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Ah such a long title. I’m already being Wagnerian.

He’s everywhere whether you know it or not, Wagner not precisely über alles, but still ubiquitous. We talked about him inevitably last night in class, discussing the dramaturgy of silent film, but we could just as easily have been talking about the device on which you’re reading this. Ever notice that when your device wants to inform you that you’ve made a bad choice there’s a funny wonky sound? Or if you’re being notified that you have something good, such as a new text, you get an affirmative sound? Yes that’s Wagnerian, that unity between the machine and the content.

No Wagner didn’t know about computers or silent film (having died back in 1883), but he did toss out the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. It’s sometimes translated as “total art work”, but that’s confusing. He was writing about an ideal, back in a time when designers and directors and performers were upstaging one another, rather than working together towards a single unified concept. So many things work that way now –not just artistic creations like our films or plays but also our machines too–that it’s hard to remember that things used to be way way messier at one time.

And so of course i have to think about Wagner after having seen: Wagner. I finally made it to the Canadian Opera Company Die Walküre, late in the run. Everyone knows their music and their movements exquisitely well by now, how arrogant I am to think I can walk in there for oh 4.5 hours, and then what… create comments within an hour, when they’ve been working on this for literally weeks? Yes, I suppose I must sound a bit like Wagner, a man with a colossal ego and the ability to upset whole nations. If nothing else he is a lesson in remembering that just because an artist is a complete jerk doesn’t mean his art can’t be wonderful.

I was joking to my friend sitting beside me: “I don’t need my voice tomorrow”. We bravo’d extensively. She actually emitted something more like a scream at one point, although I was assured that it was carefully executed to leave the voice intact.

It struck me as ironic that there were as many departures from the text in Atom Egoyan’s production of Walküre as in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni. But –as my friend reminded me—with Wagner we’re long accustomed to Regietheater (director’s theatre), indeed it’s almost de rigueur at this point. I think Robert Lepage’s Ring at the Metropolitan Opera met with at least some critical disapproval because Lepage had the temerity to tell the story as written. Audiences experienced Götterdämmerung without any fancy conceptual overlay.

I wonder though if I should call it “Egoyan’s Walküre”?   Oh he certainly made some interesting choices, don’t get me wrong. But in a real sense, one could question whose Walküre this is, as so many contributed to the total work. Given that the run is almost over –a great success by most standards I am sure—why don’t we try to answer that question, and find some candidates.

When you sit down for the first act, the story seems to be a love triangle.

But before we see anyone we’re listening to that COC orchestra led by Johannes Debus. The orchestra doesn’t go quite as fast as they did in Richard Bradshaw’s day –a quality I loved—but it’s still often quite quick, as for instance in the opening ten minutes of the last act, played brilliantly. Would it be Debus´Walküre?

Hm. Nobody would call it Hunding’s opera, yet what about Dimitry Ivaschenko, so impressive as the wronged husband, lugging huge hunks of animal haunch that he munches on when he’s not noticing how much his dinner guest resembles his wife. The voice is fabulous, powerfully penetrating, as is the stage presence. Given that he’s likely to use this as a stepping stone (although he’s already very successful in Europe) as Americans come to Toronto intent on hearing the soprano and discovering this wonderful artist, you would at least be justified in calling this Ivaschenko’s Walküre.

Clifton Forbis is back in the role of Siegmund that he created when Egoyan’s production (haha bet you though I was going to call it “Egoyan’s Walküre”..! whoops I guess I just did….) was new more than a decade ago. Physically it’s a mature Siegmund, who looks older than his onstage twin, at least from my vantage point in the second row. But the voice? He missed part of the run due to illness, and even tonight we heard coughs. But whenever he appears the story seems to be about him, the music coming to life. The further we got into the role, the better he sounded. Forbis’ Walküre? Perhaps.

