Beatriz Boizán: Pasión

Posted on November 19, 2013 by barczablog

Sometimes artists show two or more sides.  The different roles played in a concert hall or in a recording studio bring out different aspects of a creative personality, at least as masks if not as divergent personalities.

Click for information about obtaining the CD

That’s how I’m thinking, as I look at the different sides of the pianist Beatriz Boizán.  Her recent concert, launching a CD, could have been sub-titled “Action” for its vibrant physical appeal.  If “Action“ is to be at one extreme, the CD, titled “Pasión” is the opposite.  However this isn’t just a fantasy.  I saw the concert, which led me to use the word “feral”.

And the CD?  I think “passionate” is the right adjective, one that I’d like to unpack for a moment.  The word get thrown around a fair bit without any context.  A passionate embrace is one full of emotion, but not necessarily loud or active.  I believe it’s understood as a surrender to feelings, as if one were possessed by sensation.  In a CD, that means we’re encountering profound emotion in these compositions, but in the compact packages of these performances.  The music doesn’t shout, but speaks eloquently, moving us.

Boizán plays the most difficult pieces on her CD differently than she played them in live performance.  Where she was willing to risk the occasional missed note in the boldness of her attack, on the CD she manages to be carefully precise, containing the emotion in a tidy package.

Boizán takes us on a tour of Latin pianism, especially as it leads to two great masters of Cuban music.  I knew the famous names on this album, but until now did not know the Cubans, even though one is responsible for the most famous tune on the entire album:

  • Ernesto Lecuona 1895 –1963 (Cuban), including “Malagueňa”
  • Antonio Soler 1729- 1783 (Spanish), who wrote keyboard sonatas that remind me of Domenico Scarlatti, but with a Spanish flair
  • Ignacio Cervantes 1847 – 1905  (Cuban)? i am pleased to meet this subtle voice, who doesn’t seem at all out of his depth alongside the acknowledged Spanish masters of the piano
  • Isaac Albeniz 1860 –  1909 (Spanish)
  • Alberto Ginastera  1916 –1983 (Argentinian)

While this is a more passionate series of readings than what Boizán offered a few weeks ago, that is, with some of the emotion internalized rather than fully expressed in action, she holds nothing back  when we get to Albeniz’s fiendishly difficult “Corpus Christi en Sevilla”, processional music of a Sevillian sound-scape that gradually calms itself.  This is among the most difficult pieces for a pianist, powerful octaves hammering in both hands, a challenge to articulate clearly.  Boizán finds the right notes to emphasize, bringing forth key parts of the dense texture, wearing her Latina allegiance on her sleeve.

The picture is more abstracted in Ginastera’s Dances, such as “Danza del Gaucho Matrero”, a luscious waterfall of notes pouring in quick succession. Pasión is a wonderful CD, roughly an hour of music that introduces me both to the artist –who I’ve seen only in the one concert—and to several of her favourite composers. I am persuaded to make further investigations of Cuban music.

You would have no better place to begin such an investigation than with Pasión.

Pianist Beatriz Boizan in one of her Umetsu gowns (photo by Elizabeth Bowman)

Pianist Beatriz Boizan (photo by Elizabeth Bowman)

Posted in Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Esprit /Evergreen: O Gamelan

Posted on November 18, 2013 by barczablog

“O Gamelan” is both José Evangelista’s composition & a handy name for tonight’s program by Esprit Orchestra, suggesting a genuine reverence for the Balinese ensemble of that name.  Many of the works on the program employed some or all of the players of Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan, in various constellations of players & instrumentation.  In addition we were treated to a dance performance from Evie Suyadnyani, World Music Visitor at the U of T‘s Faculty of Music (which is perhaps one reason I saw the Dean of the Faculty in attendance). My head is still buzzing in a good way from this exquisitely intercultural experience.

Alex Pauk

Alex Pauk

We began & ended with orchestral works invoking gamelan sounds via conventional western instruments.  Echo Spirit Isle (1983), a work by Alex Pauk (composer & also the conductor & artistic director of Esprit)  started us off.  When the orchestra was playing repeated notes (aka ostinati) I thought of Colin McPhee, a composer whose works suggest Balinese music.  Pauk also generated some big tutti, and passages of neutral colour something like washes of colour on paper.  Pauk’s work was one of the bookends for the evening.   Claude Vivier’s Pulau Dewata (1977), which closed the concert, also had me in mind of McPhee: which is to say that some of the passages sound like attempts to echo or even transcribe a gamelan’s timbres and effects using conventional instrumentation.

Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan (click picture for more information)

Chan Ka Nin’s Éveil aux oiseaux (2005) employed eleven members of Esprit + nine gamelan instruments played by Evergreen personnel.  At times they blend, at other times there are distinct differences in the ways each culture’s instruments are used.  Several moments are wonderfully ambiguous, creating sounds and combinations that are hard to place, delightfully disorienting.  The first sounds we hear reminded me of the deep Tibetan horn-sound associated with Buddhist ceremonies, a sound that gave me chills immediately.  In an evening where Gamelan sounds seemed to instantly guarantee entry into the spirit of another culture, this composition was for me the most authentic, precisely because I couldn’t place it within any culture, any particular place or time.  Very impressive!

