Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra could drop the word “baroque” if they wanted. Tonight I heard more evidence that they can play just about anything.
Their program was all Beethoven, namely the first and second symphonies, plus the overture to Creatures of Prometheus, a natural curtain raiser because it’s in the same key as that first symphony.
The evidence continues to mount that they’re not just purveyors of historically informed performance from the Baroque, even if they recognize this as a core competency, and the music that has served them well over the decades of audience building. In May 2012 they played Beethoven’s Eroica symphony & Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, and last winter offered a powerful version of Mozart’s Requiem with Tafelmusik baroque choir. And in perhaps their boldest venture, they gave us Weber’s Der Freischütz with Opera Atelier.
So even if they can play romantic music, why change a successful formula, after all? Audiences haven’t complained. But I must sound as though I am complaining (I am a shit disturber) maybe because I like romantic music much more than baroque.
Tafelmusik sound different from what we may be accustomed to, with (for example) the Toronto Symphony, or the sounds of modern orchestras playing Beethoven on recordings. It’s a sweeter, more plangent sound. At times the brass can be jarringly loud. And curiously, so too the strings, at least when they’re playing a lot of notes, as happens in the last movement of the 2nd symphony of Beethoven, a rushing rustling sound like water, something you feel because it’s very subtle. There’s a fullness to the music that simply can’t happen with a modern orchestra.
There is an assurance to their performances of Beethoven that suggests they should play more of this repertoire. I see the smiles on the players’ faces at times during the performance.
One of these seasons Tafelmusik should program a complete Beethoven symphony cycle. They would never throw down the gauntlet, and lay claim to being the best orchestra in Toronto because it’s not their style. Perhaps it’s a matter of testosterone (Tafelmusik has been led by a woman rather than a man) taking a more feminine approach in sharing leadership among several artists, such as Bruno Weil for Beethoven, Jeanne Lamon (for many years), Ivars Taurins for Messiah and great choral works, and David Fallis with Opera Atelier: and they are the richer for it.
Of course there’s room in Toronto for more than one great orchestra. But I am frustrated, wanting to hear them undertake so many more works of the period.
Schubert’s symphonies?
Schumann’s symphonies & piano concerto
Mendelssohn’s other symphonies & overtures, and perhaps the music from A Midsummernight’s Dream
Berlioz… but his works require too many players, I fear
Conductor Bruno Weil
In the meantime, I am always eager to hear their Beethoven. Bruno Weil leads crisp readings on the fast side, as one would expect in a historically informed performance such as this one. At times Weil encourages powerful climaxes & a dissonant approach that seems to want to show us how daring Beethoven could be. To me it sounds very fresh, very new, yet elegant, balanced, witty and as brilliant as we’d expect Beethoven to sound. Dare I say it: this is the real Beethoven. Tafelmusik make it their own.
Tafelmusik’s concert of Beethoven Symphonies 1 & 2 continues this weekend on Sept 20th & 22nd at Koerner Hall.
David Warrack is writing an oratorio on the life of Abraham, the Biblical patriarch. I’m thrilled to be participating in a concert presentation of excerpts. We’ve had some rehearsals, with about a week to go until the concert at Metropolitan United Church on September 23rd .
Warrack explains the context this way:
Abraham sits at the base of three great religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, with intriguing connections to other faiths as well. This oratorio tells the story of this historic figure, but also uses the opportunity to ask why we cannot work together when we all come from the same place. Based in history, and believing in the essential goodness of man, the message of this work is that by reaching out, we can find solutions.
Composer David Warrack
The project is much more than music & words, but an excuse for interfaith dialogue. The composer wants to get a conversation going, so it’s no wonder that the work concerns communication and debate.
Here’s the plan for the next couple of years:
Preliminary presentation of 4 selections at Metropolitan United Church on September 23rd with appearances by Moshe Hammer & Jackie Richardson, as part of an interfaith conference.
3 performances in early 2014 in a church, a synagogue, and a mosque, with 5 soloists, a small combined choir, a chamber ensemble, and organ
Full performance at Massey Hall or the Sony Centre in the 2014/2015 season
Warrack’s plan is as much about religion as it is about art. It’s delicate.
Delicate? Some people don’t care who they offend. For instance. I’m reminded of a moment in Richard Strauss’s opera Salome. The Jews in Herod’s court have heard that the captive John the Baptist has supposedly seen God, leading to a debate about the nature of God. It’s very dramatic, and undignified, as the music seems to mock them and their intense faith. Some call this scene anti-Semitic.
Faith & religion are a delicate matter! Now imagine the delicacy of Warrack’s task, in seeking to present something that can be shown to three faith communities, not only without giving offense, but in hopes of sparking dialogue.
I jumped at the opportunity to participate in this presentation of excerpts of the work on the occasion of the interfaith conference. And so it seems that the oratorio probes and enacts the interfaith question, as though the oratorio itself were an inter-faith conference. But in another sense the oratorio is meta-faith or pre-faith, asking some fundamental questions about our natures and how we approach such questions, both within and outside our faith communities.
Warrack’s music is predominantly tonal, very chromatic, and not at all like his usual music-theatre idiom nor his jazz music. The chorus we were working on today is precisely the opposite of what Strauss wrote, because it dignifies everyone involved. At times we’re asked to sing dissonant music; there’s one place where I sing with another tenor a semi-tone away, while another place the basses are a major seventh away. At times we’re echoing phrases from other vocal parts a beat or two later. It’s a dense web, but each of us with conviction whether we arrive at discord or harmony.