The production places a great deal of emphasis on Sieglinde and her visions. Heidi Melton’s Walküre? I cried at her big climax in the last act. I admit I giggled a bit when I saw Christine Goerke begin to give Sieglinde—who is pregnant, we discover—advice as a mom, recalling some of the posts she’s made on social media. Both Melton & Goerke have such lovely vibrant facial expressions, it was a particular pleasure sitting up close. When the two women were singing it was totally amazing.

Soprano Christine Goerke (photo by Gary Mulcahey)

How about Christine Goerke’s Walküre? I think you could make a solid case, considering the excitement her casting created. Had she been merely okay the audiences would still have been centred on her. But in fact this was –as you may have heard—completely worth the hype, a performance that even had some genuine swagger to it. When Goerke sings that battle cry to introduce herself at the beginning of Act II she made it a bit of comedy, teasing her dad, at times shining that wacky light –part of Michael Levine’s design—onto him. If the triumph were only in the vocal realm that would still be huge news, given the shortage of genuine dramatic sopranos. Goerke is also a wonderful actress, and will be a joy to watch as she works through the different parts of Brunnhilde in the other two Ring operas that are ahead.

Even so, there might be others who might want to wrest the opera away. Johan Reuter as Wotan gets the last words, and they’re particularly beautiful the way he sang them. While the story in Act I seems to be all about the twins, while the story then gets complicated with the arrival of immortals for Act II, this opera is really about Wotan and his estrangement from himself: enacted via his daughter Valkyries, especially Brunnhilde. In passing I should mention that another Valkyrie, namely the role of Helmwige, can be understood as a future Brunnhilde given that she sings her own brief version of the war-cry in the opening to Act III. Aviva Fortunata was exquisite in her brief appearance.

Who else might claim Walküre?

There’s the fellow whose set & costume design is being used again, namely Michael Levine. I adore these designs, which serve the opera wonderfully. They serve the comical opening to Act III, the metaphysical overtones in Act II (when Wotan & Fricka are debating the whole love triangle, while standing over the sleeping bodies of Siegmund & Sieglinde). There’s so much one could say about the design, although I think it’s almost too much of a good thing. My favourite moment in the production as I saw it in the old theatre over a decade ago was largely invisible where I was sitting, obscured by parts of the set. Was I sitting behind a pillar? Nope, I was about ten feet away from the conductor. He didn’t see it either. Is this set too much of a good thing? I ask that in context with the comment from Debbie Voigt during the documentary on the Lepage Ring, when at one point she categorically refuses to get back on the set, although she eventually would relent. There are no moving planks in this set, just lots of small parts that seem designed to trip up singers. I didn’t see anyone fall, so perhaps I sound unkind. I repeat, I love this set. It manages to simultaneously suggest the grandeur of the gods –especially in Acts II and III—and the process of decay, pieces of flooring coming up, the tree chopped up into pieces.  It always gives us several wonderful things to look at throughout, when it’s not almost blinding us with glaring lights.

So while I may sound as though I am making the case for Levine’s Walküre I am inclined to look elsewhere. There’s the company’s General Director, Alexander Neef, whose assembly of talent is the reason for the excitement. I love that he brought us Tcherniakov‘s DG, complete with Russell Braun, Michael Schade, Jane Archibald, etc, yet he’s also giving us a decidedly Canadian company, whether in the Zerlina of Sasha Djihanian, the Helmwige of Aviva Fortunata, or several other contributors, Egoyan and Levine perhaps most prominent among them.

I suppose I should simply upload this now and go to bed. On the weekend there’s another performance of each opera remaining. If you can go to either –or both—I would heartily recommend you do so. It’s quite an amazing pair of productions.

The quote in the headline is the witty riposte of Ian Henderson as part of the conversation about Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni. You may have thought of it as Mozart’s Don Giovanni,…? ha! but when a modern opera director gets their hands on one of the warhorses it can be contentious.

Ian’s comments (found here if you skip to the bottom of my review of opening night) are wittier than most, but in context with concerns about the production’s misogyny. While it may be true – that at times the director is rough on the women in this opera— I feel it goes both ways, as life is every bit as rough on the men, Don Giovanni included, who is the chief victim of this version of the story.

