I use surnames in this blog. Everyone calls him “Topher”, but when I wrote about him it was “Mokrzewski”. Some aspects of the naming convention are absurdly obvious. We call RW and RS “Wagner” and “Strauss not “Richard” and “Richard”, although RS can easily be mixed up with other Strausses, so one has to be careful.
Michael and Linda Hutcheon
This once I’ll make an exception because I’m speaking of someone who will always be “Linda” to me rather than “Hutcheon”, although of course –as with RS–we must distinguish one Hutcheon from another given that it’s Linda & Michael Hutcheon.
They’re an example of what citizenship entails, fabulous role models in everything they do. They both taught at the University of Toronto. They married and appear together in public in what seems to be the happiest and healthiest marriage I know of. While their disciplines diverge –he’s in Family & Community Medicine, while she’s a literary theorist in English & Comparative Literature—they found common ground at night seeing opera. No wonder they’ve written books together, the most tangible labours of love one could imagine. Opera: Desire, Disease, Death for example, is a fascinating book right at the intersection of their disciplines. And citizenship entails service. They are right in the thick of it with Queen of Puddings, a company who have produced several interesting modern works, most recently Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba.
I met Linda in a course she co-taught with Caryl Clark, a graduate seminar with a title something like (as I struggle to recall it) “Opera: multi-disciplinary studies of a multi-disciplinary art-form.” That intersection of disciplines, so germane to her collaborations with Michael, is central to her work as a literary theorist. Two big words I associate with Linda (other than “opera” or “nice”) are “irony” and “adaptation”, as her books on those two words (Irony’s Edge and later A Theory of Adaptation: among many other books I am not mentioning) underpin everything I think as if she were Martin Luther and I’d just become a Protestant.
Saturday morning, the Canadian Opera Company & the University of Toronto co-presented the latest instalment of “The Opera Exchange”, a colloquium Linda co-founded roughly a decade ago, very much like the experience of Linda’s courses and books. Again we’re speaking of a kind of service, a brilliant outreach to the community to help educate & prepare audiences for the operas programmed by the COC. Today’s presentation, occasioned by the COC production of Tristan und Isolde and Wagner’s bicentennial this year, approached its target from several directions:
A paper by Clemens Risi concerning Regietheatre as exemplified in three recent productions, included a lovely nod near the end from Risi concerning Linda’s ideas of adaptation. Risi offered a wonderfully simply theoretical construct, looking at the tension between theatre as museum, or as laboratory for experimentation, a tension that can be pleasureable even when there’s controversy
After a brief but eloquent talk about transcriptions, Topher Mokrzewski gave a masterful performance of Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod, transcription being just another kind of adaptation. His intro included two wonderful observations: that Liszt’s motivation may have partially been motivated by a kind of envy, in effect appropriating the compositional brilliance of others into his fingers, and that transcription is a kind of wish-fulfillment, allowing one to hear and play what’s otherwise unavailable. Those two observations resonate beyond the pianistic world, in the larger sphere of adaptation.
Linda then moderated a conversation among two singers (Margaret Jane Wray & Michael Baba) & an academic (Bettina Brindl-Risi), asking a wonderfully pointed question –attributed to someone else—in a most disarmingly warm fashion. How does it feel, I wonder, as a singer in this Tristan to be the soundtrack of a video? It was asked whimsically and with no disrespect, eliciting marvellous answers from the singers; they’re too busy trying to survive the ordeal of their roles to even notice.
Now in retirement Linda is on to her next subject with Michael, namely older artists and late style. Notice that the subject is again multi-disciplinary, straddling the boundaries of the Hutcheons’s respective disciplines.
The show is Actors! Canadian Actors Up Close and Personal, and before I go any further I need to say that it’s not a show in the usual sense. I hate telling you too much because I’d be stealing some of the surprise inherent in this work. It says right on the program that it’s “part panel discussion, part scripted performance“.
True.
Melissa Major
Melissa Major of Cheshire Unicorn Theatre Company has created this mix of happening and drama.
Knowing that, I sat right at the front because I guess I am a bit of a whore for audience participation. I grew up as my brother’s claque, bravoing loudly, and love helping a show by laughing at a good joke where the laughter can get an audience going. I enjoy being complicit even when haha maybe nobody asked me to be complicit?
Hm…
We live in a funny world where the boundaries are already compromised. I am Facebook friends with famous opera singers and actors I have never met and likely never will meet. Wtf? Celebrity culture makes for a slippery slope.
Ha I almost miss-typed that as ‘slippery slop’. HA! That too!
Once upon a time, long ago, I saw a show where the fourth wall was violated by a transgressive performer coming into the audience, asking, no demanding a response from all the scared patrons. Once upon a time it used to make me nervous.
Now? We’re all eager for this, fascinated with train-wrecks wherever they may be. In other words, reality TV –as one of the participants remarked tonight—is something we know is bad, but really hard to resist. Like potato chips or cigarettes, you may know it’s poison but that doesn’t stop you.
In a world of hybrid art-forms, where conventional boundaries & structures are under attack by the ongoing hunger for re-invention & re-definition that’s everywhere, it should surprise no one that theatre, too, would be subject to the same dynamic. I don’t know what to call Actors! …except that whatever ‘it’ is, it’s fascinating and grotesque and irresistible all at the same time. Lordy, we all seem to love train wrecks.
How cool that this one is partly real and partly scripted.
Let me just say that for those of you who fear actors pulling you into the piece, you can sit at the back and watch from safety. Those who want to be involved? Haha oh my God, you can sit near the front and get tangled in it to your heart’s content. I felt a bit like a mad scientist playing with a laboratory, only the laboratory subjects are the actors. You can’t step into this (same) river twice, so my innocence is gone now that I have played in this sandbox tonight with Stephanie Seaton & Tim Walker, plus Melissa Major (maven of mayhem). In a way i wish i could do it again (fun!), but i can’t pretend i haven’t seen it.