Metropolitan United Church
It’s new. There’s something magical in bringing a new piece into the world, particularly when it’s not derivative. There are passages whose complex textures remind me of Paul Hindemith, one passage that suggests Frank Zappa, and yes, there are places where the disciplined modernist Warrack becomes the romantic Warrack. The ambiguous harmonies and extended chords lead us (the choristers) a merry chase. Our adventures in tonality are a perfect parallel to the discussion.
Bruce Barton: playwright & artistic director of Vertical City
Tonight at a performance of Bruce Barton’s YouTopia I was reminded of the difference between the mandate of University of Toronto’s “Drama Centre” (recently renamed “Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies”) and various theatre schools such as Ryerson or York, where actors learn their craft. No, this was no training ground for thespians; we were in a kind of laboratory exploring the possibilities of drama.
The work –or should I call it an installation?—is subtitled “A Vertical City Performance” and not, please note, a student show, as far as I could tell. As the program tells us
Vertical City is a professional Toronto-based interdisciplinary performance hub that has been operating since 2007, initially inspired by the desire to confront aerial movement with theatricality. Vertical City now focuses on a broad cross-section of intimate interdisciplinary intersections.
Yes, it looked like a laboratory.
YouTopia is many things:
Kiran Friesen and Adam Paolozza
Sci-fi homage to the 1960s, complete with references to films & music
A complex inter-disciplinary piece dense with meanings
An enactment of a society out of balance. If we are on the verge of a precipice, how better to show that than to enact the physical reality of that precariousness in the air above our heads?
The most meaningful use of aerial work I’ve ever seen. Vertical City supposedly seek to “confront aerial movement with theatricality” (or so it says above), but this goes one step beyond, inserting aerial movement as an essential expressive element.
It reminds me of opera. While singers tell stories with their singing, operas are usually written as a pretence for singing. There’s often a tension between singing for the sensuous pleasure of vocal beauty, and the drama being enacted (some works being more at one extreme than the other). Similarly in dance or ballet, we have works that use movement or dance for drama, balanced with dance that is an end in itself. And as with opera (at least), there is a back-forth between different discourses that build and release tension, one for action, one for passion. But instead of recitative and aria, we have cerebral (dense layers of speech plus some music) and physical (aerial movement) as the two chief discourses playing off one another.
While I was watching aerial movement –mostly Kiran Friesen—I couldn’t help thinking that the whole piece was a great excuse to get lost in watching the accomplished handling of bodies in the air, to marvel at clever compositions and configurations.
Entering the space, one is confronted with an astonishing construction filling the performance space. The set design is by Sherri Hay. I was reminded of two different Ring cycle designs and a current AGO show:
Robert Lepage’s Machine, a representation of the protean world, but especially scary (to performers or traditionalists) in how it demoted the singers. As with Lepage, this machine is the real star. Much of the time Lepage’s set is like an installation, an ongoing meditation on the meaning of the operas in concrete form. So too, with Hay’s set, a kind of sculptural treatise on our material world.
Michael Levine’s design for Die Walkuere for the Canadian Opera Company’s Ring Cycle
Michael Levine’s Ring set is much more representational, but still at times a mixture of abstract & concrete, and often a big mess. At times it looks unsafe to walk on for the performers. That’s what I felt with Freisen and Adam Paolozza, bravely clambering around in this bizarro world.
Ai Weiwei’s monumental piles of material came to mind. This is a very ambiguous set, that simultaneously seems infatuated with itself –a big technological aggregation—and ironic – as Murphy’s Law begins to rear its head, machines that break down.
Barton’s text is a funny mix, sometimes bleak & dystopian, but as often, invoking children’s stories & films.
YouTopia continues until September 22nd at the Studio Theatre, 4 Glen Morris Ave. www.totix.ca
I only found out who John Mills-Cockell was after the fact of encountering his music without knowing who he was. A tune by Syrinx –“Tillicum”— was my first encounter with sounds that have been near & dear to my heart, a composition with an Eastern flavour showing the protean utility of electronic sounds.
Many especially in the Toronto area will recall the television series The Stationary Ark, with Gerald Durrell, for which JMC supplied engaging music.
JMC has been a pioneer of electronic music in Canada and around the world. I read in his bio that he presented what’s called the first real-time music synthesizer performance in the 1960s with Buckminster Fuller. JMC has been an explorer, teacher and pathfinder ever since. His music is heard in film, TV, radio, and live theatre, with commissions to write original dance scores for the National Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet & Toronto Dance Theatre, and he seems to have worked with most of the important directors in Canada, such as Brian Richmond, Peter Hinton, Ken Gass, Guy Sprung & Richard Rose.
Savitri and Sam is an opera JMC has been developing with a libretto by Ken Gass. After their workshop back in 2008, Gass & JMC revised the work, and are now ready to put it back into workshop the week of September 23rd in Toronto. That’s the occasion for me to ask John Mills-Cockell ten questions: five about himself, and five about the work on Savitri and Sam.
1-Are you more like your father or your mother?