I got to see the show for a second time tonight, fresh from a production of von Horvath’s Tales of the Vienna Woods at Ryerson Theatre School. Mozart is a great cure for the chronic ear-worms I have from hearing and playing so much Johann Strauss over the past month of rehearsals & performances. Resounding in my head at the moment? the glory of a COC cast without any weaknesses –Russell Braun, Jennifer Holloway, Jane Archibald, Kyle Ketelsen, Michael Schade, Sasha Djihanian, Zachary Nelson, Andrea Silvestrelli– and the orchestra.

Russell Braun’s Don Giovanni sometimes resembles a singer in a monodrama (borrowing an idea from one of James Jorden’s reviews, coincidentally about another Don Giovanni, but in a very different sense). How ? While Kyle Ketelsen or Jennifer Holloway are singing powerfully in his face, Braun sings some of the quietest subtlest recitative I’ve ever heard. Sitting up close I recognize that it’s as though he’s in his own little private Espagna, crooning to himself, hallucinating at times (twice seeing someone who looks just like the Commendatore venture onto the stage), when he isn’t living the high life (or the life high). The portrayal is better, deeper & more powerful than what he gave us opening night, but it may also be the benefit of sitting closer, picking up little nuances that you miss when you’re sitting further away.

Michael Schade continues to impress me with his range of emotions. In “dalla sua pace” he runs the gamut of emotion, not just the moment when he’s in a foetal position that I alluded to in the earlier review, but instances of power, passion, reflection, sadness, triumph, all in the space of a wonderfully dynamic few minutes.

It’s really crazy to single anyone out though. Kyle Ketelsen is amazing, even better up close with his physical eloquence, including everything from popping bubble gum to trick moves with a yo-yo. Jane Archibald sounded better tonight, possibly because she’d been announced as unwell back in December when she sang in the TSO Messiah, and has finally shaken off her virus; and she was deliciously comical, once I began to wrap my head around Tcherniakov’s version, a reading that’s very dark at times, never dull, but often hysterically funny. I felt like a fish out of water, sitting beside a newcomer to the opera, and in the second row, which meant we were immersed in the comedy. I don’t understand why there weren’t more laughs, unless it’s because some people think you’re not supposed to laugh at an opera. But I do understand why there weren’t more bravos during the show, as there were many times that everyone was silent in a kind of awe. Where the music signals a clear break for applause, they went wild.

I feel there’s a cautionary note that should go with productions such as this one. “If you’re a person who arrives with stipulations, either lose them now or prepare to feel frustrated”.  Seeing an opera isn’t like buying real estate. Yes you can insist that your house must have a walk in closet or 4 bathrooms or whatever floats your boat.  Stipulations at the opera? They may help you understand what you’re seeing but they will not make you happy.  Nope. Happiness is arriving at the opera, ready to let the opera move you any way it wants to move you.   Now of course there are moments where I am not sure precisely what was happening.  We didn’t get the usual gag from Donna Elvira’s arrival, because Tcherniakov does it differently.  I don’t pretend to understand what his version “means” in the arcane subtextual world created for the performers. So what.   In most of the opera it makes exquisite sense even at times like this, when I’m scratching my head.  There are far worse examples I could point to, where a director’s insight that works 80% of the time leads to moments or entire scenes that are ludicrous because of how badly they serve the text & the performers, but slavishly serve a concept. Tcherniakov’s concept illuminates a far higher percentage of the text, and perhaps more importantly, when it works it’s amazing, especially when you sit up close.

