets her emotions show, so that when she’s distraught, the notes almost seem to overwhelm her. When she sings her long lament “Scherza infida” –the moment I would call the musical highlight of the performance yesterday –we hear a great variety of sounds.  The passions of the character seem to be having their way with Ariodante.  And later when supposedly celebrating the upcoming happy resolution, Coote offers something very subtle and profound, in the aria “Dopo notte, atra e funesta”.  It’s usually the signal of the reversal of fortunes and signal of a happy ending to come.

But there are some significant differences in this production, as I noted in my earlier review.

And so both Ginevra and Ariodante have some very complex emotions as they come to the final numbers.  With Coote I am reminded of something we don’t see so much anymore: the use of a timbre to signal something complex and ambiguous.   I remember singers such as Maria Callas or Cesare Valetti creating a sense of sadness or melancholy within a single note.  While the music seemed to signal a happy resolution, Coote’s voice said something very different.

Ambur Braid as Dalinda also ventured into this dangerous territory, a wonderfully vulnerable portrayal, while her voice dared to risk all in her stratospheric ventures.

And then there’s the question of the story itself, a tale that might seem anti-feminist if not misogynistic in its enactment.  One woman is abused, while an innocent one is jailed.  Modernizing the story –as the production does in its setting—puts a curious sort of pressure on it.  Instead of placing Ginevra in a medieval prison, remote from the others while awaiting the outcome of the trial combat and therefore alone with her misery, she’s under a kind of house arrest in her bedroom.  As a result there are additional horrors in the community censure she experiences, strongly altering the way she experiences her father’s judgment.  Where we might roll our eyes at the rigidity of the old story, we can’t ignore the way it plays in the newer context, and therefore may sense the inevitability of the outcome we get in this production.

Sylvain Bergeron (photo by Didier Bertrand)

During the curtain calls I recognized a familiar face, namely Sylvain Bergeron playing lute among the cellists, earning them special recognition at the end and deservedly so.  Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra sound marvelous playing this Handel score.  I’m delighted to see that almost every remaining performance of Norma and Ariodante seem to be sold out. And no wonder.

Part of me is dying to spill the beans about the Canadian Opera Company’s co-production of Ariodante that opened this afternoon in a matinee at Four Seasons Centre, but I have to tread carefully, as I studiously avoid spoilers, especially when the advance knowledge might subtract from your experience. The headline is a half-truth because I only tell you some of what to expect.

I’ll be a bit more open after I’ve seen it a second time. Let me just say that I am eager for a second look at this dense and layered mixture. Expect something complex.  It had people talking to strangers in the bathroom.

I think I’ve missed opera, given that I dished out a load of superlatives last night yet feel that what I just saw might have been better. Could it really be that good? or am I now just over-dosing after suffering opera withdrawal, a happy Pollyanna ready to gush about anything.

But maybe I’ll put it in perspective by speaking briefly about Norma again. The singing last night was amazing, yes, and without any messy directorial overlay to prevent us from getting at Bellini. But I think I was craving complex flavours, and the COC delivered.  This
Ariodante is the product of the team of Richard Jones and ULTZ. This is the same Richard Jones whose 1993 Royal Opera House Ring Cycle influenced other cycles, including that of Robert Lepage; those crumbling gods at the end of Brunnhilde’s Immolation Scene are done much better in what the ROH offered in 1993 (alas no longer available on youtube). ULTZ is the designer working with Jones, but I don’t pretend to know whose ideas we’re really seeing, other than to say that the outcome is very stimulating.

I would identify this as director’s theatre but with the caveat that it’s of that rare sort that illuminates without obscuring the original, and adding something in the process. With Handel I am never going to be a textual fundamentalist, because there’s no real tradition to point to, unless we seek to reproduce the productions as Handel made them in his failed attempts in London (a failure that leads him to oratorio, especially Messiah). Ariodante for example is full of ballet music, but that doesn’t mean a director necessarily uses those passages for dance. Sometimes Jones gives us dance, sometimes drama employing puppets designed and directed by Finn Caldwell. We get to have it both ways, as the story arc is presented to us, even if the characters onstage don’t precisely behave as the score prescribes. So in other words there likely shouldn’t be the sort of controversy we had over Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni or Claus Guth’s Marriage of Figaro, both of which upset some people for the departures and alterations to beloved works. Ariodante doesn’t have nearly so many alterations, and more importantly, as a non-canonical work, nobody’s going to be terribly upset at departures from a story that most people don’t even know.