Next came something absolutely different in every respect. Lou Harrison’s Threnody for Carlos Chavez for viola and gamelan (1978) suddenly brought us into something intimate and the most tonal work we’d hear all night.  Violist Douglas Perry stood alongside seven of the Evergreen players, as he played something resembling a folk song, accompanied by the most delicate sounds I think I’ve ever heard from Evergreen.  For all intents & purposes, this is a thoroughly sensuous song, with an accompaniment that likely could be handled by one or two players, but instead flitting around seven different players.

Then we came to the work giving its title to the concert, namely José Evangelista’s O Gamelan, using a modern orchestra to suggest the magical sounds of a gamelan.  I was at times unable to figure out what instruments were playing to create the timbres.  Evangelista speaks of the gamelan as a goal, suggesting that its sound is an ideal.

My favourite piece on the program was from André Ristic, a work titled Project “Peuple” for gamelan & ensemble.  It’s a spectacularly clever composition.  If I were to quote the composer’s program notes to describe its ambitions you would likely be struck by the wit of the composer.

Two groups of individuals (the gamelan percussions and winds) are trying to find a “meeting point” through the inspiration provided by a “leader” (the double bass).  They succeed and the leader goes despotic.

Ristic refers to the concerto, in looking at the interactions of these musical forces.  The only work I can think of that’s comparable is Berlioz’s Harolde en Italie, a concerto that dramatizes the Byronic hero using a viola & orchestra.  Why am I not surprised that Ristic is from the former Yugoslavia?  I’ve met so many from this country whose well-developed political awareness boils over in the arts.  At the beginning, the groups of instruments –the western gang & the gamelan—are like political cartoons, satirical caricatures of two wildly disparate groups unable to communicate.  Gradually the double bass asserts itself, leading to one of the most delicious bits of comic virtuosity I’ve ever heard & seen, the bass player like a ferocious demagogue with a bow.

Pauk (conducting the group from Esprit + the Evergreen players) led a delightfully tight reading.

Esprit return January 26th, 2014 with a program titled “Strange Matter”
(…click logo for more information)

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Christian Jeffries: The Truth About Xmas

Posted on November 16, 2013 by barczablog

I’ve never fully swallowed the Norman Rockwell images showing big happy families at Christmas, which leaves me much more comfortable coming at Christmas via angst than angels.

No wonder I feel as though I’m on the same page with Christian Jeffries.  His latest –presented Friday November 15th—reprises last year’s yuletide show,  called “Christian Jeffries: The Truth About Xmas—Live at the Flying Beaver Pubaret”.

We’re through the looking glass now.  Our mayor is eating at home, so there’s nothing especially shocking about flying beaver.  At one time the gay and lesbian demimonde helped us identify the edges of our world.  We no longer have our orientation, our up & down, our left & right, not under the current bizarre circumstances.  I felt a curious sense of nostalgia for the old days watching Jeffries, a time when you knew good & bad, and could rely on them to wear the right colour hat.

Jeffries is a complete performer, not just a singer but also a wonderful raconteur who holds the audience in the palm of his hand while drily making commentary on the wacky world we inhabit.  I’d love to spend the entire time listening to the singing voice, but then I’d lose that other dimension.

Christian Jeffries (photo by Erika Barcza)

Christian Jeffries (photo by Erika Barcza)

Jeffries sang with a trio, namely Donavon LeNabat at the piano, Dustin Shaskin on bass & Jamie Bird on drums.

While many of their songs are familiar melodies of Christmas, there was rarely anything conventional about the readings.  LeNabat & Jeffries often took adventurous routes from one chord to the next, as in a wonderfully jazzy reading of the Christmas Song for example.  Jeffries is a deceptive singer because his diction is so amazingly clear –I don’t think I missed a syllable all night—and his pitch so precise.  He makes it sound very easy, cruising through changes, bouncing around harmonies that make the most familiar song sound brand new.  We sat through an evening of charm & schmooze & effortless singing that lasted well over two hours, but felt like nothing. I didn’t want it to end.

I felt very comfortable as Jeffries offered himself as a kind of therapist for our collective ills.  No, we didn’t actually get on a couch, but even so, he spoke to us of how Christmas is challenging, a holiday for misfits.  I can relate, and evidently everyone else in the Flying Beaver felt as I did.  He can make us scream with laughter or applaud at the top of our lungs, yet for the last part of the second set we were exploring something a bit more serious & touching than just silliness.

