Alla Ossipova: Memorial Benefit Concert

Posted on January 11, 2013 by barczablog

I received the following email that I reproduce verbatim:

Dear Opera by Request Supporter,

It is with great sorrow that all of us associated with Opera by Request received the news on Christmas Day of the untimely passing of Alla Ossipova.  It was only a few short months ago that Alla delivered a stunning performance of Fricka in Wagner’s Die Walkure, the latest in several superb performances which Alla delivered over the years.

To commemorate her life, her husband George Ossipov requested a concert be presented in her memory.  Such a concert will be presented a week Friday, on January 18, at 7:30 pm at College St. United Church, College and Bathurst Sts.  A number of singers who performed with Alla in recent years will share their talents in her memory.  Donations collected at the concert will be shared by Opera by Request and Summer Opera Lyric Theatre, the two venues where Alla was most recently able to showcase and develop her talents.

Your presence will be gratefully appreciated.

Please feel more than welcome to share in this event.

Yours,

Bill Shookhoff
Opera by Request
416 455-2365

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can only add the two reviews I wrote of Ossipova’s performances that you can read here, as a reminder, plus an example of her voice, now stilled.

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Remembering Frida and Diego

Posted on January 9, 2013 by barczablog

Better late than never, right?

In October I had the pleasure of walking through the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibit Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting, displaying artwork and images associated with the lives of Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo, a mind-boggling show I wrote of a couple of times (Frida and Diego @ the AGO  and Latent Frida), and whose influence hung over everything else I lived through for weeks like a sweet perfume.  One of the natural places to end a great show is in the bookstore, where one hopes to capture and maybe take home a bit of the magic felt in the gallery.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s only now that I am really looking at the books (better late than never), enjoying happy flashbacks.

The exhibit is recorded in a book called –naturally—Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting.  Edited by Dot Tuer & Elliott King, this is an instant reminder of the magic of the show, and can be found online for all of $19.95.

It’s not a huge book, but sufficiently substantial, boldly mixing photography with the art in the same way the exhibit juxtaposed their art & their lives.  It’s tempting to see them separately because of the contrasts between their work.  For Diego, you see examples of European art influencing his work, reading too about influences such as the Mexican revolution & Soviet realist art.  For Frida, we see her at home, her health issues, and read of influences, even as we see her original –and seminal—voice burst forth in her work.   The book suggests some of the ways in which the influences were mutual, although for that one must read between the lines.

The other volume I brought home is very different, namely Frida Kahlo: Portraits of an Icon.  I didn’t see it in the online catalogue (which probably can’t list everything considering how large the bookstore’s catalogue…), but I suspect this is the place in Toronto if you hope to find it, rather than seeking it online.

Where the show (and its catalogue) is wonderfully eclectic, combining photos & art to take us through the tumultuous decades of the two artists’ lives, the portrait book is very dry and restrained.  There’s a wonderful essay to begin the book, by Margaret Hooks.  I was reminded of Harper’s Index, with its deadpan assembly of factual data without commentary.  This time, however, the “index” is a series of over fifty photos capturing Frida Kahlo throughout her life, beautifully reproduced in a presentation as restrained and quiet as an art gallery.  We see her in childhood photographed by her father, in her youth, sometimes with Diego, often holding or sitting with one of her many companion animals.  For anyone who is too distracted by the unibrow to notice what a stunningly original & beautiful woman Kahlo was, these photos are truly eye-openers.  Many images are powerful reminders of Kahlo’s art, because of course, many of her paintings are self-portraits.  The portraits in this book seem to calibrate her paintings.

For what it’s worth, Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting is open at the AGO until January 20th.  While you can capture the show in a book, it’s still there in the gallery for a little while longer.

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Benefit concert: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown for Actors’ Fund of Canada