Wow I had fun tonight!
By the way, Actors! plays at the Winchester Kitchen, a restaurant/bar at Winchester & Parliament. If I hadn’t liked the show I still would have been pleased by my prix fixe dinner:
a turkey soup that was refreshingly low on salt but flavourful;
a Caesar brightened by a lemon (that is, it made the salad perfect) sculpted to look like the sun
a big steak I inhaled
a yummy dessert (sorry, i don’t know what it was called but it was pastry with ice cream on top)
and strong coffee
…all for a very reasonable $30.
I mustn’t give Actors! away for you except to say it’s fun, it’s deep, and it’s an invitation to play along if you’re up to it, running until February 9th.
There were three items on the Esprit Orchestra program tonight in Koerner Hall, interconnected by the laws of physics.
The center-piece was a performance of a reduced version of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps on the occasion of its centennial. Beginning the program was Claude Vivier’s Orion. In between was an original commission from Esprit, namely Paul Frehner’s Phantom Suns in its world premiere.
Paul Frehner and Alex Pauk (photo: Jasmine Pauk)
In the pre-concert talk, Alexina Louie interviewed Frehner, who discussed his creative process. Commissioned to share the bill with two relative heavy-weights (Vivier being a big name among Canadian composers, Stravinsky’s piece being one of the masterworks of the past century), Frehner described his thinking. Whereas Orion is of the stars and Le Sacre is of the Earth, Frehner thought he’d aim for the sky in between.
The Phantom Suns of his composition are the phenomenon known as ‘parhelia’ (or ‘parhelion’ in the singular), also known as ‘sun dogs’, a kind of mirage in the sky seen near the sun whereby we seem to see multiple suns. In some respects his composition showed us something just like that, as the soundscape resembled a sky awash with colours and light, as if the score had been coloured with a bright paint. Frehner’s composition seemed to be conceived as a kind of intermezzo between two very different pieces.
To begin the evening , we heard Vivier’s Orion, a piece that I found to be the most successful piece on the program, in a reading of great transparency, wonderfully balanced and with a terrific sense of nuance. From Louie’s words I believe Conductor & Artistic Director Alex Pauk has great sympathy for Vivier, whose life story is itself a fascinating piece of subtext for any performance of his music. Adopted at three, gay, a successful composer recognized in his youth, but murdered at 34, Vivier’s star continues to rise worldwide. Pauk found the wit, humour & verve in this composition, and it was clear the orchestra was enjoying itself throughout.
To close the program we heard a version of Le Sacre du Printemps for reduced orchestra arranged by Jonathan McPhee. This is the loudest music I’ve yet heard in Koerner Hall, reduced forces notwithstanding.
Esprit Orchestra’s Artistic Director & Conductor Alex Pauk
At this moment Esprit was at their source, the beginning of “New Music”. The Toronto Symphony plays Le Sacre, and everyone has heard this piece and knows its edgy moments. This time we weren’t hearing an orchestra that makes its money with Beethoven and Mozart taking a walk on the wild side; no, we were hearing an ensemble accustomed to contemporary sounds & procedures, in effect letting their hair down, returning to their roots.
It was well-received by the Esprit audience, a powerful performance that belied the numbers. At times Pauk had Esprit sounding like impressionists, the strings subtle, the woodwinds delicate, at other times the room rocked to the fulsome brass, the rhythmic pulses, the pounding percussion. At this moment in Esprit’s 30th anniversary season, it’s worthwhile for them to check in with this piece that lets us hear them play repertoire you’d hear from the TSO. Even with the smaller ensemble, the pristine acoustic of Koerner Hall captured their brazen & blatant sounds. In so doing Esprit convincingly laid claim to this repertoire.
On Saturday February 2nd as part of the Opera Exchange colloquium on Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, with a nod to the composer’s bicentennial, pianist Christopher Mokrzewski will be playing Franz Liszt’s transcription of the liebestod for piano solo.
Pianist Christopher Mokrzewski
Mokrzewski has had a huge role to play in the preparation of the COC production, acting as repetiteur for this, an opera he loves very much. Later this winter, Mokrzewski will be back with Against the Grain Opera. But in anticipation of his performance Saturday, I asked a series of questions about the pianist and the transcription.
1) what do you like to play on the piano; what do you like to listen to?
Such a tough question, right at the outset! The fact of the matter is that my interests, passions and tastes are ever-changing. I can state this outrightly: I’m not particularly interested in playing standard piano rep — except when I am!
Fundamentally, I spend most of my time and energy upon operatic and art song literature. I do, however, frequently occupy myself with other pastimes. These days, I’ve been practicing a lot of Schubert (a recent obsession… I’ll be performing one of the sonatas in April) and learning a good deal of chamber music. It is both a blessing and a curse that my work/performance schedule has become quite a serious beast to contend with and it is increasingly difficult to spend time on repertoire that is “non essential” at any given moment.
For brevity’s sake, here’s what I’ve been listening to: a ton of chamber music (with and without piano) by Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, Schubert and Beethoven; some Schubert and Schubert, Schubert and some more Schubert; a bit of Mozart (everyday), a fair amount of 20th-century French piano music as well as lots of Bill Evans (to prepare for an upcoming recital); and an insane amount of contemporary music, with a particular emphasis on Morton Feldman (a Peter Sellars recommendation). But yesterday, I fancied listening to a bit of Schicchi, so I’m really all over the map every day!