Christian Jeffries is unlike any other performer I’ve ever seen or heard.  The voice is effortless, fabulously musical, floating up to notes without any anxiety that he can make it.  He dresses on the boundaries between male and female, inhabiting a persona with a drag element, but underplayed.  Seriously, that sort of description is so inadequate, so negative ultimately.  I believe Jeffries –perhaps with LeNabat along for the ride—should try performing something conventionally jazzy.  Yes I love the patter, but I simply mean that their chops are so good that they could fly purely on the basis of their musical wings, without relying upon their considerable cabaret skills.  From a  purely selfish perspective I’d want to keep Jeffries a secret, so that his extraordinary talent would stay in tiny venues like this one, where he must perform so intimately that every nuance is right in front of you.  But he deserves a bigger audience, the world needs to see and hear this amazing performer.

I’ll keep my ears open for the next show.  I understand something’s probably coming for Valentine’s Day.  I will do my best to let people know beforehand.

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Civil Rites

Posted on November 12, 2013 by barczablog

It’s quite a bargain, this deal we’ve struck.  Any social contract is a trade-off, giving something to get something.  Nobody ever thinks about it, this amazing exchange, because it’s almost totally invisible, unless someone shines light on it, as they do at certain times of year.

Today is a day when people may seem to reflect on that social contract, even if the language is indirect.  November 11th is Remembrance Day, a celebration of the lives of those in various arms of the service.

Nobel Prize winner Lester B Pearson (click the picture to read about him)

The participation of Canadians in world wars has been one of the benchmarks measuring the progress of the country on the world stage.

  • Our sons enlisted on behalf of Britain in the Great War, 1914-1918, with conscription invoked in 1917
  • Our sons & daughters enlisted in the Second World War, with conscription finally invoked in 1944.
  • Canadians fought in Korea, 1950-52
  • In the 1960s and in the decades that followed, our military took on a new gentler role, largely shaped by Lester Pearson’s idea of peace-keeping forces.

For over three quarters of a century we’ve had volunteer armed forces.  Most tours of duty over that time were not lethal, although that changed a little over a decade ago, when volunteer forces often found themselves in hostile places such as Afghanistan.

Whatever sort of service –conscripted or volunteer, lethal or peace-keeping–we celebrate in services held on or around November 11th.  At any of those services one finds  a few common elements:

  • Poems such as In Flanders Fields and High Flight are read
  • Honour roles of names are read.  In my high school we read the names of students who had died in service during one of the wars. In my church we hear of those who fell and those who served.
  • Testimonials from those who were there, which becomes a bigger challenge with every veteran who passes away
  • A poetic evocation of the battlefield in the playing of “The Last Post” and “Reveille”.  While this ritual is done in many different configurations I believe the most meaningful was the one I first experienced at UTS, where a two-minute silence would be observed between the two trumpet calls.  Stuart Bull, a UTS teacher who served in the war, explained the meaning of this ritual very powerfully to me and the other boys in my school.  He spoke of the genuine fear one might have going to bed, that one might not awake, that this trumpet call telling us to go to bed suggested darkness & night, followed by the restoring call of Reveille.  In the moments of silence in between we could contemplate those who did not awake and be thankful for our own morning after.  If I may add a parenthetical remark, any Remembrance Day ritual that puts something other than silence between the Last Post and Reveille is a kind of ritualistic mixed metaphor.
  • Hymns such as “Oh God Our Help in Ages Past” and “Eternal Father Strong To Save” are sung.

When I was younger I distinctly remember feeling guilty, as someone who lived in a time of peace.  Yet as I’ve grown older, with every year I am more and more grateful for the example of those such as Stuart Bull, who passed many years ago now.  What did I know then?

I only know that I feel fortunate to be in this country, a place where I am not facing the dangers I see regularly on the news.  They don’t ask much of me in this place where I was born. If you work you’re expected to pay taxes.  If you see a red light, you stop.  If you see crime being committed you report it, if you don’t have the nerve or wherewithal to jump into the middle of it to put a stop to it.

I’m not asked to go to war, nor was I ever asked to serve.  Others have generously done that for me.  While I pay my taxes, that’s an easy process, compared to sitting in a plane as it flies into flak, sitting in a tank as it drives across a minefield or under artillery, walking towards enemy fire, riding a landing craft across the English Channel to invade…

It is truly the least I can do to observe those sacrifices, to shed tears for those who did not hold back.  It’s part of the deal, and it’s truly a good deal.

To close, the best anthem i know, written in the darkest hours of war as an inspiration, mentioning a sword & a chariot but invoking mental fight rather than real bloodshed.

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Tcherniakov’s Serendipitous Trovatore

Posted on November 11, 2013 by barczablog

Having seen a small local production of Verdi’s Il trovatore in Richmond Hill Saturday night, the tunes & situations were very fresh in my head tonight for a broadcast of a 2012 production of the very same opera with big name talents from La Monnaie directed by one of the hottest young directors in the world, namely Dmitri Tcherniakov.

Dmitri Tcherniakov (click for interview)

This is the Tcherniakov who makes his Met debut in a few weeks with a production of Prince Igor.  Peter Gelb was quoted in a NY Times article as saying the director “would strip away the usual medieval pageantry and send Igor on a “psychological journey.”  I’d already seen something as adventurous in a TFO broadcast last year of Ruslan und Ludmilla that included the most outrageously camp beginning, that was then revealed to be merely a costumed performance, a virtual opera within the opera.  What looks conventional turned out to be edgy and provocative.