Composer, musician, innovator, teacher John Mills-Cockell
My mother, Emily, died when I was 6 months and because my father was poor and trying to establish a career for himself, devastated by the loss of his wife, I went into an orphanage for a couple years . Finally he married the young nurse who cared for me during that time, Cynthia.
My father was a violinist in a Palm Court type trio for several years before he had to concentrate on raising a family. He frequently played with friends who came to our house when I was a boy. I have 2 younger brothers and we all took music lessons, but for some reason I’m the one who carried the torch. However, Dad travelled a great deal. He was in fashion and spent much time in Europe, New York, Montréal to buy dress fabrics.
Am I more like my father or my mother? I don’t know, but obviously the fact that he was a musician and that music was always part of our daily lives was seminal.
I joined a church choir when I was 5 and learned to read music. This probably would not have happened without him. He was a regular in the choir. Cynthia attended church only occasionally.
2- What is the best thing or worst thing about being a composer?
Labels are certainly a trap. Even after all these years one feels hemmed in and limited by them. Interesting that you have picked this particular ‘worst thing’.
The best thing is clearly the incredible opportunity I have to express myself for others’ pleasure & interest. I love creating music in all contexts.
3- Who do you like to listen to or watch?
Of course I’m passionate about theatre, just as much as I am about music. Almost everything else I choose to spend time doing is directed towards feeding my desire to create music: concert music, and music in various multidisciplinary settings: theatre, film, dance, whatever; music in all forms and genres. It is a mistake to dismiss any possibilities for expression without at least having a crack at it. The only problem is that our time here is limited.
4- What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
For the next 2 weeks I’m facing an ensemble of singers in the recording studio with only rudimentary skill in conducting, even though I have acted as musical director in a variety of contexts for most of my life! Even though I’m considered by some to be a pioneer in electronic technology used in music creation, every time I use my smartphone it’s an awkward battle
5- When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
I walk my dog at home on Vancouver Island. Cook with my partner, Jean. Drink coffee.
~~~~~~~
Five more about the creation of Savitri and Sam for Factory Theatre
1-How does scoring Savitri and Sam challenge you?
Although it is a large scale work incorporating various musical & theatrical traditions, I believe Savitri & Sam is not difficult aesthetically compared to some contemporary operatic works. The story, dramatically and deftly depicted by Ken Gass, is so compelling. The characters are both operatically theatrical and believable so that audiences will care about them and hopefully be swept away by their performances.
The work is comic as well as tragic, powerfully resonant for anyone concerned with human rights. It’s themes resonate universally, far beyond the multicultural backgrounds of the characters and the panoramic setting of northern British Columbia.
Librettist, director, and teacher Ken Gass
2- What do you love about composing music, particularly collaborating with Ken Gass?
I am incredibly fortunate that Ken agreed to work with me on the project. He has a much needed instinct, developed through years of play writing and directorial experience, for creating clearly delineated characters who can express complex human situations through a dramatic & meaningful narrative.
In Savitri & Sam we had an opportunity to create a libretto that combines realism with poetic imagery & expression. I think he has done so beautifully. It was an ongoing joy to set the text. Beyond that, Ken has indisputable experience producing many kinds of theatre with many performing artists & designers.
One of the reasons I wished to compose an opera, beyond this amazing and powerful story, was to have an incentive to imagine and set forth dramatically exciting music. Having a narrative like this one was my portal to discovery, forcing me to find fresh colours, melodies, & rhythms.
The poetic clarity of Ken’s text and the incisive quality of his characters inspired whatever I have been able to do with the score.
Of course it is a collaborative process. Inevitably there is a great deal of back and forth about pretty much every detail of the work, from story line, to timing, dynamics, every breath and sigh!
3-Is there a moment in the work that you’re especially eager to see or hear?
The climax of the piece, not to give away too much, is a powerful and violent scene set above the raging waters in the Fraser River Canyon at Hell’s Gate. This is the penultimate scene of the opera and Ken has created a marvellously dynamic spectacle of human passion bordering on the edge of madness. That said, every scene that leads up to this one and to the denouement that follows are hopefully just as gripping in their own way. They are certainly as necessary as the ‘big scene’.
4- How do you relate to the modern world of music as a 21st century man?
When I was a maverick electronic renegade & 12 tone composition student, everything seemed easy. We never though about being ‘modern’. It was simply what was happening, the zeitgeist.
Exciting: Karheinz Stockhausen’s talk on Max Neuhaus’ performance of Kontakt at U of T, Cage & Feldman at Knox-Albright, Zappa at Convocation Hall, later Einstein on the Beach, etc, etc. Now so much feels pretty conventional to me, but it takes great courage and imagination to break free in order to make something ‘new‘ that is ‘meaningful’ and inspiring to audiences. This must come not only from the artist (we must make opportunities as well as dream up works), but also from facilitators, individuals & organizations who lay the groundwork for exciting new art to occur.
5- is there a colleague or teacher you especially admire?
Samuel Dolin (click photo for more information)
The colleagues, other artists mostly, who inspire me are way too numerous to mention. It would be just one or two whom I might think of right this minute. People in my past that had a direct influence on my personal development: Dr Samuel Dolin, my composition teacher, Myron Shaffer who got me into graduate electronic music studies with Gus Ciamaga, composer Ann Southam, composer Udo Kasemets, sculptor Michael Hayden, producer Felix Pappalardi. Only a few.