And here’s another thought, from the morning after, that perhaps this is really about our society’s maturation.  DG is a throwback of sorts, certainly someone valorized in other centuries.  The first time I was confronted with Tcherniakov’s modernization i too was stuck in that slough of despond where everyone seems stuck for much of Act II, unable to shake off the heavy legacy of past DGs, of honour and lies and behaviour that’s ultimately unhealthy. Last night I realized what that Act II struggle was about. We watched the three women gradually come back from a very dark place, we see Ottavio man up, and Masetto have his own crisis, so that in the end the cast seems to outgrow the childishness of what DG represents, the old false social archetypes that we no longer can live honourably. Perhaps this is like an ordeal for the collective unconscious, as each archetype grows up: except DG himself.  DG (and also Don JianGhomeshi too, yes we can use Ian Henderson’s version) represents everything we are outgrowing, in the glare of the trials and the screams of sexual assault.

Don Giovanni runs until February 21st.  See it if you can.

click for more information (photo by Michael Cooper)

Today’s opening of the Canadian Opera co-production of Don Giovanni directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov met with a mixed reception at the Four Seasons Centre. I heard a few boos, saw some empty seats at the end and heard an earful from my companion. That doesn’t mean it’s not a success, given that the COC knew going in that some people wouldn’t like it. You can’t please everyone, especially when you hand your opera over to someone with a reputation for radical & provocative direction. People wanting a conservative approach –such as those who boo’d when Tcherniakov came out for his bow—likely knew that this wasn’t that kind of show.  But then again this review isn’t really addressed to those people.

I’ve seen a few of Tcherniakov’s productions on video, and I liked some better than others. I adored his Prince Igor and Wozzeck, quite liked Ruslan and Ludmilla, but wasn’t as infatuated with either Il trovatore or Don Giovanni. You’ll notice that the two I liked least are so well-known as to be warhorses, operas whose familiarity likely represented a challenge to the director: to do something new with those overly familiar texts, whereas the other three were all works where I felt the director was free to simply direct. And so I think Tcherniakov came in feeling the need to shake things up, to get the dust off the stone guest and everything else in the story as well. While I didn’t like every second it was stimulating and better than most DG’s I’ve seen, a great piece of theatre. And I can’t deny that the dynamic with the resistant ones (including the conversations with my companion) was an added bit of entertainment. Some of the scenes seem designed to deliberately play with our expectations, none more so than the usually sentimental “vedrai carino”, where Masetto and Zerlina usually reconcile. But in an anti-romantic universe the happy ending is elusive, especially when you have Tcherniakov teasing you without mercy.

Tcherniakov’s set design could be a distant cousin to the one for Atom Egoyan’s Cosi fan tutte.  While this opera isn’t a school for lovers –or seducers– the whole opera happens in a kind of library that in some sense represents the collective mind.  It’s a mythical place, a big metaphor, but i won’t pretend i’ve decoded its implications.  Not by a long shot.

There are at least two big changes from the original text in Tcherniakov’s production. One is the insertion of big lapses of time. A curtain will come down, while a projected title informs us that a certain number of days or weeks has gone by. For some scenes this is pure magic. For example in the first ensemble, where Donna Anna runs off to get help, she returns moments later with Don Ottavio & servants, to find her father slain. Instead, a few days pass, and now we get the same formal lines from Donna Anna in a funeral parlour, lines that seem to make much more sense in Tcherniakov’s version. My one problem with these insertions has to do with overall pace. Tcherniakov sometimes has his cast performing their recit as though it were Pinter, inserting colossal pauses (in addition to the ones when the curtain suddenly flops down, telling us of a new delay in the story), that might be meaningful, and add gravitas. But the weight comes at the expense of energy, and makes DG a longer and darker night than it has to be.   I suppose that’s how Tcherniakov likes it.

The second change is a profound revision to the relationships between the personages in the story. This too adds depths & gravitas, due to new familial connections. There’s a Jungian dimension when we start wondering about all the interactions as having overtones of other kinds of connection. The word I think I need to use is “problematize” for almost everything that one could take for granted in the text. Zerlina now has a family relationship to Don Giovanni, so the seduction scene has a different meaning.