2) can you comment on how difficult this is…? IS it something you struggled to learn? are the technical challenges of this composition comparable to anything else you’d mention?
There’s so, so much to say about the Liebestod transcription and about Tristan in general. I learned Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod nearly a decade ago, when I was 18. I was preparing my graduation recital at Eastman, the main event of which was the Liszt B minor sonata. At that point I was seriously challenging the assumption that had ruled my entire musical existence up to that point — that I was meant to be a solo pianist. Through Tristan, a piece I had fallen in love with as a youngster, I had gradually become a proper opera fanatic and, by the time of this recital, was considering making a fairly dramatic move to the much greener pastures of the collaborative field and into conducting. I reckoned that the Liebestod would serve as a lovely companion piece to the Liszt sonata and considered it a symbolic segue into my musical future.
That was all well and good in intent, but the learning of the thing was another matter entirely. I don’t remember exactly how this came to pass (chalk it up to being an irresponsible and cocky teenager) but at one week away from the recital I had not even cracked open the score. I don’t know how I learned it and I choose not to remember the number of hours I spent in a basement practice room in those last few days, but I can happily report that it went over quite well at the recital and it has been a personal favourite ever since.
3)What’s especially difficult about playing this piece? Playing a transcription are you simply playing the piece or are you aware of the orchestral original, and the resemblances: do you care how it sounds vis a vis the original?
First a story! When I was working at Calgary Opera earlier this season, I attended various rounds of the Honens piano competition. One evening there was a fellow who came out and played Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Petrouchka — an incredible virtuoso showpiece. I confess: yes, it was repurposed and re-crafted as a solo piece for Rubinstein by Stravinsky himself; yes, it is a transcription of sorts, but one designed with virtuosic effects for concert hall performance. It’s a piano piece in this form, but more importantly, it is a piano piece that is derived from a great orchestral masterwork! The fellow made it sound as though it was some newly unearthed version of Islamey, not by Balakirev, but Debussy. It wasn’t badly played by any means, but it was clear that he had never taken the time to listen to the actual piece. How could you not want to recreate the orchestral magic of that piece on a piano? What’s so great about the sound of a little solo piano in comparison to the woodwind section, a battery of percussion or a blasting and bopping trumpet??
All pianists love the piano — we spend too much time with it to feel otherwise — but our situation with the instrument is much akin to the second year of many romantic relationships: we’re always trying to change its fundamental character into something it is not, which we think might be better for the relationship.
Horowitz (his often brutal sound notwithstanding) always spoke of his aim to emulate the human voice when he played. Ditto Rubinstein. Numerous famous pianists have spoken this way, or have spoken of emulating the orchestra (Liszt was always going on about that!). The business of piano playing is smoke and mirrors: make a mechanized action — hammer-hits-string-sound-dissipates-immediately — sound natural, human, bowed. It’s not easy!
All this is to say, in the instance of playing transcriptions or reductions, we ought really to start with the orchestra. When I play the Liebestod transcription, or any of Tristan for that matter, I HEAR the orchestra in my mind and ears and then replicate that sound on the piano as best I can. In a way, it’s not piano playing at all!
4) do we miss the singing voice from the equation? should we hear it in our heads as we hear you playing Liszt?
5) how would you compare playing this now… When wagner is famous vs when wagner was unknown and liszt”s versions were like youtube, helping to popularize this unknown composer. Which would you prefer?
Then(when your pianism is like an evangelist spreading the message of unknown music) or
Now (when you are playing a version of a well-known piece)?
(I’ve provided one long answer for two questions at once!)
Piano transcriptions, as you mention, no longer serve the purpose that they once did. We can hear performances of Tristan on record, on film, on the internet on demand. The evangelical thrust of a transcription is gone. On the surface, playing the lesser incarnation of a musical entity is pretty pointless nowadays. But I think there’s more to be discussed on the matter of transcriptions, especially concerning Liszt.
The fellow transcribed everything for piano: Schubert songs, all the Beethoven symphonies, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and, of course, all kinds of Wagner (we’ll not speak of the music atrocities known as the paraphrases!). Yes, Liszt sought to popularize these works in an era when there were few others ways to do so. But he was also known as an egregious egotist and it seems he sought to conquer these pieces in the arena where he was the undisputed champion gladiator: at the piano. That’s all a bit of fun speculation. But we pianists (some other instrumentalists too) spend too much of our early years in solitary confinement learning our craft and cannot be blamed for our psychological quirks!
I do think, in all seriousness, that playing transcriptions these days is much more of a personal act. It’s no longer a meaningful convention, and it likely serves no higher purpose. It’s simply an act of wish fulfillment. I learned the Liebestod transcription (and others) all those years ago because I desperately loved that music and, as I cannot play any role in a performance of the piece as an orchestral instrumentalist, as I cannot ever get up on stage and sing one of the roles (what a nightmare that would be for everyone!), I must satisfy my urge to act as a vibrant participant in this astounding music in a smaller way, at the keyboard.
When you hear this transcription, any transcription (or if you happen to be sitting in a piano rehearsal of this opera), of course you miss the orchestra. Tristan cannot be the all encompassing, life altering experience that it was intended to be without all of the elements working together to form the crushing totality.
Listening to this transcription, in comparison, is a more intimate affair. It’s an unrequited love affair, it’s love letters sent from great distances, but it isn’t The Real Thing. Perhaps there’s something beautiful about that.
6) do you practice?