I did my best to decode Tcherniakov’s take on Trovatore in a single viewing on television (thanks to TFO,  the most exciting programming in the area), but would welcome a second look. It’s deep.

The entire opera is set in one room.  Azucena and Ferrando seem to work together, handing out printed scenarios to the others –the Count di Luna, Manrico and Leonora—who then roleplay them out in full view of the others, at least until they lose control of the exercise.  When they walked into the space at the beginning it felt as though Ferrando and Azucena were real estate agents, with Di Luna & Manrico sizing up the place as though they were potential buyers.  As it went along, Ferrando felt more like the man with a memory, the story-teller we’re accustomed to from conventional readings of the opera.  The space is classical but timeless, sparsely furnished, and well lit.

We discover that the chorus will not appear.  When the men listen to Ferrando telling stories in the first scene, it’s di Luna and Manrico who engage him.  When the chorus are written to show fear, these two choristers –the  principals that is—laugh it off, until they hear the offstage chorus expressing their fears, and then start to show their doubts.  It’s in moments like this that Tcherniakov lures us in, surprising us with depths.

Where are we exactly?  For the first two acts I thought I might be watching a kind of therapy, where Azucena & Ferrando engage with persons or souls such as Di Luna, Manrico & Leonora, who listen to one another as if in group therapy.  That changes partway through, as di Luna pulls out a gun, changing the dynamics suddenly from something that seems to be about story-telling, spirits & karma, to something suddenly about power & fear.  In due course di Luna shoots Ferrando and then when –in the usual place—discovers he’s been betrayed, shoots Manrico too.  With the texts being enacted we are able to have our cake and eat it too, to have cardboard rigidity in some of the lines, with overtones of subtlety & depth.

I’d expressed my scepticism generally about Regietheater approaches to this opera, which I believe is one that is so melodramatic as to resist modernization.  But in fairness Tcherniakov brings some wonderful insights into many moments in the scenes, stirring things up.  Trovatore is an opera full of stories from long ago, told in a series of scenes that are themselves full of stories.  Ferrando tells a story of long ago.  Leonora tells Ines about a voice she heard singing.  Azucena tells a story about something that happened long ago.  And so on and so on.  So while the original is melodramatic and in some respects two dimensional, those two dimensional aspects can inform moderns as if they were archetypes.  At times it is as though we are watching modern people who have a deep subtext haunting them from another century,  or another life.  They sing of the old medieval story while looking like moderns.  And so, while Leonora ostensibly says she will give herself –future tense—to di Luna, in this story it seems very evident that she’s done so, as we watch them lying onstage for the substantial scene of the last act where Manrico talks to his mother.  It’s dense with meanings that I believe would be released even further with multiple viewings.

I continue to be impressed with Tcherniakov, and eagerly anticipate his Prince Igor.  For what it’s worth, he was received rapturously by the audience at this live broadcast, which likely wasn’t an opening night.  But overall this is Regietheater that works.

The singing is mostly excellent.  The women are the best singers in this production. Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo has a stunning voice, offering a rather subtle Azucena, especially in context with the directness of the performances I saw last night.  In the first half of Tcherniakov’s reading, we could be at a séance watching people speak of souls from other lives, even when they’re singing passionately about their own lives.  Marina Poplavskaya is spectacular throughout, dramatically very complex in her response to the layers implicit in this production.  Misha Didyk is a spinto Manrico with no high C but lots of power throughout.  Scott Hendricks gives as sympathetic a portrayal of the Count di Luna as one could expect, given Tcherniakov’s overlay.  Hendricks is a local favourite, having sung Iago & Amonasro here in recent years.

Marc Minkowski’s conducting was brisk & clear, always helping his singers.

I didn’t see any sites offering anything but PAL discs (which aren’t usually compatible with North American players), and so for the time being I’d be cautious about buying them unless you’re certain you have the right equipment to play that format.

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Opera York: True to Verdi

Posted on November 10, 2013 by barczablog

It’s exciting when you get a chance to test an offbeat theory, and even more exciting when you prove it.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore was at one time –perhaps at the end of the 19th century—the most popular opera in the world, the sine qua non of beautiful singing & dramma per musica.  Now? According to operabase.com’s 2012-13 stats Trovatore is merely the fifth most popular of Verdi’s operas –after Nabucco for crying out loud—and merely 20th most popular. And their earlier survey for 2005-6 through 2009-2010 puts Trovatore at 23rd.

And so as I’ve pondered why it fell in popularity, i had my theories. Maybe the problem is that the work is never allowed to work the way it’s written, which is to say, as a conservative and mechanical melodrama heavy on religion and old-fashioned values.  When you tell the synopsis to people they often speak of it as embarrassing, as though opera were somehow supposed to be realistic; what, Das Rheingold or Rusalka are realistic or believable?  We’re okay with the witch in Hansel and Gretel and the nasty lady with the high notes in the Magic Flute but NOT the one in Il trovatore??