Tcherniakov always seems to get full commitment from his cast, so that they’re never out of character for the entire night, and there are always several places you can look in his stage picture. But there are moments when the lines that are sung seem to make no literal sense, because one has to decode what’s happening, to step over the virtual corpse of the original text that’s been knocked down at times. So long as you don’t resent that imposition of new meanings, it can be hugely enjoyable.  Maybe it makes sense in his alternate world, but several times I was puzzled, speaking as someone who knows this opera so well that I know almost every line by heart. Maybe I am in need of an intervention, a visit by a bunch of people dressed up as the characters in Don Giovanni to rescue me from my dysfunctional relationship with the text. But then again the last scene was a lot like an intervention for DG, even if the addict being helped could be the conservative listener/viewer as much as that womanizing Don.

I’m a lover of abstract art and someone who enjoys ambiguity, not someone who needs to have everything explained. For example I don’t know what happened at the end, when the fellow who sang the Commendatore re-appears at the end and the lines seems to suggest that the Don is going to Hell. I don’t mind, it’s fabulous music. The final moments—when the Don is alive, and those who have been in thrall to him have finally shaken off his control and celebrate their freedom—are wonderful. While there are moments that are confusing, that are still enjoyable, presented with commitment & passion; and quite a few stretches of the opera that make more sense in this production than in any Don Giovanni I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen lots of them. While I like that sense of being disoriented & challenged, some in the audience don’t like that, and they voiced their displeasure.

The cast is strong. Russell Braun continues to captivate with the COC, a winning streak going back over several productions. The voice is sometimes delicate as in his Act II serenade, sometimes powerful, as in the finale to Act I. Everything Tcherniakov is doing with the Don seems to work for Braun, whether he’s at the centre of our focus or simply lurking in the shadows.

Kyle Ketelsen as Leporello is every bit as watchable. The voice is stunning and never less than beautiful, while the body-language is strongly suggestive of a playful servant right out of Commedia dell’arte even if Tcherniakov’s modernized reading makes no direct references to the style. Leporello is not actually a servant, his relationship with the Don being left quite ambiguous. Whenever KK was onstage he was usually the one I was watching.

(l-r) Russell Braun as Don Giovanni and Kyle Ketelsen as Leporello (Photo: Chris Hutcheson)

Michael Schade’s Don Ottavio isn’t like what one usually gets in this role. With the passing of the Commendatore Ottavio becomes something like the leader of the family, a leadership that’s visible in Schade’s performance. The singing was as flawless as ever: meaning that I don’t think I’ve ever heard this man sing sharp or flat in years and years of roles here at the COC. Some lines were exquisitely delicate, others more powerful. This might be the most macho & confident “Il mio tesoro” I’ve ever seen, sung to a group of characters who seemed to be lost in the slough of despond. Yet his “dalla sua pace” is achingly vulnerable, some of it sung in a foetal position.

Jane Archibald as Donna Anna and Michael Schade as Don Ottavio (Photo: Michael Cooper)

Jane Archibald sings a wonderful Donna Anna even if Tcherniakov seems to dislike the character & what she represents, considering what he puts her through. At the end we find a genuine reconciliation both with her and the entire cast in the final great aria, which the director used as a kind of abstract template for everyone to drift back in the direction of sanity & possible fulfillment after the travails of earlier scenes. While her lines resist sense—because the lines are meant for Ottavio, not the others—I was grateful that for once the aria seemed to have a central purpose in the story instead of feeling like something Mozart tacked on (as it can in some productions).  It’s such a beautiful piece of music, especially once Archibald cuts loose in the last part that I completely teared up watching this music used in such an original way.

Jennifer Holloway is given a great deal to digest as Elvira, the most interesting of the women in most DG productions that i can recall. She is both an agent and also a reactive canvas, as we watch her reactions. Holloway’s intensity was often the most profound of anyone on the stage, and every moment of her role made sense to me (something I can’t say of everyone in the opera).

I’ll be seeing DG again from up close, hoping I understand it better next time. The production runs until Feb 21st. I’d recommend that you see it if you can.

click for more information (photo: Michael Cooper)