Posted on January 7, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

Theatre critics and personalities unite in the concert version of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown in support of the Actors’ Fund of Canada.
Barrie, ON – After a triumphant fundraising performance of The Producers for the Actors’ Fund in 2010, Talk Is Free Theatre (TIFT) is delighted to follow up with a fundraising, concert performance of You Are a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The performance will be held on Sunday, February 10 at 8PM at the Young Centre in Toronto.
You Are a Good Man, Charlie Brown follows an average day in the life of Charlie Brown and the little moments picked from all the days of Charlie Brown, from Valentine’s Day to the baseball season, from wild optimism to utter despair, all mixed in with the lives of his friends (both human and non-human) and strung together on the string of a single day, from bright uncertain morning to hopeful starlit evening.
The Globe and Mail Theatre Critic J. Kelly Nestruck will play the title character, with National Post Theatre Critic Robert Cushman appearing as Schroeder and Now Theatre Critic Glenn Sumi taking on Linus. There will be surprise guests in the roles of Lucy and Sally. The role of Snoopy will be divided into small cameos to encourage a wider representation of the theatre company with  Theatre 20 Artistic Producer Adam Brazier, Broadway World Kelly Cameron, Rose Theatre manager Costin Manu and Dean of the Performing Arts at Sheridan College Michael Rubinoff as agreed participants to date. More casting confirmations are expected to follow shortly.
The event will be directed by Mitchell Cushman. Musical director is Ryan de Souza, designer is Erika Connor, stage manager is Carolyn Mykytyshyn and producer is  Arkady Spivak.
“We’re grateful for all the hard work that Arkady Spivak and Talk Is Free Theatre have put into organizing this tremendous fundraiser, as well as for everybody who has committed their time and energy to make this a great event,” says Actors’ Fund Executive Director David Hope. “The spirit of community that this fundraiser embodies is at the heart of the Actors’ Fund, the community stepping up to help its most vulnerable members during their time of need. We’re excited for this unique show that is sure to be remembered for years.”
Tickets are $30, $50 and $100 (this category qualifies for VIP seating and admission to pre-performance reception). Tickets are available through Talk Is Free Theatre box office by calling 1-888-792-1949 or website www.tift.ca. Sponsorship, pledges and program advertising opportunities are available by contacting Arkady Spivak at arkady@tift.ca or (705) 792-1949 ext. 22.  
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COC’S Ensemble Studio: La Clemenza di Tito

Posted on January 6, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

RISING OPERA STARS OF COC’S ENSEMBLE STUDIO STEP INTO SPOTLIGHT IN SPECIAL PERFORMANCE OF LA CLEMENZA DI TITO

Toronto – The young artists of the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio take to the mainstage for their own performance of Mozart’s final opera, La clemenza di Tito, on Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.  This special performance of a production described as “modern music theater you mustn’t miss” (Chicago Tribune) is a rare showcase of these young singers’ talent and an important step in their careers as they develop into the next generation of Canadian opera stars.  All tickets to the February 6 performance are affordably priced at only $25 or $55.  La clemenza di Tito is sung in Italian with English SURTITLES™.

The Ensemble Studio artists perform under the direction of the same artistic team as the mainstage cast, including visionary American director Christopher Alden and young Israeli conductor Daniel Cohen leading the full COC Orchestra and Chorus.  Members of the Ensemble Studio frequently appear in smaller roles or understudy leading roles in COC mainstage productions.  This special performance of La clemenza di Tito is an exciting opportunity for audiences to see these young Canadian artists featured in principal roles.

Written in the last year of Mozart’s life and considered to be one of his masterpieces, La clemenza di Tito depicts the attempted assassination of Roman Emperor Tito, and his subsequent choice to forgive rather than punish the two conspirators, Vitellia and Sesto.  Composed in honour of the 1791 coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia, Mozart’s sublimely beautiful score showcases his sophisticated understanding of human nature.  La clemenza di Tito delivers the kind of emotional immediacy that only great art possesses, and depicts its complex characters with both realism and powerful drama.

Sharing the title role of the benevolent, forgiving Tito are two young tenors: Christopher Enns and Owen McCausland.  Manitoba-born Enns, a third-year member of the Ensemble, has appeared in several mainstage productions with the COC, including The Tales of Hoffmann (2012) and Ariadne auf Naxos (2011), and was praised for his “large, expressive voice” (NOW) in the 2010 Ensemble Studio performance of The Magic Flute.  New Brunswick’s McCausland, a Dalhousie University graduate and first-year member of the Ensemble, was recently seen as the Messenger in the COC’s fall 2012 production of Il Trovatore and has been praised for his “impressively ringing tone” (La Scena Musicale).

This fall, soprano Ambur Braid was a hit as the “sexy, sparky, sensational” (Toronto Star) Adele in the COC’s production of Die Fledermaus.  She brings her three years of Ensemble experience to her last mainstage performance as a member of the Ensemble Studio, the challenging role of the scheming Vitellia.  Mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, praised for her performance as the “deliciously evil Ino” (Opera) in the 2011 Ensemble Studio performance of Semele and her ability to “[command] the stage with authority” (La Scena Musicale), returns to the mainstage as Vitellia’s lovesick co-conspirator, Sesto.

In her COC mainstage debut, soprano Sasha Djihanian, first-year Ensemble Studio member and first-place winner of the 2011 Ensemble Studio Competition, portrays Tito’s loyal friend Annio.  Fellow Ensemble newcomer soprano Claire de Sévigné, last seen as Ida in Die Fledermaus, sings the role of Servilia, Annio’s lover.  Rounding out the cast as captain of the guard Publio is bass-baritone Neil Craighead, who is in his final season with the Ensemble Studio and was previously seen in the COC’s productions of Tosca (2012), Rigoletto (2011) and Idomeneo (2010).