Directors who modernize only heighten the disconnect, as if you’d taken a medieval mystery drama telling the biblical myth of Noah and decided to stage it as though there is no God, and no boat.  In my review of the COC’s recent Trovatore for example, i acknowledged how nice it sounded, but I felt it made little or no sense (but i didn’t address that in much detail).  OR as Richard Ouzounian of the Star put it:

And while it’s generally acknowledged that the strength of Il Trovatore is in its passionate characters and sublime music, it needs a strong hand on the design and directorial elements to make its overwrought saga of gypsy vengeance ultimately not seem risible or dull. It doesn’t get that assistance here.

And so no wonder that it’s always believed that if only the director were  to fix it the thing would work, when the whole problem is directors fighting the work’s naturally melodramatic tendencies, fixing something that isn’t actually broken.

Tonight I saw Opera York stage a conservative reading of trovatore, largely driven by melodramatic acting and staging.  We were in the intimate space of Richmond Hill’s Centre for the Performing Arts, a comparatively small space with exquisite acoustics.  Where the Four Seasons Centre seats around 1900, I believe this space is somewhere around 600.  Opera York’s Artistic Director Sabatino Vacca conducted a small orchestra (22 players) ensuring that no singer was ever covered.  Opera York’s chorus is likely a group of 20 amateurs, a bit daunted by the complexities of Verdi, bravely singing some of the most glorious numbers ever written even as they’re often unable to muster a collective sound as loud as a single genuine operatic voice.  The costumes suggest the middle ages as if we were watching a B-picture from the 1950s.

And yet for me it was far more satisfying than what I saw from the COC, precisely because the opera was allowed to work the way it was written.  Director Gabe Graziano doesn’t fight the inevitable, allowing his cast to mostly stand and deliver in those situations that Ouzounian had spoken of as “risible or dull”.  And my theory is confirmed, that directors have been fighting Verdi, whereas Graziano more or less let Verdi work as written.

Kristine Dandavino as Azucena in Opera York's Il Trovatore

Kristine Dandavino as Azucena in Opera York’s Il Trovatore.   Click picture for Opera York website.  (photo: Lance Gitter)

 

This is especially so with Kristine Dandavino who was an over-the-top Azucena, or in other words, giving us the gypsy woman the way the role is written.  We watched an interpretation so blatant as to resemble a throwback to Verdi’s time, an authentic piece of melodrama always in character.  The voice is startlingly powerful with a few soprano high notes interpolated, and an amazing chest voice.  Her work in Act II was so chilling the audience was too stunned to applaud at the end of her big –and brilliantly sung—aria “stride la vampa”.

Paul Williamson’s Manrico was much more about the voice than the dramatic characterization, which –again—is consistent with how I believe the work should be done.  We watch someone whose emotions turn on a dime, someone who—like Siegfried or Rhadames—believes what he’s told, a hero whose reactions are instant and genuine, without intellectual depth.  This too is exactly what the melodrama requires, particularly the luscious line and the high notes.

Nicolae Raiciu was the most enjoyable Count di Luna I think I’ve ever seen.  I should mention that I believe this role is largely un-singable.  With a full orchestra (rather than the 22 players in a tiny house) much of the role tends to get drowned out.  Di Luna is a jerk, a jealous obstacle in the plot whose actions are unsympathetic in any presentation attempting to give the characters depths.  While I loved Russell Braun’s singing & sophisticated portrayal with the COC, it ultimately made little sense because the opera doesn’t reward three-dimensional characterization.  Raiciu was savage, as jealously romantic as a French apache dancer.  Yes, the smaller orchestra changes everything, but in fact Raiciu had lots of voice with a spectacularly full top.  Di Luna often sounds like a bizarre hybrid, a transitional creation from Verdi that’s partly bel canto, and at times has to honk out impossible lines during ensembles.  This is the first time I’ve ever heard those notes.  In fact I could hear everyone clearly.

Rachel Edwards had some great moments, especially in the last act, and was very good dramatically.   Henry Irwin was a very dynamic Ferrando, especially in his big scene at the beginning. Also rounding out the solid ensemble were Sarah Hicks, making a lot of the small part of Inez and Richard Iannello, a very sweet-voiced Ruiz.

On balance I believe Opera York should be very proud, a company gradually building a foundation for the future.  Vacca kept things moving at a brisk pace, getting a lovely sound from this small orchestra, easily filling the intimate theatre with more than enough power, and delicacy when necessary.  This is an opera company with a great future.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Songs in the key of F Mayor

Posted on November 7, 2013 by barczablog

Meaning is where you find it.

Toronto’s mayor is bigger than ever.  He was always large, but now he’s becoming an international icon.  If he wanted it, I’m sure a reality TV show could follow His Worship and his brother around town.  The talk shows are waiting for him if he’s willing to go there.

And the whole time it appears that support for our mayor is growing.  No wonder, when the chief issue is not finances or gravy or libraries, but Ford himself.  He is the biggest issue. All the others who would run define themselves by him.