Information concerning the workshop:
JMC:
The second workshop Ken & I are about to hold after many, many months of preparation, casting, calling favour, interruptions, is an important step in the development path of this work. We’re both excited about it and looking forward to what emerges. At the same time, in parallel, we have been working with record producer William Blakeney at Grant Ave Studio on a complete recording of the piece. Next week I’ll be in the studio with a very fine ensemble of singers to lay down the chorus parts on the instrumental tracks already recorded.
LB:
The workshop is to be held the week of September 23rd, with a public performance on Saturday Sept 28th. Details (how to get tickets) TBA.
Click for Rotten Tomatoes quiz, and NB if you read this article you’ll have the answer to the pertinent question
In The Greatest Story Ever Told, an assortment of Hollywood icons share the screen with lesser known talent, to give the audience a well-known tale. Some of the film works, while other parts are wooden, especially because we’re so busy spotting stars that we’re distracted from the story. Nothing exemplifies this better than the scene of John Wayne as the centurion who stood by the cross during the crucifixion.
He intones the famous line “Truly this man was the son of God”, but sounds as Roman as a cowboy.
I don’t know how to feel about this, given that nobody really expected realism in films made in 1965. For the time it was more or less average, and not the worst.
I can’t help noticing how commercial cinema revisits themes a few times each generation, coming closer or diverging from realism depending on the expectations of the paying public. In our own era such a film might show a centurion speaking some dialect of Latin instead, perhaps with subtitles (as in Passion of the Christ). Hollywood is a factory of anachronism, regularly giving the audience moments that are more modern than accurate (for instance in the careless sprinkling of current colloquiualisms), although each generation gradually gets more realistic than the previous generation in the core facts being presented.
Tonight I saw a film that reminded me of John Wayne’s famously anachronistic delivery of that line, but it wasn’t a Biblical epic. No, I saw The Butler, a film by Lee Daniels that’s a chronicle of the civil rights movement. In fairness, nobody is quite as bad as Wayne.
I liked it very much..! But as a realistic film it’s a lot like The Greatest Story Ever Told:
It’s full of stars in brief appearances as famous people. Jane Fonda is Nancy Reagan, Robin Williams is Dwight Eisenhower. John Cusack is Richard Nixon. I won’t name them all, because part of the fun is in recognizing them. But the fact we’re drawn to those famous faces seriously breaks the illusion, turning it into a kind of star-parade that feels decidedly old-fashioned.
The story majestically unfolds from famous episode to famous episode, as though we were moving through chapters of a Gospel account of the life of Jesus. As soon as the son sits down at the table with the beret we know he’s a Black Panther, which will lead to some sort of political discussion. As with Biblical epics, some of the greatest pleasure is in famous moments seen from an oblique angle rather than directly. I thought of Ben-Hur—a film I love very much –a few times during this film.
There’s a kind of sublime achieved in the film, as in epics such as Ben-Hur, in taking us directly to the heart of a great moment, and if you’re a true believer there will be tears. While I may have been already tenderized by the opera I saw last night, speaking as a guy who loves to cry at operas & movies, I was more emotional at The Butler than any film I’ve seen in a very long time. If you like to cry, you’ll love this film: unless you’re a racist, of course.
So let me be clear. I do not want to knock this film. It reminds me a lot of The Help, another film that was a kind of template allowing us to see the inevitable progression of history –that we are privileged to know with the benefit of hindsight—except that it’s got a different focus.
I am highly sensitive to fictions as I write this. I’ve been thinking a lot about Syria, about the various stories being put out by various governments. I don’t pretend to know the truth, only that one of the wonderful things about this film is that awareness of stories being told & retold. While some of the mechanics of this film are very old-fashioned (see the bullets above), there’s one aspect that makes me smile. I am fascinated by the changing presentation of the discrepancies between fact & fiction. While aspects of The Butler are mechanical, particularly the resemblance to the epic-genre & its story-telling techniques, there’s no mistaking the truths in this film concerning America’s past. As a baby-boomer I watched this, and almost expected to see someone say “this is your life”. And it was, and is. For certain aspects of this film–the most political parts of the film– it’s shockingly accurate.
No wonder the whole Jane Fonda thing has been trumped up in places that fear this film (for instance as in this Fox News Report). They had little problem with Fonda for generations, when she played harmless characters and made them money. Suddenly the film is going to be banned, even as Fonda plays a tiny part, giving a wonderfully sympathetic version of Nancy Reagan? Gimme a break. They fear this film because it reminds you of America’s hypocrisy, its racist past and the strong remaining vestiges to this day.
Verily it’s like a Biblical epic, a spiritual tale as remarkable as anything in the Bible, except we know this one is true. How beautiful, to see the way this film ends.
See it and believe, sorrow for the damned, redemption for the faithful.
When i go to write a new piece here on the blog, i follow the tab to “new post”. We were promised a paperless office, a paperless world long ago, but it never happened. It’s funny to keep bumping into that word “post” as though it were the pole in a fence we just banged into.
Technological change is reflected in the way we tell stories. The plot devices for our plays, our novels, our operas, our films change with us. Writers have been faced with this in the films of the past few years. When people can text, you can’t have the same kind of mis-understandings as in the past. Or can you? Against the Grain managed to reformat old-fashioned mail into a text message in Figaro’s Weddings earlier this year.
Not so long ago, mail figured prominently in popular songs.
Remember “Return to Sender” especially when Elvis sings it? Remember these lines?
“And if it comes back, the very next day,
Then I’ll understand”?
What a different world we live in. The whole drama of this song would be over in 30 seconds of texting.
Remember “She’s Leaving Home”? I won’t blame you if you didn’t. It’s the song nobody ever remembers from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , and my favourite song from that album.
There are two pivotal moments in the song that are built around a written note. We hear that she is “leaving the note that she hoped would say more”, and then in the next verse, father is snoring, while “his wife gets into her dressing gown/ Picks up the letter that’s lying there”, and the consequences unfold.
Maybe Elvis’s letter returned to sender situation has been supplanted by texts, but I think people still write notes, clutch handkerchiefs, and yes, feel they’ve been treated thoughtlessly.
Letters aren’t fully obsolete, and so perhaps it’s not so odd that i am still “posting”.
As I watched and listened to Adam Klein’s Winterreise as filmed by Eric Solstein, I came to a song that has long fascinated me, every bit as powerful as the Beatles tune. It came back into my brain, after I saw Loose Tea Theatre’s Carmen Friday night, sitting in the first row, a close-up perspective that I’d recently seen in Solstein’s film.
You can find Klein’s performance 37 minutes and 14 seconds into Solstein’s film.
Or here’s a lovely stand-alone reading of the song by Hermann Prey. Notice the way Schubert’s piano conjures up the gallop of a horse, a possible horn call. It’s so indecently clean, so economical.
Die Post. The phenomenon for this song isn’t simply a letter in a mailbox. It’s a dramatic event: because mail itself was a dramatic event at one time. We still see that drama nowadays (for instance, that Amazon package I was expecting to see Tuesday that was late). But the way the song unfolds feels antique, yet his emotion is so clear. The singer isn’t waiting for a DVD or a book. It’s a letter, and contact with the woman he loved. No, loves, it’s clear in the song.
Von der Strasse her ein Posthorn klingt. From the street, the posthorn sounds
Was hat es, dass es so hoch aufspringt, why do you leap so,
Mein Herz? My heart!
Die Post bringt keinen Brief für dich. The delivery includes no letters for you
Was drängst du denn so wunderlich, why are you so excited
Mein Herz? My heart?
Nun ja, die Post kommt aus der Stadt, And now the post comes from the town
Wo ich ein liebes Liebchen hatt’, where I had a true beloved
Mein Herz! My heart!
Willst wohl einmal hinüberseh’n do you want to again peer out
Und fragen, wie es dort mag geh’n and ask, how things are back there
Mein Herz? My heart
I suppose what I am pondering is pain. Sometimes I wonder, why do people write operas and movies & plays about pain? Why is Written on Skin the great hope of opera, when it’s once again, a tale of men oppressing women? I wish we could get past that, and yes, same thing with Carmen, too. And Schubert’s obsessed singer in Winterreise.
But the songs & operas are haunting precisely because they distill the pain down so perfectly, musical / dramatic vehicles that are irresistible to performers (Klein and Harper and Warner and Hannigan among others) because they’re irresistible to the audience.
Considering that the heroine of Bizet’s opera usually ends up stabbed, I want to make clear that the headline refers to Peter Brook’s La Tragédie de Carmen, a much shorter version of the original, and not the violence meted out by Don José.
I just saw Loose Tea Music Theatre’s wonderful new production of their adaptation, mostly Brook plus a bit more of Bizet. In conversation with Alaina Viau, the director/producer and adaptor (and maybe i should also call her dramaturg, fund-raiser and promoter), we discovered we had something in common. I hope I paraphrase correctly, but I think we both find Bizet’s opera problematic, and that motivates the adaptation. It’s as though the opera is a ritual slaughter, complete with the cheers of the bullring, as though she were just an animal, a strong woman, sacrificed because she transgresses the usual rules of her society. I can’t deny Bizet’s opera is brilliant precisely because it draws us in like one of those youtube videos of a disaster, a murder you can’t bear to watch, but keep watching all the same. I hate what happens to Carmen, and have had trouble watching it….in its complete version.
I could be wrong, but I believe this is the first time Brook’s version has been done in Toronto, possibly in Canada. It’s a whole new look, and at roughly 80 minutes is well-nigh irresistible. Where have you been all my life, Carmencita..!? Carmen-lite is a greatest-hits show, breath-taking to hear, and much more powerful in its reduced form. Like the Johnny Walker that the hero seems to be swigging, if you take the pure essence undiluted, you will get very intoxicated. In its short time on the stage, La Tragédie packs an enormous wallop. I cried in a couple of places, and no I didn’t expect to be moved this way. If you can’t be bothered reading the review, the executive summary is “SEE IT!”
In the interview from a few days ago Viau explained that José is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and we’re in the period after WW I.
Fight Director and PTSD consultant, Sean Brown, working with Ryan Harper (left) and Cassandra Warner
The first time we see him –during the prelude—we can already see that he’s hyper-sensitive to loud sounds, using alcohol to suppress his feelings. In the first ten minutes, mostly between Ryan Harper’s José and Lisa Faieta’s Micaela, I had to get acclimated to the pace of this adaptation, a very economical texture, with super quick exposition and great tunes, instead of the usual gradual story-telling. Even if you don’t know the story, you can read between the lines; but we’re taken a long way very fast, especially with Cassandra Warner’s seductive arrival. We don’t doddle around with the soldiers, the children’s chorus or the cigarette factory, oh no.
And it all clicks in an instant because Warner is a very beautiful Carmen. She scans the audience during the Habanera as if checking every one of us out (and yes for a moment I was also so swallowed up by the moment that I was wishing her eyes would land on mine and…?), singing of love while every eye is upon her. It’s inevitable that the innocent José Harper plays would be out of his depth, and easily reeled in by her. He’s overmatched by the accomplished extrovert, exactly as the score gives it to us in the longer opera. This is the prescribed dynamic, given that Carmen & Escamillo are confident extroverts singing boastfully to crowds, while José and Micaela are lonely romantics in comparison.
I look forward to hearing how Warner’s voice develops in the years to come. Yes she’s a wonderful actor, physically beautiful, but (oh but I must sound like such a nerd) the voice? The high notes have me wondering what she’ll be singing in a decade’s time. When she hit her top notes I was thinking of a voice like Susan Graham, where she’s on the boundary of being a soprano, and very assured up there, even if her colour is luscious and dark in the middle voice.
Cassandra Warner as Carmen
I believe she’s a conductor’s dream, almost too precise in her near-perfect intonation. I wondered if she’s also an instrumentalist, because I’m not accustomed to singers who sing this accurately.
Where this was my first experience of Warner, I’ve been listening to Harper for awhile. I’ve reviewed him twice before, as Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte with Opera York in 2011, and later that year in Against the Grain’s second mounting ofLa boheme. I’d remarked already at Harper’s comic gift. Not only is he the funniest Ferrando I’ve ever seen, but he brought unexpected lightness to Rodolfo, making the tragic turn of the last act feel deeper than usual. How was this lyric voice, this comic sensibility going to work as Don José, the character that –as mentioned above—troubles me…? At the beginning he was a lot like every José I’ve seen, giving us the intense romantic.
And then we came to his flower song, sung not to Carmen, but as a soliloquy as if sung to the flower. While he’d given us plenty of voice, at this moment we were taken to a still place, a lyric reading of the aria penetrating deeply into the text. I was sitting in the front row, indecently close, and at times had eye contact with this man singing an artificial piece about a flower & love that can sometimes feel genuine and heartfelt in a big theatre. The vulnerability of the comedian was there, except those skills took us to a new place, one of authenticity and depth, even as he sang the aria easily.
And so when we come to the last scene and Carmen faces José, it was not the usual ritual slaughter. Warner stands tall, every line dignified and brave, while Harper’s innocent delivery for the first five minutes reminded me of Anthony Perkins in Psycho, someone who fools us because he seems so gentle & kind. Who could ever suspect that such a sweet voice would do anything violent? But he changes. We watch it, and even in the tiny space at Buddy’s it rings completely true. It has to work this way, or it would make no sense that she’s stood her ground so long, and not run away. I like what Viau does to this scene, what she asks of Warner & Harper, and I believe she’s in touch with us, a society who have (forgive me Georges!) outgrown the ritual slaughter of that 1875 bourgeois opera.
I must also mention two other wonderful performers.
Greg Finney steals the show every time he’s onstage (the funniest one in Against the Grain’s Boheme and again in Figaro), so I am thrilled to see him in a principal role. This is an Escamillo who perfectly matches the extroversion of Warner’s Carmen, a flamboyant man of charmisma unafraid of crowds. Finney’s voice is amazingly versatile, as he gave us plenty of voice in the Toreador Song, yet always gave us a perfect balance in his ensembles. And Lisa Faieta as Micaela made the most of her brief role, especially memorable in a wonderful rendition of the aria we usually hear in Act III.
I was again reminded of AtG’s Boheme, the way this Carmen feels inside Buddies in Bad Times Theatre space, a long way away from a big opera house. Oh my, there’s so much talent in this city, and new companies coming up all the time. Welcome Loose Tea Music Theatre! If you can fit it in, please see this either Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. You won’t be sorry you did.
As I revised the outline for “The Most Popular Operas” (a course I teach here at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, beginning September 18th), I was asked as usual to recommend books.
I used to suggest Roger Parker’s Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (1995), a solid and well-written work. But I believe it’s been supplanted by a new book, namely A History of Opera (2012) by Carolyn Abbate & Roger Parker. Yes, it’s the same guy + a collaborator, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that the new book has a chattier feel to it. It’s not so dry, and actually lots of fun.
In comparing the two books, and as I prepared to teach again, I began to think about opera books in general. Someday I might like to try my hand, although my contribution would be much more specialized. Yes, there are many different sorts of books. They succeed –which is to say, find an audience—because there are so many different sorts of readers.
But it starts with the different sorts of authors and what they might have to say.
A.M. Nagler’s A Source Book of Theatrical History
I am inclined to go back to the beginning, which is to say, the history book that is my touchstone for theatre history. In my M.A. at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, Professor Lise-Lone Marker relied very heavily on one book, namely A.M. Nagler’s A Source Book in Theatrical History. I took this course a long time ago, but the book’s still available, still a landmark of sorts.
Why? Because we’re reading the words of witnesses & participants from the time. The analyses of modern-day writers are never going to have the authenticity of this kind of material.
Nagler’s book doesn’t have a great deal about opera in it (although there are a few), indeed I believe that opera’s sparse inclusion is perhaps the largest blemish upon this book; as such it might seem like an odd candidate to be mentioned. But I cite Nagler more as an example of genuine historical specimens, historiography done right.
Let me get back to Parker vs Parker/Abbate.
There are new things in the new book, which is as it should be. Anyone reading about the beginnings of opera in other histories could be forgiven for finding it all a little unbelievable, a little too perfect. If the history of opera were an account of a murder, any decent cop would have noticed that the tale makes good use of all available evidence. If you want to read one of those, go to Wikipedia for example; but books & historical accounts (mine included) haven’t been much better, so let’s not be too hard on wikipedia.
What I love about Parker-Abbate’s beginning is how it’s framed not as the beginning of opera so much as the beginning of the telling of the history of opera. We are confronted with the limits of what we know and ironically presented with centuries of myth-making, the way opera has been understood. They present a series of specimens, including Richard Wagner, telling us variants of the story. They’re all perfect as setup for the joke. No it’s not a colossal laugh although I would imagine scholars may have chuckled. I recall reading this with my mouth hanging open. And I had the impulse to applaud. So yes, this is perhaps the biggest quote I’ve ever put into this blog.
Thus according to the established historical account, was opera born and started its 400-year progress. But in the latter part of the twentieth century the picture was modified in significant details. Scholarly research gave rise to a more complex description, almost an historical anthropology of the phenomenon. Nowhere was this more evident than in accounts of opera’s first decades. The story still portrayed opera flowing from an important moment of change in Italy around 1600, but the details could take us aback: for instance, the very designation ‘opera’ was not consistently used until as late as the nineteenth century. An impressive list of genre terms used in opera libretti or scores at various historical periods in various centres or national traditions can be reconstructed, and these differences in terminology reflect important variations in the very nature of the works. One recent history of opera in seventeenth-century Venice lists around fifteen terms that circulated in the early decades, few of which include the word ‘opera’, and only some of which make reference to music. It could be attione in musica or a drama musicale or a favola regia, a tragedia musicale or an opera scenica; the sheer proliferation speaks of a genre in the making. In this second, more modern manner of telling opera’s history, the precursors and theories underpinning its emergence are now all over Ialy in the sixteenth century. Opera mutated gradually out of these ancestors, …
(Abbate & Parker, p 38-9)
I’d keep it going if it didn’t make my own writing seem impoverished and weak in comparison. This is a whole new way of seeing that opening chapter of the history of opera. Their charming conversational tone is a pleasure to read.
Okay, so that’s the good news.
If I have a quibble –and it’s a biggie—it’s how I feel about their response to the last century, a colossal omission or perhaps simply an error in their choice of focus. I must frame it within my own beliefs about opera, so that you can decide whether I can be trusted.
I love teaching opera as a series of debates, or conversations if you prefer. These change throughout history. In the first century of opera the composer is barely in the picture, when we recall that musicians were usually servants, that opera performances sometimes employed substitute arias & solos pulled out of a suitcase. There was no textual integrity because there was barely any text, period. Publishing came later. The conversation at one time was really between the librettist and the virtuoso, whereas in another later century, the composer became the most important figure.
And now? The most imposing figure in modern opera productions is the director: although you’d never know it from reading Parker & Abbate. Their focus is on text, which makes sense. They wrote a big honking book. How could they concern themselves over the evanescence of performance? The ephemera of high notes or interpretations?
But that’s just it. While they would love you to see opera as a bunch of books –which is what you find in a music library—that’s a very narrow perspective, particularly in this century of convergence. Opera is both the works and the performers, the songs & the singers. To focus only on the works is to miss a great deal of the story, particularly now as opera turns up in movie theatres & TV. Now maybe they were concerned that the book was LONG. I can’t argue, even if i want it longer to include what’s missing. Honestly, yes!
So… How to tell the history of opera? go to opera. See the productions, quibble with them, discuss them with your friends. That’s where any art form lives.
Lotfi Mansouri’s death earlier this week is not the end of an era. His time had already passed long ago. But his death is still a fit time to ask “how important was Lotfi Mansouri”?
One answers that question differently as a Canadian. The Canadian Opera Company before Mansouri was a series of question marks and possibilities.
During his time with the COC big name talent was more willing to take the plunge, to come here to perform. As a result the optics gradually changed, both abroad (for the artists considering coming) and in Toronto (for audiences noticing the talent).
However much one may associate Mansouri with glitz & glamour, his key achievements were administrative ones that secured the future. Perhaps they would all have been addressed sooner or later, but his stewardship strengthened the COC’s place in Toronto, at a time when the ecology was changing.
The Toronto Symphony –who had worked in partnership with the COC and who were cut loose with the creation of the COC’s own orchestra—seemed to be the most important cultural organization in Toronto at the time of Mansouri’s arrival in the 1970s. One can’t point to a single factor. The TSO’s move to Roy Thompson Hall was a huge disappointment, even after a further renovation to improve the acoustics of the new hall. In the past quarter century, when opera steadily grew in Toronto, the symphony not only lost its hold but maybe lost its way, as the competition in this city became increasingly diverse & sophisticated. At the same time Tafelmusik was gradually carving off a chunk of the available audience, while in addition they had a collaborator onstage in Opera Atelier. To survive in this market one needed not only to know what one’s mission was, but to articulate it and market it clearly to find an audience.
Canadian Opera Company photo of the Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Centre
The COC has been a leader during this period, both under Mansouri’s leadership and after. Their Ensemble Studio, modeled on the Merola program in San Francisco, changed the relationship to the pool of talent. Internal organizational moves such as the building of the Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Centre consolidated the company.
There’s one aspect of Mansouri’s career, however, that makes news of his passing of world-wide importance. Whether you call them “surtitles” (the copyrighted name the COC came up with), “supertitles” or “subtitles” doesn’t matter. It’s a simple idea that has been adopted all over the world, changing the way people experience opera. It used to be that one either did one’s homework –listening to the work, learning the libretto, reading the synopsis—or one sat in comparative ignorance during the performance. Now? Opera has become more inclusive because one simply shows up and understands what’s going on.
People split hairs about the titles themselves. Some purists dislike them, some resent the laughter that they sometimes elicit, although over the years titles are being written better to avoid the problem. If I have a beef –and it’s minor—it’s that the titles I see in Toronto work a bit differently than what you get at the Met in NYC. Here, they always seem to presuppose that you know where the text begins to repeat, where the da capo part goes back to the beginning. If you watch the first verse you’ll see text. When the singers repeat, you’re out of luck. Pardon me, title-writers, but if I knew where the titles were repeating, I wouldn’t need titles in the first place. Why are repeats an occasion for a blank space up top? Please keep the titles coming. It means that if I look away from the text and spend a moment watching a singer, I miss the text for the repeated passage.
But I digress.
Lotfi Mansouri’s importance? In Toronto, he helped establish the COC as the pre-eminent performing arts organization in the country. And his greatest achievement with the COC –surtitles—have been imitated all over the world, arguably the single most important innovation in the opera world over the past few decades.
“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.
August 31, 2013 Toronto, ON – The Canadian Opera Company is deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of former general director Lotfi Mansouri, who guided the company from 1976 to 1988.
“Lotfi Mansouri was a legend. There is no question he was one of opera’s most influential general directors; whether it be his passion for promoting young performers, his zeal for attracting new audiences to the art form, or his undeniable love of opera and all its idiosyncrasies,” says COC General Director Alexander Neef. “The international prestige that this company now enjoys is due in no small part to his strong leadership and tireless efforts. I am personally very grateful for his friendship and the advice he shared with me ever since I joined the COC.”
Mansouri was the COC’s third general director and played a significant role in launching the COC’s international reputation for artistic excellence and creative innovation, and growing the company into the largest producer of opera in Canada and one of the largest in North America. During his tenure, Mansouri’s focus was on implementing a longer performance season, audience development, more adventurous repertoire and productions, and advance planning both financially and artistically, the accomplishments of which are essential elements of the COC’s operations today.
The COC’s international reputation was most certainly launched with the growing number of singers of world-renown that Mansouri was able to attract to the company with greater regularity. Mansouri brought with him to the COC an extensive network of friends and associates developed during his time as a resident stage director at Zurich Opera and Geneva Opera, as well as guest director at major opera houses in Italy and the United States. Not long into his term the COC presented what has been called an unprecedented season with preeminent opera stars of the day Joan Sutherland, Tatiana Troyanos, Elisabeth Söderström and James McCracken all appearing in the 1980 – 1981 performance year.
Mansouri is also credited with establishing the COC Orchestra and COC Chorus, which have become two of the company’s most distinguished attributes. The company’s orchestra and chorus are internationally acclaimed for the skill and musicianship possessed by their artists.
A great ambition of Mansouri’s was the creation of a specialized training program for young opera artists that would serve as a bridge to professional life. This goal was realized in 1980 with the launch of the COC Ensemble Studio, which has become Canada’s premier training program for young opera professionals. To date, over 180 young professional Canadian singers, opera coaches, stage directors and conductors have acquired their first major professional operatic experience through the Ensemble Studio, claiming such alumni as Ben Heppner, Isabel Bayrakdarian, John Fanning, Wendy Nielsen, Joseph Kaiser, David Pomeroy, Lauren Segal and Krisztina Szabó.
It was also during Mansouri’s time as general director that the COC established permanent administrative offices at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre and its own production shop, an essential requirement of any major opera company.
Under Mansouri’s tenure, one of the greatest contributions to the COC and the opera world was the creation of SURTITLES™, which were unveiled at the company’s 1983 production of Elektra. The occasion marked the very first time any opera house in the world had projected a simultaneous translation of the opera for its audience, and the advent of SURTITLES™ allowed the COC to make opera more accessible to audiences. The idea of titles, once revolutionary to the international opera community, is now accepted practice in all major opera houses worldwide.
Mansouri left the COC in 1988 to become general director of San Francisco Opera. He returned on multiple occasions to give masterclasses to the young opera professionals of the Ensemble Studio and to direct on the company’s mainstage.
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra could drop the word “baroque” if they wanted. Tonight I heard more evidence that they can play just about anything.
barczablog 