In addition to the special Ensemble Studio cast production of La clemenza di Tito on February 6, there are eight performances of the La clemenza di Tito mainstage production running from February 3 – 22, 2013 at the
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.  This is a production from Chicago Opera Theater, with costume design by Terese Wadden, set design by Andrew Cavanaugh Holland and lighting design by Gary Marder.

About the Ensemble Studio

The members of the Ensemble Studio are the COC’s resident artists and are important ambassadors for the company.  Since its inception in 1980, over 150 young professional Canadian singers, opera coaches, stage directors and conductors have acquired their first major professional operatic experience through the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio.  Former members include Ben Heppner, Isabel Bayrakdarian, John Fanning, Wendy Nielsen, David Pomeroy, Joseph Kaiser, Allyson McHardy and Krisztina Szabó.

Members of the Ensemble Studio receive a blend of advanced study and practical experience through an individually tailored, multi-year program, involving understudying and performing mainstage roles, intensive vocal coaching, language and acting studies, and career skills development, as well as participation in masterclasses with internationally renowned opera professionals.

________________________________________________________________________________________

TICKET INFORMATION

Single tickets for the Ensemble Studio performance of La clemenza di Tito are $25 or $55 (includes applicable taxes).  Tickets are available online at coc.ca, by calling 416-363-8231, or in person at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Box Office, located at 145 Queen St. W., Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Standing Room

Sixty $12 Standing Room tickets are available at 11 a.m. the morning of each performance, in person only at the Four Seasons Centre Box Office.  Limit of two tickets per person.  Subject to availability.

________________________________________________________________________________________
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ensemble Studio Performance Sponsor: RBC

Presenting Sponsor of SURTITLES™:  Sun Life Financial

Official Automotive Sponsor of the COC at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts:

Jaguar Land Rover Canada

Official Media Sponsors:  CTV and The Globe and Mail

Digital Marketing Sponsor:  Delvinia

The COC Ensemble Studio, underwritten in part by Peter M. Deeb and The Slaight Family Foundation, is Canada’s premier training program for young opera professionals and provides advanced instruction, hands-on experience, and career development opportunities.  The Ensemble Studio is also supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage, RBC Foundation and other generous donors.

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About the Canadian Opera Company

Based in Toronto, the Canadian Opera Company is the largest producer of opera in Canada and one of the largest in North America.  The COC enjoys a loyal audience support-base and one of the highest attendance and subscription rates in North America.  Under its leadership team of General Director Alexander Neef and Music Director Johannes Debus, the COC is increasingly capturing the opera world’s attention.  The COC maintains its international reputation for artistic excellence and innovation by creating new productions within its diverse repertoire, collaborating with leading opera companies and festivals, and attracting the world’s foremost Canadian and international artists.  The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, hailed internationally as one of the finest in the world.  Designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects, the Four Seasons Centre opened in 2006, and is also the performance venue for The National Ballet of Canada.  For more information on the COC, visit its award-winning website, coc.ca.

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Not so Incidental Music

Posted on January 6, 2013 by barczablog

Novelist Lydia Perović (Photo by Cheryl Rondeau)

November 21st I posted a kind of preliminary review of Lydia Perović’s first novel Incidental Music: preliminary because at that time, I hadn’t finished reading it yet. Now that i’ve finished reading the book i have more to say.

A long time ago I recall Larry Niven explaining that they would find inspiration when two stimulating subject areas intersected.    While a single idea could intrigue him, it was his recognition of an intersection with a second subject area that would ignite his imagination: and the story would begin to write itself in the tension between the two.

In reading Incidental Music I had the most curious sensations.  Sure, we expect books to interest us, otherwise we wouldn’t pick them up and read them.  But Perović’s novel concerns several subjects near and dear to my heart.  I repeat, several.

Perović’s protagonist Petra (ha, there’s a mouthful), an Eastern European in Toronto navigates the tensions between her self-awareness and her conservative milieu as if she were Gulliver in the land of the Houyhnhnms.  Petra’s deadpan travels through Toronto set off many resonances for me, a second generation Eastern European, and a Torontonian.  One of the incidental pleasures of Incidental Music is in navigating Toronto neighbourhoods.  For instance, the church where i was married (first time) is in this book.

Perović takes on three other big subjects near and dear, via one of the characters.  We hear from an aging opera singer (# 1), present in Budapest for the Hungarian uprising (#2), which she now recollects through the gathering haze of senility(#3).  Readers of this blog will know of my obsession with opera. In addition, I’m a second generation Hungarian who has devoured tales of the uprising, both from family or from strangers.  And I was close to a family member whose dementia was subject of a blog post awhile ago.

Perović makes distantly remembered operatic roles a kind of meta-text.  Are we reading about the progress of a love affair, a revolution, or a kind of coming of age tale?  All of the above in different ways.  When I look at the complex array of topics, particularly considering how personal they all are for me, I can only sigh at how smoothly Perović crafted her interwoven tales of her three protagonists, and how authentic the accounts feel.  I don’t deny that at first I resisted the Hungarian narrative –knowing that Perović is from Montenegro, not Hungary—but that this makes Perović’s achievement all the more impressive.  In other words, this is not her life story, it’s an accomplished work of fiction, its points of view portrayed with genuine virtuosity.

The other big subject of this novel?  Lesbian eroticism, and I must insist there’s nothing lewd or pornographic in what we read.  It shouldn’t be a big deal, anymore than it’s a big deal when a man writes (or reads) about a woman or a woman writes (or reads) about a man.  If we accept those imaginative stretches –when Shakespeare puts words in the mouths of such women as Juliet Capulet or Mrs Othello, or when Jane Austen brings Mr Darcy to life—then why would it be problematic for me, a sensitive male, to avidly devour accounts of lesbian love?  For a man to somehow fail in his imaginative connection with lesbian love would, I believe, be tantamount to failing to show interest in women altogether.  If I can read about a woman’s love for a man (I can and do), of a man’s love for another man (I can and do), this should be no different.  I only mention it because it’s central to the novel, not because it’s such a big deal in any other sense.  In fact it’s just one more aspect of the novel that’s handled with ease, and may i add, with class & dignity.

Music is not at all incidental in Incidental Music, a novel I recommend whether or not you’re a Torontonian, an opera-lover or an Eastern European.

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High-def Troyens

Posted on January 6, 2013 by barczablog

Seeing Les Troyens at the Met Monday night, Elizabeth Bishop replaced Susan Graham as Dido, which led me to wonder who’d be singing the role in today’s high-definition broadcast.

Silly me.  While it’s possible Graham was unwell Monday, her performance today was one of the most impressive I’ve seen in the Met’s series of cinema presentations.  Coupled with Bryan Hymel’s performance as Aeneas, it made Part II even better this time.  While it may not be (affect a pompous voice for this) “a performance for the ages”, it’s surely good enough to be released on DVD, one that people will be talking about whether they sound pompous or not.

And forgive me if this blog is starting to look like Troyens R Us.  It’s been a great week of Berlioz.

I’d mentioned Graham’s work in a DVD from Théâtre du Châtelet (2003) designed & directed by Yannis Kokkos.  Maybe it’s because Graham has matured, has lived.  Maybe it’s because Francesca Zambello’s Met production gives Graham something to push back against, including a scene where the Trojan soldiers / sailors seem to turn on her en masse.  But the result in Zambello’s production seems oh so much deeper than Kokkos, at least in Part II; my reservations about Part I, as mentioned  are unchanged.

Zambello has a couple of recurrent images of heaps: dead/sleeping bodies, booty, arms… We are all eventually on that (scrap-) heap.  That’s how the opera opens and closes.

The ghosts or gods who appear in her Les Troyens carry a torch that could be the sacred flame of history or perhaps simply spirit itself.  When the Trojans give thanks for their apparent victory it’s with flames.  Dido is suppose to end up in a pyre although we don’t see it at the end.

Zambello problematizes both sides.  I already mentioned how the Trojans were cruel to Dido upon their departure.  We also see Trojans torturing a poor Greek prisoner.  In Act II Zambello adds cruelty to the Greeks as we see them begin to rape & pillage even before Aeneas knows they’ve come out of the horse.  I’m conflicted about this because, while it’s a fascinating set of images, I feel it steals Hector’s thunder; what’s scary about a ghost when we’ve already seen soldiers carrying off children?

Speaking of horror, watching the chorus response to Aeneas’s news about Laocoon (as the front of the chorus sings, dancers convulsively act out the punishment of Laocoon, whereby he and his two sons are attacked by sea-snakes), I was reminded of the collective media agonies over Newtown.  Are we any different, in our repetition compulsion, telling and re-telling the horror over and over?  While I was fascinated but resistant at first, seeing it again has me thinking it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

I am hoping Bryan Hymel can hold up, as such voices sometimes have a very brief shelf-life.  At times I could hear traces of John McCracken or Jon Vickers in his sound, although there are other flavours I couldn’t quite place.

The third major singer –the one who is supposed to carry Part I—namely Deborah Voigt as Cassandre—thankfully looked and sounded much better in high-definition today than in the theatre on Monday.  Even so I am thinking that all those Brunnhildes over the past few years are taking a toll on the voice, particularly when she sings at the bottom of her range.  The high notes are more or less there, but the line is sometimes ragged, with no meat on its bones.  Dwayne Croft as Chorèbe in comparison seemed so much richer in his sound.

There are always trade-offs between live and high-definition.  In the theatre, the orchestra & chorus have depths that simply can’t be heard in the cinema, particularly when some forces are offstage.  But the high-def miking compensates for vocal shortcomings, making a bad voice okay and an okay voice sound good.  No wonder Graham and Hymel sounded immortal.

Usually up close camera-work is a double-edged sword that may expose weaknesses in a portrayal.  I kept waiting for the camera to get too close to Graham, and it never happened, not even when I started drowning in her eyes.  I think it needs to be said that a portrayal is only as good as its context.  While I enjoyed her work in Carsen’s Iphigenie en Tauride here in Toronto last year, neither the production nor the opera gave her the scope to show us what we saw here.

I was also thrilled to hear a brief interview with Fabio Luisi backstage, arguably the real star of the production: which is now over.  Want to see it again? There’s the encore, or—if there’s any justice—on the DVD when it’s released.

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Jan 1st Troyens

Posted on January 4, 2013 by barczablog

Francesca Zambello’s production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens has returned to the Metropolitan Opera.  When it premiered a decade ago it was Deborah Voigt as Cassandra, Ben Heppner as Aeneas and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Dido, conducted by James Levine.

A decade later?  Lieberson passed away, Levine stopped conducting for awhile (although he’s gradually coming back), and for awhile Heppner stopped singing (although he’s back now, coming to Toronto at the end of this month).  In the Met’s current incarnation of Troyens, it’s Fabio Luisi who is now the conducting workhorse rather than Levine. Susan Graham began the run as Dido, but was replaced January 1st by Elizabeth Bishop.  Marcello Giordani began the run as Aeneas, but was replaced by Bryan Hymel early in a run that began Dec 13th.  The one hold-over from a decade ago is Deborah Voigt as Cassandra, although based on what I heard January 1st, it’s hard to believe she sounded this way a decade ago.

Zambello’s production manages to be true to the text without worrying about verisimilitude.  The opening image is echoed at the end: a cluster of corpses on a stage, mutely telling us of the futility of war.  When the opera begins it’s from an amorphous composition of scattered bodies who arise as if awaking from a bad dream, to celebrate the end of their great war.  At the end, they’re planning vengeance against Aeneas for the death of Dido, before collapsing into another heap.

In between, Zambello skillfully manages large numbers of people on a huge open stage.  The Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, led by Fabio Luisi, are the biggest stars in this wonderful opera, truly an epic presentation of a story after Vergil’s Aeneid.  We see a mobile chorus unafraid of genuine acting, while singing this wonderful score, and two dozen ballet dancers appearing in several divertissements throughout this grand opera, and assorted supernumeraries.

At times Maria Bjørnson’s set calls for two levels of action, with a curved passageway or lookout upstage at the back, above the main stage area.  They invite us to fill in the gaps with our imaginations instead of spoon-feeding us literal representation although Bjørnson’s design includes an actual horse.  Zambello did seem to under-estimate our intelligence in the moments when Laocoon’s death is not just described but re-enacted by the listeners; yet i loved this spell-binding moment.  I found the entry of Hector’s widow Andromache more of the same unsubtlety, a moment that has made me cry in other productions.  I say this as someone who desperately wants to like this (Berlioz is my favourite composer).  Zambello seems to want to turn this scene into a funeral, which is not a violation of the music, but seems sadly literal.  We should actually be seeing a crowd abashed in their celebration, chastened when they notice the widow Andromache and her son.  And Andromache and her son usually comport themselves with restraint, recognizing that this is a victory celebration.  Zambello gives us an over-the-top display of grief that I found very unsympathetic and wrong-headed.

Less is more in this scene. 

Throughout Part I, I was hungry for direction to my emotions, seeking someone to lead me to something clear & meaningful.  I was certainly ready to be led by Voigt, a singer to whom I surrendered all my disbelief last season in Die Walküre.  But I found her unconvincing for most of her performance.  Her last moments were perhaps her best, but curiously Voigt –the one remaining holdover from the 2003 version—looks and sounds miscast.

Part II is a sunnier series of tableaux, full of celebration, joy, and yes eventual calamity, a great deal of fabulous orchestral music and exquisite singing.  Where Part I worked only intermittently in its large-scale set-pieces for chorus & orchestra, and was otherwise a pale shadow of what Berlioz wrote, Part II burst through the clouds of gloom, a transcendent piece of ensemble singing, dancing & theatre.

Bryan Hymel is a solid dramatic voice and would appear to be a huge discovery with a great career ahead of him.  Marcello Giordani has been the Met’s workhorse over the past few seasons, reliably singing spinto roles in Italian & French, but has reached a point where he needs a break.  I wonder if Giordani even at his best would have been up to Aeneas, a heavier role for instance than (Berlioz’s) Faust.  Hymel brings a heroic demeanour to the stage in the battle sequences, and a lovely line that reminds me of a young Jon Vickers (as dry as Vickers but with a better top).

Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop (photo Sasha Vasiljev)

Elizabeth Bishop started slowly, although from what I heard, she may not have had a great deal of time to assimilate the staging.  At one moment in her first scene –where she’s presenting awards to her assembled people—with a scary misstep she almost fell.  Bishop built steadily from there, reaching all her high notes easily on pitch.  Hers is a gentler Dido than the woman she replaced, namely Susan Graham, at least judging by Graham’s portrayal on the 2003 Théâtre du Châtelet DVD.  Bishop’s Dido warms quietly to Hymel’s Aeneas, so that when he leaves, I felt a great deal of sympathy for her, as she erupts in a gradual display of outrage & anger.

In an unexpected benefit from the casting change, Bishop, who is much shorter than Susan Graham, happens to closely resemble Karen Cargill, who plays her sister Anna; on the other hand, the change throws off the ballet in Act IV, when a very tall dancer stood in for Dido: likely the same height as Graham.  Cargill’s voice has the stunning colorations of a latter day Marilyn Horne, a wonderful contrast to Bishop throughout.

Kwangchul Youn (Narbal) and Eric Cutler (Iopas) added to the vocal glories of the second half of the opera, stylishly sung & persuasively acted.

In the love-scene “Nuits d’ivresse”, we see debauched sailors paired off with Carthaginean women as if in a bower all around Aeneas & Dido.  It makes for a much more complex decision process for Aeneas than you might find in a purer version that only shows Dido with Aeneas; when Aeneas seeks to mobilize his army we see genuine human emotions from this chorus.  The departure sequence itself –when the music seems all duty & Trojan honour—has a nasty side that is quite wonderful, leaving Dido buried on the stage under a pile of ropes, as if some of the sailors have acted out their disrespect.  It’s ugly yes, but it’s powerful and a wonderful embellishment that makes perfect sense.  Bishop’s Dido is very human and very broken.  I’ve never felt quite so much affection for a Dido before.

Saturday’s high definition broadcast is the last performance of the run.  I’ll be interested to see whether Graham returns or not.

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Adaptation: plus and minus

Posted on January 3, 2013 by barczablog

That plus or minus in the title is a less controversial way of phrasing something that came up among friends recently.  Someone was asking why people make adaptations: meaning, the kind they dislike of course.

There is always going to be a part of the audience sitting there boiling over because they don’t like what you’ve done to “their” song (….or play or book).  Too bad.  One can’t write without putting some noses out of joint somewhere, especially when we’re talking about noses so high in the air as to always get wind of something foul.  I lament their misery, particularly because it brings me down.

Speaking of misery, the film of Les Miserables was bound to raise hackles.  Whenever a well-loved work is translated or adapted into a new medium –and we could be speaking of the translation of Hugo’s 1862 novel into English, the subsequent creation of a musical play for the stage in French (1980), then into English (1985), or the creation of the film that has just come out—there are trade-offs.  Without naming names, the hackles in question belong to music – theatre fundamentalists of my acquaintance rather than literary loyalists.

Look at these two examples, and consider what’s at work.  In most adaptations we’re looking at dimensions, questions of how big, how long, how wide, how deep.  When you go from one medium to another –say from stage to screen—you have to make trade-offs, usually sacrificing or losing something in the process.  Stages are inflexible places, where the people have to come in and fill the available acreage, and so we’ll get something that aims to be spacious and momentous, expected to hold our attention entirely.  On screen, we can sometimes be massive and court the infinite, and then be more intimate. Softness becomes a necessity when our screen stars are commodities who don’t have the vocal skills of their theatrical brethren.  How far does cuteness take you?

Let’s compare, and try not to judge, so much as to appreciate.  Each one has its advantages, its strengths.  First let’s look at something live.

Notice how this version from stage doesn’t really need to be sung, as speech and barking work just fine.  Given how much is often going on, it’s usually harder to understand the text in live theatre, even when the actor enunciates carefully, whereas in the cinema one can fix everything nice and neat and tidy (after the fact).

Sacha Baron Cohen is never as big or as extroverted as a stage performance, missing all that gnarly character we usually see in performances of this song. It’s all intimate & close, aka “cinematic”.  But of course Cohen’s fame can at least help sell the film.

Someday i’ll go see Les Mis in a movie theatre. The question comes to mind because just yesterday I was listening to and comparing versions of Berlioz’s Les Troyens, a very loose operatic handling of some of Vergil’s epic.  I can’t help noticing that loyalties depend on exposure. No one seems particularly concerned about the ways a classical poem was changed for the opera.  The concerns always seem to come up when someone who is attached to a particular version is somehow offended by a new rendition.

I am going to make a bunch of generalizations, loosely equating a large class of activities, not because they are really the same, so much as because the similarities open up possibilities.  I don’t believe anyone would object to the translation of a novel into a new language even if we lose some of the subtleties of the original when we render the prose into another language.  I read a part of Hugo’s novel long ago when I was in school.  I enjoyed it, but I was reading the novel in English translation.  Without the translation it’s unlikely I would have undertaken it in French: something I’ve only begun to do as an adult, and normally for scholarly purposes (eg essays and books about opera) rather than for pleasure.

We have laws in Ontario whereby technology is supposed to be adapted for those who are not readily able to access materials.  In changing the way a powerpoint presentation or a webpage is assembled, the content is made available to people who would otherwise be excluded.

Ferruccio Busoni

I believe adaptations can work the same way.  But please don’t view this through the pejorative lens of ability & disability, particularly when we all have sensory preferences.  Some of us are visual learners, some of us are more verbal (or verbose), and many other tendencies I could name.  Some of us can’t sit still, others are happiest cradling a book. For some people, a novel is the ideal, but for others, their cognitive style favours other ways of assembling the content.

Instead of looking at the adaptation of Hugo’s massive work in other large-scale works, let’s instead consider something smaller.  I’d like to look at two transcriptions of a work for solo violin, namely Bach’s Chaconne in D minor.  I don’t play the violin nor do I encounter solo violin music in concerts very often, although youtube has substantially changed those rules.  Here’s the original. 

I have encountered two very different piano transcriptions of Bach’s violin work.  One is as spare in its way as the original, namely Johannes Brahms’ transcription for the left hand.  It’s much harder than it looks. 

Another approach is to let the Bach composition be a kind of template for a transcription for solo piano that employs both hands and many more notes; that’s what you find in this other transcription by the virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni.

Each (Brahms and Busoni) are marvellous in their own way, as is Bach’s original.  I can’t decide which I prefer, only that I need all three compositions to exist, that each in its way enables my appreciation of the other.  It’s a lot of fun to play one after the other (usually Brahms first followed by Busoni)…i don’t play the violin.

No, not everyone is a Brahms or a Busoni. But everytime we look at the world we’re paraphrasing, trying to make sense of some portion of what we understand.  As you can probably tell, i believe adaptations-transcripions-paraphrases are quintessentially human behaviour.  You’ve heard that phrase “adapt or die”?  To adapt, to paraphrase, to re-assemble what you see is to be alive.

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Trojans: three or is it four?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by barczablog

To my knowledge there are three versions of Hector Berlioz’s epic Les Troyens on DVD.

I obtained the first when it came out as a VHS tape.  It’s now available re-mastered, capturing several remarkable performances from 1983, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra & chorus, conducted by James Levine, in a production by

  • Jessye Norman as Cassandra, having recently made her Met debut.
  • Tatiana Troyanos as Dido
  • Placido Domingo as Aeneas

In this version you’re watching the story more or less as written.  War may be horrible but no one connected to this production sought to over-write the text with any modern counter-discourse.  Perhaps the best evidence of this is in the exciting moment when the soldiers & sailors of Troy finally bow to the will of the gods.  We see a series of boats put to sea in a moment of great excitement, more or less as dictated by the instructions in the score.  Depending on when you ask me, i’d point to any of the three principals as the chief reason for obtaining the DVD, even with the magnificent work of the orchestra, chorus and some of Levine’s best work on record.  I especially miss Troyanos (whose untimely death is now almost 20 years ago..!), as i listen to the fabulous duet from Act IV.

I obtained the second at the suggestion of my friend James Fretz, who was singing the praises of Anna Caterina Antonacci, and whose stunning performances can be seen in two of the three links in the post I made yesterday.

My main motivation was the presence of John Eliot Gardner at the podium.  As some regular readers here will likely recall –because I am so obsessive going on and on about this—I am very impatient to see historically informed performance (HIP) venture past 1800, finally exploring the romantic period.  And so, while this production may include some HIP sounds, the staging is very modern.

How modern?  There’s at least the flavour of Regietheater in the look & feel of the Théâtre du Châtelet production from 2003, designed & directed by Yannis Kokkos, the soldiers resembling troops of our own era, although the action is not over-written. In the finale to Act I the onstage surfaces that function as mirrors create some remarkable distortions of perspective.  At times it’s as though we’re watching ghosts, because the choristers seem transparent; and of course the moment is breath-taking (see yesterday’s post).