In the meantime I’m seeking solace in various pieces of music, presented herewith as a kind of therapy.  Can music help?  I got the idea from John Terauds of musicaltoronto.org  If you’re anything like me, you’ve had enough headlines & humour. The joke’s on us.
I present these examples without prejudice, and in each case, with a title that I hope connects it to current events.

“News” 

“But who are you, actually?” 

This is a longer segment from Verdi’s Otello, directed in his usual over-the-top way by Franco Zeffirelli.  Cassio leers after Desdemona.  Otello sees it and so does Iago.  So let’s have a drinking song, some drink, and poor Cassio gets drunk. Before you know it everyone is laughing at him.  He’s set up by Roderigo & Iago. Moments later –after the foolish fight—Otello comes out angrily, demoting Cassio.

“Drink & reputation go hand in hand.” 

“A bully” 

“And the bullied.”

Thank you Adams, Beethoven and Verdi three times.

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Reinventing the audience

Posted on November 5, 2013 by barczablog

No, I am not reinventing,  I am the anthropologist busily observing, and seeking to articulate something that’s out there among the specimens.  Humanity –at least the western version thereof—are busily changing the social consensus.

Surely the changes have been underway for decades, like the movements of subterranean tectonic plates.  The young are flexible, mobile, active.  When they change they influence everyone, including their immobile elders, who—no matter how they may deny it—regularly imitate youth.  I’ve seen more upheaval in the past ten years than in the previous forty, but maybe it took a kind of critical mass for any of that to surface.  And then again when society is reinventing itself, the last place this manifests itself is in the concert halls & opera houses I frequent, performances where the average age is somewhere around 60.  If I don’t miss my guess, the consensus –itself an unspoken set of assumptions that were never really discussed—seems to be changing.

I made a list of remarkable moments, not in any special order.

  • Tapestry Briefs a few weeks ago offered a series of short operatic experiments.  The premise was a kind of theatrical speed-dating, where composers & librettists were mixed & matched, in search of theatrical gold.  Leaving aside the texts, in production several of these played with our understanding of the interface between audience & performance.  The most troubling moments were confrontational.  In one, a performer sang about her fertility in a narrow space resembling a birth canal, surrounded by uncomfortable auditors.  In another the singer dialogued with someone just stabbed by a machete (and yes it was really uncomfortable).
  • Bruce Barton’s YouTopia used a set resembling a jungle-gym both to enable aerial work and a kind of sculptural commentary on our civilization, while putting us in headphones for a layered soundtrack.
  • I was a guest at Figaro's Wedding

    I was a guest at Figaro’s Wedding

    Toronto Summer Music’s Minimalist Dream House Project dared to take its audience out of their comfort zone.

  • Einstein on the Beach (receiving its final performance just a few weeks ago in LA, after touring around North America the past couple of years) encouraged us to go in and out as we pleased.
  • Stewart Goodyear’s Beethoven Marathon created a happening out of a concert, reinventing (at least temporarily) the role of the virtuoso along the way.
  • Sasha Lukac’s production of Move(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied at York University in 2012 incorporated social media.
  • Figaro’s Wedding by Against the Grain Theatre, in a Queen West space, was the highlight of the early summer.  For much of the evening we could have been at an actual wedding.  I shared a picture of myself taken during an intermission next to a wedding cake on Facebook.

There are really several audiences of course.  You don’t see the same behaviour at bars as at theatres or concert halls, and again, it depends whether you’re listening to ear-splitting rock, jazz, or classical.  As a super-vocal loudmouth I am regularly at a loss to know how to behave when I change milieu.  Friday night’s concert at Gallery 345 was in the land of clapping and the occasional bravo, whereas yesterday’s play in Tarragon’s Extraspace was in the land of the woot-ers, a curious species of enthusiastic creature who aren’t really very loud –I can’t woot 1/10th as loud as I can bravo—but well-meant.  Of course when the woots morph into screams –and yes I mean my own—we can be much louder.  Pardon me if this sounds critical, but all I’m getting at is that each group seems to have restrictions and unspoken boundaries they don’t transgress.  In some places –for instance in the jazz world—you clap immediately when you love something, no matter what’s happening.  The last parts of solos are often drowned out by raucous applause.

I wonder, then, is the movement of those tectonic plates I spoke of partly because of the intersection of strata?  There are age strata of course, where the old meet the middle aged meet the recently young meet the young, or the cultural strata, where woots meet bravi meet screams or other sorts of cheers.

Okay, let’s stop this discussion for a moment.  You probably think that the good old days are gone now, the time when nobody would dream of texting during a film or a play because those devices hadn’t been invented.

But no, I actually long for a return to a golden age of a different sort.  I long for a time much more remote from our own.  Nevermind those quiet audiences.

At the premiere of Hector Berlioz’s Harolde en Italie, a wonderful concerto for viola with a program based on Byron’s poem, the audience asked for encores of the middle movements.  I love it so much, why wouldn’t they want to hear it again? We play tracks on our CDs over, why not in a concert?