There are nonetheless additional layers that aren’t in the text. The action has been moved to a small Scottish island, the story set in a recent past even if the actions of the story –particularly justice done by fighting duels—are more fitting for previous centuries rather than recently. Such infelicities can be ignored when the director’s overlay illuminates: as this one does. It’s normal for Polinesso to conspire to undermine his political rival Ariodante (sabotaging his marriage to the princess Ginevra, not just by slandering her, but by arranging to have Ariodante see Dalinda, a co-conspirator dressed exactly as Ginevra seeming to have a liaison with Polinesso). In Jones’ reading Polinesso is a preacher whose rants get the tiny community of this production riled up at the sinful actions that Ginevra is alleged to have committed.

(l-r) Varduhi Abrahamyan in preacher garb as Polinesso (in background), Jane Archibald as Ginevra and Ambur Braid as Dalinda in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Ariodante, 2016. (photo: Michael Cooper)

His co-conspirator Dalinda is not merely infatuated with Polinesso, but wears the visible bruises, as we discover a second rougher look corresponding to the person underneath.

Varduhi Abrahamyan as Polinesso and Ambur Braid as Dalinda (in background) in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Ariodante, 2016. (photo: Michael Cooper)

The action of the story invites comparisons between pairs:

• Ginevra and her double Dalinda: both of whom sing coloratura soprano, although one is a princess, one is of a lower class
• Ariodante and his political rival Polinesso: both of whom are male characters sung by mezzo-sopranos in male attire
• Lurcanio and Polinesso, who offer two contrasting ways to pursue Dalinda (Lurcanio rejected initially, Polinesso rejecting Dalinda but pursued by her nonetheless); but Lurcanio recovers from rejection to become the most powerful agent in the story, defying Polinesso and defeating him in combat

Jane Archibald as Ginevra is the focus of the production, a starring role that makes great use of her vocal abilities. Hers is a different sound from that of Ambur Braid, who steals the show as Dalinda.  Varduhl Abrahamyan as Polinesso was genuinely scary, and one of the most believably male trouser performances I’ve ever seen, especially when beating up on Braid.  Yet it was Braid and not Archibald or Abrahamyan who was the most interesting character onstage, a flawed individual right on the boundary between pathos and humour, many of her lines drawing nervous giggles from the audience. Alice Coote in the title role had a swaggering realism as a man, believably opting out of the first act bridal dance like so many men I’ve seen fleeing the dance-floor. Her singing is not overpowering, her coloratura not especially precise, but she offers something more important by inhabiting genuine feelings during her arias, authentic and in the moment. Owen McCausland was a suitably macho Lurcanio. While there were several poignant lament arias–one each for Braid, Coote and Archibald—the most moving number for me dramatically, one that elicited dead silence in the hall was the reconciliation duet between Braid & McCausland, a matter of question marks and possibilities rather than a genuine pathway. Johannes Weisser as King and Ginevra’s father gets to be the figure of dominance at the head of this quirky island of fundamentalists.

The production is full of self-reflexive and meta-theatrical moments, particularly in the use of puppetry in several key moments that are scored as ballet, but of course, can be staged any way the director wants. This is especially powerful at the climax of Acts II (Ginevra’s nightmares resembling hallucinations) and III (the resolution of the story).

A scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Ariodante, 2016 featuring Finn Caldwell’s puppet design/direction (photo: Michael Cooper)

The chorus have their moments as do the orchestra, brisk and crisp throughout under the direction of Johannes Debus, although it might have been a bit too brisk, considering that there were a couple of moments when soloists seemed hard-pressed to keep up. But even so the complexities of the stage picture matched the lovely sonorities presented to our ears.

Ariodante continues until November 4th at the Four Seasons Centre. For further information click here.

This isn’t your usual Norma. It’s an opera that requires talent and skill far above and beyond what’s usual or normal.  Believe the hype about Sondra Radvanovsky, who is singing the lead in Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece, in a cast as strong as any I’ve ever seen for a Canadian Opera Company production.  I saw it tonight and am happy to be seeing it again.

Sondra Radvanovsky as Norma in the Canadian Opera Company/San Francisco Opera (SFO)/Gran Teatre del Liceu/Lyric Opera of Chicago co-production of Norma, 2014, SFO. (Photo: Cory Weaver)

I’m very lucky that I’ve seen Radvanovsky enough times that I now begin to know some of her mannerisms, to recognize certain quirks of her performance.  In her longest roles she knows how to save her energy, brilliantly marshaling her resources for key phrases, climactic scenes.  And then when the going gets tough she gets a look in her eyes that’s totally ferocious, such that if you were the high notes printed in the score you’d be scared of what she’s about to do to you.  She seems to click into a higher gear, get more alert, more energized, her eyes widening and the scene and the music effortlessly being devoured as though she were a shark and the whole theatre full of people were her dinner.  She effortlessly inhales us, her voice swallowing two thousand of us in one gulp.  Yes she is a humble presence, especially during curtain calls, but in those moments when she clicks into that take no prisoners mode of singing she could be a thousand feet tall, her voice undaunted by any big orchestration or chorus competing with her for our attention.  Oh sure, there are other people onstage with her and they were good.  But at those key moments she totally makes everyone, everything vanish.

I guess you can tell that I like what she did.

There are times I think of opera as escapism, especially lately.  I’ve been watching way too much CNN  although tonight I will turn on Saturday Night Live, which begins in a few minutes.  I couldn’t help noticing that maybe the story of Norma isn’t so old.  A man who has kids with one woman falls in love with another younger woman, and would run off with her.  Act I could be the story of either of the US Presidential nominees, although when we get to the second act it turns out that the Druids and Romans are better behaved than our contemporary liars and cheaters.  And why didn’t I realize before, that if a serial monogamist has kids from a previous wife that he left, the excellence of the kids is probably more a testimonial to the mom than the dad?  Yes I was fitting the moderns to the operatic template like paper dolls, trying on outfits, Norma sometimes reminding me of Ivana confronting Melania, sometimes reminding me more of HRC as she tells a colossal lie with a straight face to a crowd of people.  And perhaps people used to leap into pyres at the ends of stories to spare us the endless hours of dissection on CNN, a merciful option that unfortunately is missing from the 21st century version.  But pardon me, I digress.

Kevin Newsbury’s production is recognizably the usual story, unencumbered by a directorial overlay.  We’re in a world reminiscent of “Game  of Thrones” which is to say that they don’t get in the way of the story.   Stephen Lord brings his high octane conducting to the orchestra pit, holding nothing back.

Yes there were other singers besides Sondra Radvanovsky, and they were quite good.  Russell Thomas was a better fit tonight as Pollione than in Carmen last year (when he was quite good), the voice effortlessly soaring to a ton of high notes, and an especially good casting choice considering the powerful sound emanating from the pit thanks to Lord.   It was great to hear Isabel Leonard again, a beautiful technique up to all the challenges Bellini threw her way, and a tone that blended perfectly with Radvanovsky.  Dimitriy Ivashchenko too was a welcome return, the same big bold sound he made as Hunding a couple of years ago but entirely Italianate this time.

Among such a talented group, the two young Canadians in smaller parts weren’t at all out of place, Charles Sy as Flavio and Aviva Fortunata as Clotilde.  And the COC Chorus sounded great too.

The time flies by on the wings of the bel canto.  I’m looking forward to seeing this again.  Norma will be presented at the Four Seasons Centre by the Canadian Opera Company until November 5th.  Don’t miss it.