As a youngster soloist, I practiced all the time. Ten hours? No problem! These days I probably spend as many hours (or more) at the piano each day, but the projects I devote my time to are many and diverse in nature. I do not think I’ll ever have time again to practice in the concentrated, monastic manner I once did. Now I always feel pressed for time, oppressed by time even, and I want to learn every little bit of music that I love so much. It’s a ridiculous and privileged complaint, to be sure. I am very lucky to be able to spend every single day devoted to the works I am most passionate about (what an indescribable joy and privilege it has been to be a part of the preparation of the Canadian Opera Company’s upcoming production of Tristan!!!). For the entire month of December I happily rose before dawn to tackle the score. I live in a very open-concept loft, so it was a relief that my fiancée also loves Wagner and didn’t mind waking up to it every day!
7) Who sings your favourite Liebestod (soprano) performance?
You never forget your first love! I’ve already mentioned how important Tristan was in my musical development. The first time I experienced this opera, and the Liebestod in particular, was through the live from Bayreuth (1966) recording conducted by Böhm and sung by Birgit Nilsson. I’ve heard many a lovely recording since then, but this one will always be my favourite.
I’d like to add, however, that Tristan is a piece that is meant to be lived, and no musical experience I’ve had in my life as yet has compared in impact to the performance (and it was only the dress rehearsal!) at the COC the other night. The cast is outstanding, Johannes and the orchestra are superb and Peter Sellars and Bill Viola’s production is a marvel. To anyone who hasn’t already gotten a hold of tickets, you would not be wrong to resort to any means necessary to acquire them.
I watched a wonderful interview tonight at the Toronto Public Library, presented in co-operation between the Canadian Opera Company and the Toronto Star.
Opera director Peter Sellars
Richard Ouzounian of The Star interrogated opera director Peter Sellars, in anticipation of tomorrow’s opening night of the COC’s Tristan und Isolde. Sellars gave us a mix of intense statements about his beliefs as an artist and a modern man in a troubled world, as well as light anecdotes as illustration.
I was thrilled to hear Sellars more or less confirm what I’d seen on Friday in the dress rehearsal: that while eros is not absent, it’s a pathway to an investigation of spiritual matters.
It was a mixed blessing. Let me be clear. The dress rehearsal of Sellars’ Tristan Friday night that I experienced was a revelation. It’s thrilling to hear a director more or less confirm what you thought you saw. Sellars spoke of dying and dying well, placing Tristan in that context. While I’ve understood the Schopenhauer-Buddhist connection, Sellars put it so succinctly I am embarrassed that I’ve never thought of this before: that Tristan –like Tannhaüser and Parsifal—is a sacred opera. And recalling Bill Viola’s images in particular, I see that this is the extraordinary reading of Wagner’s opera that they’ve not only sought but truly achieved, a pathway to the sacred.
Sellars took an immense & elliptical pathway to answering Ouzounian’s first question, about the director’s path into the story. Sellars told us that as a young man he’d been drawn to the eroticism of the story & the its yearning music, but that he didn’t understand it until he was much older.
Along the way Sellars answered a question that would later be put by an audience member, the inevitable Regietheater question. Although it was never asked in this direct and blunt fashion, I’d paraphrase the question as “how do you reconcile the text with what you are doing, Mr Sellars?”
And so, in recounting how Sellars met Heppner, and an early experience with Wagner at the Lyric Opera of Chicago doing Tannhaüser, we heard of a modernized production, that putting it in a new time made it real. We heard of a production where the hero comes back via an airport, that Venus is dressed up as a stewardess.
And we heard of Wagner’s tendency to make the tenor roles examples of humanity “in extremis”, suffering the outrageous challenges of the composer.
In passing Sellars also said of Wagner “you gotta love him: for someone this disturbed,” a line that drew a chuckle.
And of his own role, the biggest laugh came when he said that “”directing is a service job.” He explained that he must always ask whether he’s being helpful, and otherwise must stay out of the way. Patience? Very important because singers such as Heppner are great artists, who don’t need a director to show them around, especially with works they know much better than him (and that’s true with most opera directors).
His humility seemed genuine, as he spoke of the real job of a director: not to tell them what to do, but to open pathways for the artist to discover their answers through his questions. The more interesting the question, the better the the answer. They have to have moment of discovery. If you create the conditions for them to discover it they will discover it every night. Sellars said his job is to “create trajectories of discovery”.
Sellars was incessantly positive about his process, with one negative caveat. “You can’t do it with actors who are vain and egocentric and self centred.”
And speaking of powerful quotes, if I got this one right it’s certainly eye-catching. The performing arts? The last gasp of the old fascist museum (did he say that? I wasn’t 100% certain although it sounded like that).
Next year? Sellars will return to the COC to direct Handel’s Hercules, in another production with a modernized setting. It’s a revival of a co-production already mounted in Chicago, incorporating war veterans returning to modern America.
At the intermissions of Tristan und Isolde Friday (dress rehearsal) there was madness in the air, a place rife with miscommunication. Wagner himself said that good performances would make people mad (or crazy), so perhaps that was the problem. A crappy production would have been safer, so maybe the COC should have a disclaimer above the door (“this production may impair your judgment, operation of heavy machinery not recommended”). We’d been taken into a place of magic and fantasy, where drinks don’t poison you so much as open doors to other realms and dimensions.
Miscommunication is of course something central to Tristan und Isolde. The story is built out of a series of them. More fundamentally, however, this is a place of honour, which means that people often hold a great deal of their feelings in reserve. In a traditional Tristan Isolde rails at the stoic knight in Act I, finally demanding he drink atonement because he’s doing the safe and politically correct thing.
Peter Sellars defies most of the usual logic in his production that’s come to Toronto after an earlier incarnation in Paris seven years ago. With the use of elaborate video, Sellars changes the usual balance. A conventional Tristan sees characters speak indirectly, often across great distances from opposite sides of the stage, before finally being compelled by a potion to be truthful. It’s called a love potion but it could just as well be truth serum.
Sellars changes it up. His characters sing Wagnerian phrases from intimate distance. Simply from the point of view of intensity it’s almost hazardous, imagining Ben Heppner taking Franz-Josef’s heart-break from inches away, right into his face.
While Tristan is often spoken of as an opera about love, I think it’s a misnomer. Wagner was obsessed with Schopenhauer, and in this opera uses the medieval legend about the lovers to create a parable about the Buddhist ideas he was discovering at this time. Chief among the tenets of this philosophy is the futility of desire, that we are to overcome desire, and that death is our release. The opera uses love as a pathway to enlightenment for both of the lovers.
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
Bill Viola’s video seems very well attuned to Schopenhauer. While Wagner’s music captures the Dionysian intoxication of desire, Viola gives us the deeper structure, the quest of each for the other.
While I would wish it were somehow recorded in a DVD I don’t think it can be properly captured, given that there’s so much to look at. The eye sometimes doesn’t know where to go, which text (music, singing, words, or visual images) to follow. It’s delightfully challenging.
Mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta as she appears in re:porter, Porter Airlines magazine (photo: Michael Edwards; costume by Camille Assaf)
Have you seen this smile?
That’s Wallis Giunta, who may have caught your eye in the in-flight magazine you’d casually leaf through if you were flying Porter airlines between New York and Toronto: as Giunta herself likely does. A graduate of the Canadian Opera Company ensemble studio (Toronto), currently a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program (NYC) you’ll often find the talented mezzo-soprano performing in one city or the other.
Giunta’s first appearances caught the eye of the critics in her first NY Dorabella:
Opera News “The two standouts in the principal cast were Canadian mezzo soprano Wallis Giunta as Dorabella, and Californian bass-baritone Evan Hughes, as Don Alfonso. Giunta, a saucer-eyed, red-headed stunner, sang and cavorted with star-quality grace and point and offered delicious comic timing; if anyone is thinking of making ‘Born Yesterday’ into an opera, this is your girl.”
Anthony Tommasini (NY Times)
“Wallis Giunta, with her chocolaty and penetrating mezzo-soprano voice, is a more down-to-earth Dorabella”
Clearly she’s off to a great start.
And there’s more to come. 2:00 pm March 24th at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto is Giunta’s ‘CANADIAN VOICES’ recital. In April Giunta makes her mainstage debut at the Met as Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto.
But first we get to see Giunta as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito, one of the moral pillars in a mad world of flattery, influence & manipulation, The production goes up next Sunday February 3rd. By the way, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am by Giunta’s take on the role …see below.
I ask Giunta ten questions: five about herself and five about her portrayal of Annio.
1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?
I am a good blend of both my parents, actually. I have a few features from each of them, and therefore don’t look particularly like either one. Especially since they both have dark hair! From my Scottish/ Irish side, I got my red hair and freckles, and from my Italian side, my ability to tan, and maybe my voice?
2) What is the best thing / worst thing about being an opera singer?
The best thing about being an opera singer is that someone pays me to do what I would be doing for free anyway, because I love it so much. I suppose the worst thing could be, as a colleague recently told me, always asking for a table for one.
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
My favourite artists to listen to are mostly in the folk/alt-country realm. Top of the list would be Patty Griffin, and her first album, Living with Ghosts. I also LOVE Ray Lamontagne, who I just had the great honour to see live at Carnegie Hall with front row seats. Next, I could listen to Alison Krauss and her pure, golden voice all day. I saw her, along with Ray, last year at the Bonnaroo festival (heaven). Another contender would be the one-man-band, didgeridoo sensation, Xavier Rudd. I have seen him many times, and his music makes me so happy.
For opera, I love to watch and listen to Giuseppe Giacomini! Over and over. The most epic tenor I have ever heard, and so totally underrated.
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
In the realm of the possible, I wish I could speak all languages perfectly, and switch between them with ease. And if magic skills were an option, I would like invisibility. Hmmm, both of these skills would make me an excellent spy…
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
Riding my bike somewhere lovely, and reading in the sun!
Five more about playing Annio in the COC production of La Clemenza di Tito
1) How does portraying the trouser-role of Annio challenge you?
I think Annio is the oldest male character I have performed (and he’s only about 20), so I have to work more on the male physicality here. When you’re playing a pubescent boy, like Cherubino, you can get away with a bit less manly body language, because they’re just so awkward at that age.
2) What do you love about Annio: both the role & your part in Christopher Alden’s production?
On our first day of rehearsals, Christopher told me that my character would be based on Michael Cera’s role in Juno. If you’ve seen that movie (which you should!), you’ll know why I love this Annio so much. Also, no matter what the take on it, he is a really good, caring, deep-feeling guy, and it breaks my heart how much he tries to help people in the opera, and sacrifice his own happiness for that of others.
3) Do you have a favourite moment in Clemenza di Tito?
Giunta’s colleague and fellow trouser-wearer Isabel Leonard (photo: Jared Slater)
Yes. Isabel Leonard’s Deh Per Questo is my favourite part of the show. She sings it so beautifully, with both strength and fragility. The power of the staging in its simplicity, and the desperation of her plea to Tito just floors me.
4) How do you relate to Annio as a modern woman?
Hmmm. The interesting thing about our production is that both of the pant role characters are dressed in a not-very-manly way. I think that allows the audience to feel more comfortable with the fact that they’re aware we are not men. And then we can just get on with it. Ultimately, this piece comes down to power and how it corrupts. I think one’s sex has no bearing on that, and I relate to it on a human level above anything to do with gender.
5) Is there an influential recording you’d care to name that you especially admire?
For this role, I didn’t consult a particular recording, as I have often done with other pieces. I guess Mozart just makes sense to me now, having done so much of it. I get the music when I’m learning it, without having to hear it all in full.
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Yes: March means a concert in Toronto, April, Rigoletto in NYC. But first it’s Annio in La Clemenza di Tito in Toronto. For ticket info click here.
It’s really good. That’s all you need to know. The Canadian Opera Company’s imported production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (originally presented in Paris in 2005), directed by Peter Sellars with video by Bill Viola is quite simply unforgettable. And while Sellars & Viola deserve attention—and I shall address their work in a moment—for me the chief story revolves around Ben Heppner.
Tenor Ben Heppner, seen here performing in 2005. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press)
Start with the fact that Heppner –a Canadian who was with the COC early in his career—has never sung a major Wagner role in Toronto even though Heppner was among the best Tristans in the world if not the best. And if that weren’t enough to make the occasion special, Heppner had vocal troubles awhile ago. One could be excused for wondering: what was Heppner going to sound like? Yes this was a dress rehearsal, a time when singers are excused for giving less than 100%.
Heppner threw me a curve with the best live Tristan I have ever heard, both vocally & dramatically, a performance of spectacular singing, heart-breaking vulnerability & rock-solid conviction. While I heard in the COC announcement earlier this week that Heppner’s coming back next season to sing the role of Peter Grimes, tonight I realize that this is truly cause for celebration. Heppner’s voice sounded wonderful, and I never realized what a great actor he could be.
Let’s talk about Sellars, Viola and the COC production.
Modern opera productions can be a scary prospect, particularly if you’re a fundamentalist: one who demands that the work be staged as written. Sellars & Viola offer something wonderfully original that’s not a violation of the text, because for almost the entire work, they are complementing rather than challenging or over-writing the work as written. Extreme cases of radical interpretations sometimes rebel against the text, refusing to stage the work as written: but there’s no cause for alarm with Sellars & Viola.
Viola’s video functions as a kind of gloss, a commentary upon the singing & acting downstage from the video screen. We get a very simple presentation of the action from the principals, accompanied by the extra layer supplied by the video. Viola’s images seem to supply the deep structure, the symbolic under-pinnings of the action being presented. And so, for example, while Tristan and Isolde engage in an intense conversation in the last part of the first act (but before any potions have been consumed), and suddenly we hear the chorus, prompting Tristan to say “wo sind wir” (or “where are we?”), the visual, which had shown two faces partly immersed in water, suddenly emerge from the water. It’s visceral to watch, and an indirect way of expressing what’s happening, but it’s one of several instances where we’re living with the tension between a body above or below the surface of water. Viola’s images are always striking and sometimes stunningly beautiful, but never upstaging the performers.
If you’re already a lover of this opera, as I am, then this production is a treat. Viola’s images are often very open and abstract, gently suggesting symbols without precise assignment of meanings. So for example at one point we are watching an ocean with waves during the first scene. It might be a medieval ocean: until partway through Isolde’s narrative we see a modern looking boat with lights on the surface of those waves. Is this problematic? I like it, because this is my 21st century sea, not some feeble Hollywood image of the past. But when music is this powerful, I don’t want something overly specific. Some parts of the video worked better than others for me.
Sellars has some interesting ideas. I can’t help thinking that maybe there’s a cinematic influence at work. Often characters get insanely close to one another, at least by operatic standards. When King Marke laments to Tristan, or Tristan addresses Melot near the end of Act II they stand at a very intimate distance. A camera close-up is suggested by this intense configuration even though i was sitting some distance away.
Another effect that leads me to use the word “cinematic” even if it’s likely not the root cause is Sellars deployment of the various diegetic performances (heard within the sound-world of the characters) inside the opera house. These include the sailor’s song at the opening, the shepherd’s tune in Act III, the horns in Act II. As well, Sellars has a prominent diegetic effect at the end of Act I, where the brass for King Marke’s arrival is all assembled inside the theatre, making the end of the act quite hair-raising. I was staring through tears for the last 3 minutes of the act, completely unprepared for the freshness of the interpretation,complete with house-lights up.
Johannes Debus deserves credit for a brave reading of Wagner’s score. The COC Orchestra sounded flawless throughout, particularly in all the climactic passages, sterling in all the famous music, big & powerful when they had to be. The famous Prelude was given a taut & urgent reading. The tempi were fast for the most part, which as far as I understand is authentic; slower tempi are a 20th century affectation that hopefully is no longer considered ideal.
For a dress-rehearsal there was a great deal of good singing, from Melanie Diener as Isolde, Alan Held’s Kurwenal, the youthful Brangäne of Daveda Karanas and particularly the King Marke of Franz-Josef Selig, who was vocally & dramatically as powerful as Heppner in a smaller role. If you have the opportunity you must see this.
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YPT Mourns the Loss of Founder, Susan Douglas Rubes
It is with great sadness – but also gratitude for her life – that Young People’s Theatre acknowledges the passing of the theatre’s founder, Susan Douglas Rubes. Mrs. Rubes passed away in Toronto on January 23rd at the age of 87. A much-beloved leader, producer and artist, Mrs. Rubes will be greatly missed by her YPT family and remembered as a pioneer in Theatre for Young Audiences.
“We are so grateful for the life and work of Susan Rubes,” said Allen MacInnis, YPT Artistic Director. ” I feel truly blessed to have had her advice and presence since I was appointed to this incredible job. YPT thrives today because it has the indomitable spirit of Susan in its DNA.”
Born Zuzka Zenta in Vienna, Austria, Mrs. Rubes moved with her family to Czechoslovakia when she was very young, then on to Paris in 1939, eventually immigrating to New York in 1940. After graduating from George Washington High School, she began a remarkable career spanning radio, television, theatre and film. Mrs. Rubes earned the first Donaldson Award for Best Debut on Broadway for her performance in the 1945 revival of He Who Gets Slapped by Leonid Andreyev. She appeared in seven films and hundreds of television shows, including 10 years on the soap opera The Guiding Light. She continued to receive fan letters from time to time right up to last autumn.
In 1950, during the filming of Forbidden Journey in Montreal, Susan met the love of her life, renowned actor and singer Jan Rubes. The couple married the same year, had three sons and moved from New York to Toronto in 1959. They were together until Jan’s death in 2009.
In 1963, Susan began producing plays at the Royal Ontario Museum and in 1966 she founded Young People’s Theatre with the goal of establishing a permanent theatre for children in Toronto.
From the very beginning, Mrs. Rubes was determined Young People’s Theatre would be dedicated to professional productions of the highest quality – classic and contemporary – from Canada and around the world, created for children and the people who care about them. She worked hard to develop quality new Canadian plays to stand alongside the best from around the world and was often quoted as saying “Only the best is good enough for children.”
After several years of performing in a variety of venues in Toronto (as well as school touring), Susan and Jan found the run-down former TTC power plant in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood that was to become the permanent home for YPT. They worked tirelessly with their friends and supporters to convince a skeptical Toronto City Council that a large building housing a children’s theatre company was good idea and YPT has thrived in its landmark location on Front Street since 1977.
Mrs. Rubes remained artistic director of Young People’s Theatre until 1980 when she moved to CBC where she was the head of Radio Drama from 1982–86. From 1987–89, she was president of the Family Channel and also served on the board of the St. Lawrence Centre and the Ontario Arts Council. She was named Woman of the Year of the Toronto B’nai Brith in 1979.
Mrs. Rubes was awarded the Order of Canada (our nation’s highest civilian honour) in 1975, recognizing “a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation” for her services to children’s theatre in Canada.
Now in its 47th year, Young People’s Theatre is Toronto’s oldest not-for-profit theatre and continues to experience tremendous growth, proudly carrying on the legacy of Susan Douglas Rubes. A memorial book will be available at YPT from 9am to 5pm, Monday, Jan. 28th to Saturday, Feb. 2nd for anyone wishing to express condolences to the family.
Christopher Enns (left) with baritone Russell Braun in a February 2012 concert (Photo: Karen Reeves). Notice the “infamous Enns profile”.
Born in Manitoba, tenor Christopher Enns is in his final season with the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio.
He made his COC debut as an American/Glass Maker/Strolling Player in Death in Venice. Enns was one of the strengths of the Ensemble Studio’s mainstage performance of The Magic Flute in February 2011. On that occasion I said that he was “a convincingly handsome prince” and that “the sound was often very powerful, and never unconvincing.”
Enns holds a bachelor of vocal performance from the University of Manitoba, and a diploma in operatic performance from the University of Toronto. Enns has also performed with the Winnipeg Symphony, Saskatoon Opera, and the Aldeburgh Connection.
On February 6th Enns will be undertaking Tito in the Ensemble Production of La Clemenza di Tito (sharing the role with Owen McCausland). I asked him ten question: five about himself, and five about preparing the role.
1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?
I am a dead ringer for my father at my age. Both of my parents are from a German Mennonite background with dark hair and dark eyes, so a case could probably be made for either one. But since I have inherited the infamous Enns profile my father wins, dare I say it, by a fairly large nose.
2) What is the best thing / worst thing about being an opera singer?
I think there’s something amazing just in being able to answer that question. You spend so long training to be a singer, so long being a student that the ability to call yourself an official opera singer still seems to be a bit of a novelty to me…. even after a few years. But that’s not an answer to the question.
My favorite part of being a musician is the collaborative aspect to the art form. How great the whole can be if the sum of its parts commit to the process. The play and experimentation that goes on in the rehearsal room between director, conductor and your colleagues can be absolutely incredible. Add to that an orchestra, a chorus, and another hundred people working behind the scenes and you have opera. The work of so many hands going into a few short hours. The fact that I get to be a small part of that story is a real blessing.
And as it often is, the hardest thing I’ve found with being in this business is the reverse. Those moments where collaboration is hard to find, where the play is out of the work for whatever reason. Sometimes projects become more about ego than the story. Those are the times when opera seems very selfish and lonely.
But by and large this has not been the case. I have met some of the best people in the world through working in opera, and every job, every contract brings a few new faces to add to the group. That in itself has made a life in opera an incredibly rich thing to live.
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
Hmm… well this is not going to be a very classical answer. As much as I love living in the world of opera, I don’t listen to much of it in my free time. I actually don’t listen to a tonne of music at all, but when I do it’s often of the country/folk ilk. I grew up on a farm and have many fond memories of hours spent on the tractor belting out the latest Garth Brooks or Kenney Chesney hit.
Mainly my iPod is filled with books on tape and podcasts. Podcasts have become my new favourite thing (Yes, I realize that I’m about 5 years late to that party). I have become that wonderfully endearing (read: annoying) person who constantly interrupts conversions with anecdotes beginning with: So, I was listening to this podcast… The topics range from hardcore history podcasts (I just finished a 7-part, 12 hour-long series on the fall of the Roman Republic – good research for Tito), to my daily basketball updates. And sometimes, when the schedule gets busy, the only way that I know it’s Monday is because there’s a new This American Life podcast waiting for me when I get home.
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
I find this question difficult to answer, because there’s not a lot that I don’t wish I could do. I often wish that I had a more practical skill – like being able to build a house, or having the capacity to heal people – something that has very clear real world benefits. This is what my noble side thinks…
But really I’d love to be able to play a sport really well. Any sport. It could be completely random; although, I do have a better bedrock of knowledge for hockey or basketball than, say, for cricket. I am surprisingly uncoordinated, and have never managed to be anything more than that guy on the field with ‘a lot of heart’. But alas, until they make opera singing an Olympic sport I am content to sit on my couch and pretend that if I ever gave it chance I could probably pole vault… probably…
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?
Nothing terribly exciting I’m afraid. I have wonderful friends whom I see far too rarely, so whenever there’s a bit of a break in my schedule a lot of time is set aside to catch up with them. I’m an avid baker, desperately trying to reach the bar set by my mother and grandmother. This summer, for the first time since moving to Toronto, I took a dip in the world of gardening. I would call it semi-successful. The plants grew quite well and created a beautiful oasis on my deck… they did not however create much produce. So… I guess there’s always next year.
But generally when I’m not working, I try to take really deliberate rest. Once a year, if I have a longer break I like to get back to the farm in Manitoba and remember what it’s like to work hard in a completely different way.
Five more about appearing in the COC production of La Clemenza di Tito.
1) How does singing the role of Tito challenge you?
I find Mozart challenging in every situation and Tito is no exception. The role demands everything – sweet tender moments, and rousing dramatic coloratura. It really pushes a singer to the edge more than any other Mozart tenor role. It’s a really cool role to work on, but I won’t pretend that there aren’t pages that still give me heart palpitations.
There is also a lot of recitative, and recit just takes a lot of time to become part of me. It seems to need to take a trip around the world before settling somewhere in my brain.
2) What do you love about Tito: both the role & this production of the opera?
Before I started preparing this role in the summer I knew nothing about either the opera or the story of Tito. I assumed that because it was a lesser performed Mozart opera that it would be of lesser quality. But I have really fallen in love with this piece, both the music and the complexity of the relationships.
Tito is an incredible figure – an emperor by name, but a philosopher at heart. I love that he has decided to control his world not with cruelty and violence, but with generosity and clemency. On the surface this may paint him as a saint, but there is considerable potential for manipulation in ‘generosity’ and ‘clemency’. He uses his ‘goodness’ to control the world around him just as well as he could with any other method.
This production has forced me look past the Ghandi-esque facade of Tito, to the clever man behind the curtain who is pulling the strings of an empire. Pulling them by granting favours and mercy to everyone in the name of high ideals, but ever tightening his control on those to whom he grants them.
His friendship with Sesto, in the midst of the falseness of Tito’s world, is the only thing that keeps him afloat. I find the relationship between Sesto and Tito fascinating. Amongst all of this political intrigue Tito has this one real relationship; one place where he can be open and vulnerable. The juxtaposition of controlling manipulator and desperate friend creates an extremely interesting character to sink your teeth into.
3) Do you have a favourite moment in La Clemenza di Tito?
Since there are so many moments of intense emotion, and vocal virtuosity in this piece, it’s the simple moments I love best. There’s a moment in Act 1, following a very public scene with the chorus and Publio, when he and Sesto are alone together. It culminates in the singing of Tito’s first aria Del piu sublimo soglio. It’s an incredibly simple moment of closeness and love. The audience gets a glimpse into how intimate this relationship is that they have, and how much they need each other.
These simple moments are woven throughout the piece. I especially love Annio and Servilia’s music. Annio’s aria Torna di Tito a lato, as well as that exquisite Act 1 duet between the two lovers, Ah perdona al primo affetto
4) How do you relate to Tito (an absolute ruler) as a modern man living in a democracy?
Emperor Titus (aka “Tito”)
In some ways Tito is living in a completely different world to ours and in some ways it’s not much different at all. Rome might have transitioned into an empire, but it still had a strong history as a people driven Republic, and we see that Tito is still often hamstrung by the Senate, as represented by the character of Publio. Just before the opera begins Tito has been forced to send away the woman he wanted to marry due to pressure from the Senate. The world he lives in is still fraught with political gamesmanship.
Although I can’t relate in the least to the life of an emperor of Rome, the struggles we see Tito go through are completely relatable. His struggles with what kind of leader he wants to be, and what kind of man he wants to be, make him far more relatable than the average absolute ruler.
Tito’s greatest frustration is that he can’t seem to find people he can trust; people who are real with him. He finds the world he lives in false and it’s driving him insane. This is not such a foreign problem.
On a purely political level I think there are moments in our modern world when we are caught in the mire of political inaction, when even the most stalwart defenders of democracy might wish for a benevolent leader like Tito.
5) Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?
When I look back at the path that has lead me here, it is abundantly clear that I have been immensely lucky to have had the people who have guided me. There are too many people to mention, and it’s difficult to choose, but I would like to give a special nod to my teachers throughout the years: Mel Braun, my first teacher back in Manitoba who opened me up to this world and taught me to sing with my body; Bob MacLaren who has, I am sure, sung the entire lyric tenor repertoire for me in our lessons together, and also taught me to sing with my heart; and my current teacher, Patrick Raftery, who has been my balance, and whose faith in me I will always be thankful for.
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Christopher Enns sings Tito in the COC Ensemble Studio Production of La Clemenza di Tito February 6th at the Four Seasons Centre. Tickets are available online at coc.ca, by calling 416-363-8231
Christopher Enns (centre ) with soprano Ileana Montalbetti (left) and soprano Ambur Braid (right) in the October 2012 concert, “Madcap Moments: Highlights from Die Fledermaus”, through the COC’s Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Photo: Karen Reeves
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