We live in a funny time, when we’re told that there’s no applause between movements of symphonies.  The concert I was at Friday night, Ernesto Ramirez sang a series of Mexican songs that by usual practice call for applause at the end of the group.  My hands kept wanting to applaud, partly because he was so good, partly because it’s simply un-natural to hold our applause the way we are always told to do.  At a few points in this concert, attended by at least a few family members, applause erupted in the middle of groups of songs, and protocol be damned.

We have much to unlearn.  While mobile phones are spoken of as a curse, I am loving this dogfight between the rules for repressing human impulses, and those unquenchable impulses.

Adam Paolozza and Viktor Lukawski in The Double (photo by Lacey Creighton)

Adam Paolozza and Viktor Lukawski in The Double (photo by Lacey Creighton)

I close with a quote from Viktor Lukawski, whose words in the talkback for The Double and afterwards in conversation largely stimulated me to write all this.  Speaking about the contrary human impulses we observe in a theatre, we were discussing the different responses humans make in different places, the respectful crowd that in some places resembles a church congregation afraid to let loose, and the inter-generational thing I alluded to.  In fact this whole essay is really just expanding on what he said so succinctly.

We’re trying to fight against the “church congregation”. Hopefully, by doing this kind of work, and the cabaret-style itself, allows people to relax those stiff shoulders. The idea is to make it feel like you’re watching a concert, rather than some period piece. … Maybe then the inner wild high-schooler might have come out in the older audience! 

We shall see.  And hear.

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays, Popular music & culture, Psychology and perception | 2 Comments

Late to the party: The Double’s Trio

Posted on November 4, 2013 by barczablog

Getting to Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace 20 minutes before the start of The Double, would have been early for most shows in Toronto.  But all the good seats were gone, and so we were forced to sit near the back.  I’m late to this party.  I missed TheatreRun’s production of The Double last year.  And today an admiring crowd beat us to the good seats.

Whatever else one says about The Double first and foremost, this is a hysterically funny show, powered by elegant performances.  When they told us at the talkback that for high-school kids the show becomes complete pandemonium, I totally got it, speaking as someone who struggled to make sure my laughter didn’t cover any witty lines.  I came out of the theatre as high as a kite, wondering what I might have felt in the front row, where the wackiness would have been right in my face.

Based on Dostoevsky’s short story, The Double is a one of a kind experience, a whimsical adaptation that restores my faith in the theatre and its magic.

Created & performed by Adam Paolozza, Arif Mirabdolbaghi & Viktor Lukawski, directed by Paolozza with original music by Mirabdolbaghi, this is a self-reflexively theatrical creation.  Theatre nerds will feel like they’ve died & gone to heaven with this show, a virtual compendium of the many ways to make you laugh & create illusions, and no wonder considering the delightful nerdiness of the creators.  Sometimes it’s verbal, sometimes it’s vocal, sometimes it’s visual, sometimes it’s physical, and always it’s delicately balanced on the edge between a kind of psychological truth & existential horror.  Dostoevsky anticipates the psychiatric breakthroughs to come in Freud & Jung, although this story (supposedly a failure in the lifetime of the writer) is so far ahead of its time as to seem a foretaste of Woody Allen or perhaps the Marx Brothers, especially via the vaudevillian enchantment of this trio.

Mirabdolbaghi’s bass acts as self-effacing back-up to the onstage shenanigans, when he isn’t himself in the spotlight as the narrator.  In the talk-back session Mirabdolbaghi spoke of a parallel he saw, between the curious awkwardness that a string bass player might feel, finding himself suddenly all alone onstage–divorced from his usual role in support of the melodic instruments such as violin or cello—and the character of Golyadkin.  It’s one of several happy accidents.

Adam Paolozza (photo: Lacey Creighton)

Adam Paolozza (photo: Lacey Creighton)

Paolozza is Golyadkin, the man who may or may not have a double, although it is certain that Paolozza delineates two very distinct characters & voices in the same body.  We’re unable to tell for sure whether he’s delusional, even in those moments when he and his double share the stage.  We’re sometimes in a realm of shadows or vaudeville silliness, sometimes watching a radio-play with overdone foley sounds created by hands and voices.

Lukawski –like Paolozza a graduate of Ecole Jacques Lecoq—plays everyone.  I mean, yes he plays everyone else, but at times, when Paolozza is trying to be two people, Lukawski even jumps in to momentarily be Golyadkin: one or the other version.

I can’t help thinking about narrative devices in adaptations, as I’m currently watching a stylish BBC serial of Dickens, using expensive costumes, horses, and authentic buildings. When story-telling makes the jump to the stage, one has several possible choices, combinations of enactment & mediation, depending on what sort of reality one seeks to create and how much money one has at one’s disposal.  In this instance, we’re watching the impossible enacted not through expensive mise-en-scène, but at low cost with the aid of our imaginations, invoked through a clever use of theatrical devices and aided by a wittily ironic narrator.

Less is more, although it helps to have physically gifted performers.