If there’s one aspect to point to, it’s that Susan Graham’s Dido is so strong, that the title starts to feel false.  Dido is not just grief-stricken.  I wonder what’s the point of the opera if the pageant of her grief over-rides Trojan destiny, and the messages of the gods to Aeneas?  Even in the moment when they sail away, this production only seems to care about Dido: who is to be the focus of the last minutes of the opera.

Mr Fretz was of course correct to draw my attention to Antonacci, who owns Part I in one of the most powerful performances I’ve ever seen in any opera.  For those concerned that Susan Graham has missed some of her Met performances due to illness, here’s a chance to see and hear her remarkable interpretation of Dido.  Gregory Kunde is a solid Aeneas in a production that often had me feeling that the role can be very thankless.  Or is it because the two female stars of this production are both so very strong?

I am thrilled to have both of these recordings to document an opera I love very much.

There’s a third video I have read about in a review, conducted by Valery Gergiev; the review led me to hesitate.  Even so –given the negative remarks about the mise-en-scène—I will have to get it, just to hear what Gergiev does with this score.

This Saturday January 5th the Metropolitan Opera high-definition broadcast is Les Troyens.  Knowing the quality of the orchestra & chorus, and having heard Fabio Luisi’s brisk tempi, I am hoping that sometime thereafter there will be a fourth DVD available.

One can hope…(!)

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A remembered tune: Les Troyens

Posted on January 2, 2013 by barczablog

Melodies are time-machines.  I can hear a song and instantly I go back in time.

Composers know this.  It’s why films often employ compositions we’ve heard before to invoke a whole set of meanings.  In Forrest Gump Robert Zemeckis accomplishes a series of short flashbacks to instants in historical time pinpointed by the associated song.  These discreet little moments are a curious reflection of Forrest himself, as though he lived in the two-dimensional surface of these Polaroid snapshots.

Composer Hector Berlioz

I’m looking forward to seeing Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens in a high definition broadcast this weekend.  The opera is understood as an adaptation of Vergil’s Aeneid even if we get very little that’s recognizable from the classical poem.  This should scarcely surprise us if we know Berlioz.  His Romeo et Juliette employed the orchestra to portray the lovers, using a very indirect dramaturgy.  At one point a narrator actually speaks of Shakespeare by name.  An opera that names the playwright during the play? Sure, if it’s part cantata, part symphony.

Premier amour, n’êtes vous pas
Plus haut que toute poésie?
Ou ne seriez-vous point, dans notre exil mortel,
Cette poésie elle-même,
Dont Shakespeare lui seul eut le secret suprême
Et qu’il remporta dans le ciel!

Similar odd things happen in the libretto of Troyens, as for instance when Dido stands on her own funeral pyre, predicting that Hannibal will one day (hundreds of years in the future) be a scourge to the Romans  (and Aeneas), avenging the North Africans (Dido & Carthage).

Don’t confuse this with a Wagnerian opera.  For one thing, it’s full of ballet.  I say this ruefully because it’s likely a deal-breaker for the COC.  Otherwise Troyens would be an ideal candidate for the COC, being a showpiece for chorus & orchestra.  Oh well.

Where Wagner’s operas & music-dramas usually have several themes, Berlioz is much more economical in his assignment of meaning via recurring musical ideas.  There is a single melody Berlioz employs as a key to his opera.  We hear it several times:

  1. it appears offstage accompanying the procession bringing the horse into Troy, as Cassandra (a member of Priam’s royal family given the dubious gift of royal prophecy, but cursed because no one ever believes her) expresses her sorrow, disbelief and outrage.  As such it is the melody whereby Trojans celebrate their victory, even as Cassandra –sole witness for historical truth—declares that their joy is a mistake. 
  2. When the few surviving Trojan exiles come ashore in Carthage we hear it weakly in a minor key
  3. As the Trojan sailors discuss the dire messages from the gods & ghosts of their fallen brothers –admonishing them to leave the comforts of Carthage to resume their journey to Italy—we hear fast snatches of the tune
  4. When Aeneas and the sailors finally leave –ignoring Dido’s pleas—we hear a brief but full-blown version of the tune as they prepare to sail away
  5. During the final moments of the opera, when the Carthaginians swear vengeance upon Aeneas, we hear a loud statement of the theme.  (note the version on the video is not the same version used in the Met version, although a variant of this theme also figures at the ending, sung by chorus)

Whenever I listen to Troyens, as I did tonight,I have trouble getting this melody out of my head.  With a melody like this? It’s a good thing.

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