There’s a  segment near the end of The Double that reminded me of a sequence right at the beginning of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers.  Stoppard’s heroine suffers a kind of cultural overload, free-associating clumsily through a series of songs to do with the moon.   I was reminded partly because I had the unfortunate task of playing forensic music-director, trying to re-construct something coherent from a text resembling a crime scene (as we try to put together how to make it work as it did in that first production).  In The Double, we don’t begin as Stoppard did, in the place of incoherence and find our way towards a kind of logic; instead we begin in a place of relative order and move deeper into the realm of the subconscious.  We watch a stand-up comedy routine that seemed to be brain-stormed around the idea of someone who thinks they have a double.  There were famous Rat Pack songs, and “Who are You” from The Who. Sorry, I was too busy laughing to remember the song names!  Yes these are anachronistic, like the reference in the first minute of the show to Gordon Lightfoot, which is to say, they’re part and parcel of a witty & theatrical approach to story-telling, not a BBC costume drama dripping authenticity.

The text? As a creation from a collective, it’s marvellously coherent now, but I have to wonder how it could possibly be documented, and whether anyone in future will be able to capture the quicksilver magic of this perfect trio, exquisitely balanced.  What we saw was astonishing, leading me to wonder how it would be recorded for posterity, and whether the musical component would be scored with the text—as though it were a musical or melodrama—or simply implicit in a few stage directions.

As I said, I’m late to the party.  Toronto’s theatre crowd know about this show, because they were all there before me, grabbing all the good seats.  But you can still see the brilliance of the trio who present The Double if you’re quick, as this amazing show runs until November 24th (click photo for more information).

Left to right, Arif Mirabdolbaghi, Adam Paolozza, & Viktor Lukawski (photo: Lacey Creighton)

Left to right, Arif Mirabdolbaghi, Adam Paolozza, & Viktor Lukawski (photo: Lacey Creighton)

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Bogdanowicz & Ramirez: a common language

Posted on November 2, 2013 by barczablog

I met some new people tonight.  Some of them were singers, some were composers, and everyone got along beautifully in several languages.

Mezzo-soprano Michèle Bogdanowicz

Tonight Michèle Bogdanowicz and Ernesto Ramirez sang a quintessentially Canadian program at Gallery 345, with pianist Rachel Andrist.

It’s an old truism that the difference between Canadians and our American neighbours is that their social fabric is a melting pot, in a country with a solid national identity that demands allegiance, whereas ours is a mosaic that doesn’t require you to sacrifice your heritage.

In the past year I’ve seen examples of artists finding inspiration in their own parentage.  Last week I listened to Beatriz Boizan’s authentic Cuban piano playing. A few months ago, I reviewed an album of Estonian songs sung by Stephen Bell exploring his roots in that community.

Tonight was even more intensely multi-cultural, given that there are two nationalities in the marriage of the Polish Michèle Bogdanowicz and the Mexican Ernesto Ramirez.  The tension between their ethnicities electrified the concert.

They began the concert on neutral turf with an aria from a Mozart opera.  In some respects this was the most remarkable performance of the night, as Bogdanowicz sang “non piu di fiori” from La Clemenza di Tito, an operatic aria including a clarinet obbligato: played by Ramirez.  I’ve never listened to the aria this way before, watching a man play those soulful passages that seem to unfold all the emotion inside the soul of the woman standing beside him, the woman to whom he’s married.   While that was the last operatic item on the program, there was much more drama to come.

Bogdanowicz next sang Poulenc’s eight Polish Songs, a remarkable series of apparent folk melodies accompanied by rhythmic piano passages that often sound like Chopin.  Other than visits to a Polish church,  I can’t remember the last time I heard someone sing in Polish.  These are stunning compositions that I wish I’d heard before.

Bogdanowicz followed with a special treat she’d prepared to honour her father, namely Four Lyrical Moments. This was a commission of original Polish songs composed for this occasion by Norbert Palej, setting texts of Halina Poswiatowska, a young Polish poetess.  The songs were passionately melodic, subtly capturing the powerful texts.  Bogdanowicz seemed especially comfortable with these songs.

Bogdanowicz began the second half with some of Viardot’s transcriptions of Chopin for piano & voice.  Here, as in the Poulenc, Andrist’s subtle playing never pushed the piano into the spotlight, her rhymic clarity supporting the songs, without ever upstaging the singer.  Bogdanowicz’s dramatic abilities shone in songs that were by turns dark¸ droll, or dynamic.

Tenor Ernesto Ramirez

Then I heard Ernesto Ramirez for the first time (unless you include his clarinet playing), a pleasant discovery indeed.  This is one of the  most melodious voices I’ve heard in a very long time, an effortless sound that was a constant joy to hear.

The final numbers were duets by Viardot, an especially romantic meeting ground, with two transcribed from Chopin, followed by a Habanera.  But in the end they always had a common language, namely music.  And now I wonder if I will ever hear anything like that again, whether in a recording or concert.  I hope to hear Bogdanowicz & Ramirez together again someday.

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments