Elliott Hayes was a playwright & dramaturg, the literary manager of the Stratford Festival for awhile in the 1980s.
A friend of mine introduced me to him, a really big deal I thought, an opportunity to maybe get some input on what I should do, where I should take my work. I had an operatic project I was working on. I sent it to the friend who showed Hayes.
I had the one meeting with Hayes, highlighted by a sentence that I resented at the time. Hayes said –of my confused unfinished libretto fragment—that it contained “big ideas”.
When he said “big ideas” his face contorted somewhat with the words: as if big ideas are bad. Here I was talking to this great man (I’d just seen his new play Blake), and uh oh I felt as if I had urinated on the floor, except somehow instead of urine, the floor was immersed in my “big ideas” which I couldn’t possibly retract or conceal.
Yeah it was pretty embarrassing.
That one encounter was back in the 1980s. Unfortunately I never had a chance to atone, to either show him that wait, look here, I really could create small ideas, see?
But as it turned out that conversation was seminal (if you’ll excuse my use of a metaphor that echoes the one I used for the big ideas all over the floor), as I pondered my sense of humiliation, that I wanted to take up the debate about the value of big ideas, hoping to show him.. Sadly and tragically Mr Hayes died an untimely death in 1994, before I could ever discuss it with him.
Big ideas? Maybe you wouldn’t want to see them in a new spoken word play. But they’re essential in opera. Opera is a symbolic medium where there’s simply less time for words, so each one much carry much more weight.
I don’t bring this up to debate Mr Hayes, wherever he’s gone. He was reflecting the conventional wisdom. Big ideas are unwieldy. But they are also the essence of the difference between opera & spoken word theatre.
When I think of the most successful original operas over the last 35 years (and forgive me if that number is arbitrary, to allow particular examples), you’ll notice something they have in common.
Philip Glass wrote Einstein on the Beach, then Satyagraha, then Akhnaten
John Adams wrote Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic
Every one of the operas listed concerns big themes.
I suppose in fairness, all that Mr Hayes sought was the usual outcome any good dramaturg seeks: to fix a bad text and make it better.
I submit that there are at least two things you can do to a text that’s full of holes. A dramaturg can change it, of course. But sometimes what’s missing isn’t text.
Lech Walesa (click link if you don’t know who he is… or even if you do)
I doubt that anyone of genuinely conservative leanings will read this unless they mistake it for an opera review. Hm someday someone may write an opera about Lech Walesa, perhaps in Polish or Prussian. But the title of such an opera would be Solidarność, not “Solidarity”. So you can stop reading, conservative opera lover.
What was I saying?
Ah yes. I can’t recall a period when class war seemed to be so central to our discourse.
We’re watching a showdown between the teachers and government in Ontario that seems to be calling the collective bargaining process into question, not so long after the Conservative Government in Ottawa seemed to do the same in their legislated solution to the Canada Post dispute.
The American election features two figures who are so wildly divergent that their positions are as different (if you’ll excuse the expression) as black from white. In the past week Romney has been taking a beating in the social media that I read; but of course in Facebook or Twitter we always preach to the choir. Those who disagree are not “friends” or “followers”, and so we can be seriously out of touch with popular opinion. Just ask all those friends of mine who argued whether to support Pantalone or Smitherman in the last Toronto mayoralty election, blind to Rob Ford’s impending landslide. Of course, as a Scarborough resident I wasn’t quite so blind given the signage (all for Ford) on my street.
The Occupy Movement has changed the conversation, even if the only real revolutions occurred on the other side of the ocean in countries experiencing the “Arab Spring“: or some of them anyway. Percentages are now tossed about in this election with the vigour of baseball fans, and for the first time in a long time, capitalism seems to be on the defensive.
What is it in the optics around some conflicts that win our sympathy in some cases but not all? My question is not one I address to the 1%, as we’d expect them to identify with rich owners rather than poor workers. That dichotomy –rich owners and poor workers—seems to break down, however when we’re confronted by the millions earned by hockey players.
At least for most people.
Me? While I am a poor skater, I identify with the hockey players, no matter how much money they make. The game of hockey belongs to those who play it. I believe Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson and Oprah all deserve their millions, even if they’re so big that they’re like multi-national corporations. I suppose I am talking about principles not money, even if those principles have exceptions in practice.
Hm…. The participation of money in our arts & entertainment usually taints it. I grew up disliking PT Barnum for his cynical outlook, his riches made in the under-estimation of the public intellect, a kind of prophecy of modern dumbing down. I have no real problem with entertainment if that’s what people genuinely like, so long as I am not forced to watch it.
Sol Hurok is another figure about whom I am conflicted. Yes he was a brilliant judge of talent. But I heard an architect once explain to me that the reason so many concert halls had bad acoustics in the middle of the 20th century can be laid at Hurok’s feet. It was all about money, about raking in dough with huge audiences who couldn’t really hear without amplification, of a star-driven business that ceased to be art. If the attraction were using microphones anyway, no problem. But if you were hearing the Metropolitan Opera on tour? Different story.
Where am I going with this?
Ken Gass
I have been a quiet observer of the ongoing drama surrounding the dismissal of the Artistic Director of Factory Theatre, Ken Gass. I didn’t need to hear the details –which created a great wave of sympathy for Gass—to know that I identify with the artistic talent, not the money.
The dynamic for non-profit arts companies isn’t the same as for sports franchises. Those Boards are not making money from their contribution. I’ve heard people try to make the case for the contributions made to the arts by boards of directors, the input from savvy owners in sports.
I submit that the primary qualification for Boards seems to be allegiance. I’d be useless on a board –at least in the current model—because I don’t think like a banker or a lawyer. I wear the rose-coloured glasses of an artist. Even so, there has to be a balance. Does your art sell its soul in pursuit of money?
I believe culture is a necessity. We have other necessities that are funded by the government. We don’t expect our firemen to work on a cost-recovery basis, but instead, they’re funded. The defence of the country, the policing of our streets, these are necessities.
And so is culture.
I am old enough to remember other principles. Our Canadian culture seems to be brand new, minted with the help of generous government support. Without Canadian content regulations for broadcast media, we would never have the wealth of talent that we now have. Without the Canada Council, performing arts companies likely would have been unable to compete with television and popular radio.
I identify with the hockey players just as I identify with the cultural workers. I don’t believe in erecting class barriers between parts of society. As Barack Obama has said, we must work together. It’s not just about the economy, but the very fabric of society, which is woven from our diversity.
NDP Leader Thomas Mulhair (photo: Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)
I’m hoping the NDP will aggressively champion the arts in the same way that the Democrats have bravely championed labour recently. Do we contract out our culture? That’s what we do when we allow our televisions to be filled with foreign productions, telling stories without any connection to our lives. Mulhair needs to show the cost benefit of arts funding, the clear payback in language that the conservatives can’t refute.
But we need to stop speaking the language of the board, which is only couched in profit and loss. That’s Romney’s thinking. We need to be willing to spend on our cultural industries not because of profit models, because they are a good investment, but because we believe culture matters.
The extent of the community response to my abrupt firing from Factory Theatre on June 20th was unexpected and overwhelming. More than 4200 people signed a petition demanding my reinstatement and the board’s resignation. 250 prominent artists stated their intentions to boycott the Factory, both as artists and as audience members. Hundreds more have written personal letters of support. All this has made it very difficult for me to simply move on to the next chapter of my creative life as per my original release on June 21st. Thus, while the protest action has been a community initiative, I have remained deeply engaged in the issues and the debate.
It is clear, however, that the avalanche of community response has made absolutely no impact on the direction set by Factory’s current board of nine directors. In August, I made overtures to the board in the hopes of finding a positive and respectful way to break the impasse, to restore community confidence and to help move the theatre forward. These too fell on deaf ears. A month ago, bowing to public pressure following the collapse of key productions from the season, the Factory board agreed to pursue mediation to try to resolve the issues. While mediation has taken place over the past two weeks, this attempt has been unsuccessful and has now ended.
What became clear to the public in the months following my firing, was that the dispute between myself and the board was not about artistic or financial issues, but rather a disagreement re pathways towards a future renovation of Factory’s heritage site. What has happened since is that divisions have emerged within the theatre community over the impact of the boycott, the loss of key productions in the season, as well as future possible artistic directions as put forward by the board. While debate of the larger issues remains vital, I believe further divisiveness around the Factory itself will only have a detrimental effect on the future of the company.
Thus, while I am extremely grateful for the huge outpouring of support I have received from the community, I wish to now state firmly and unequivocally, that under no circumstances in the foreseeable future will I consider returning to the Factory Theatre, either as artistic director or in any other capacity.
Having removed myself from any equation in Factory’s future, it is my view that, in order to move forward creatively and to restore community trust, the Factory now needs to seek not only a strong new artistic director, but also a new board of directors who can work effectively with our artists and community stakeholders to fulfill the company’s potential. In accomplishing this, I hope the Factory Theatre will continue to be a strong and vital force in the Canadian theatre ecology.
In parting, I’m confident the record of the past 15 seasons of all-Canadian plays at the Factory will speak for itself-the strong diversity and inter-generational mix of our programming, the many premieres and the constant stream of new voices. I’m grateful for the privilege of collaborating with so many powerful and original artists from coast to coast. I’m proud of the role I played in the rescue of Factory Theatre from complete collapse in December, 1996, and in the purchase of Factory’s heritage property two years later. I’m also proud that I was able to help develop a vision for the future of the Factory site, and that this design proposal is now part of the public record. I very much regret the loss of Michel Marc Bouchard’s TOM AND THE COYOTE and George F. Walker’s DEAD METAPHOR from the current season, not only for the playwrights but also for the artists attached to those shows. Despite my troubled relationship with the board of the directors over the past year, I am thankful to the many supporters, volunteers and donors over the years who helped make the work possible, and above all, to the thousands of audiences members whose friendly faces I got to know in the Factory lobby after the shows.
My relationship with Factory is now a historical one. I will be focusing on new creative projects through Canadian Rep Theatre in the near future. Please stay tuned.
I tried to run away myself To run away and wrestle with my ego—Joni Mitchell
One can imagine, somewhere between selfless slavery and imperial command, a middle way. There’s a place one can imagine in the tao of the performer, a balance between vocalizing that’s all “me me me” and respect for ensemble.
The relationship between ego and voice concerns me right now because I’ve been thinking a lot about
virtuosity and the virtuoso, both in older periods and now
how to reconcile ego in my work as a writer, composer, keyboardist and performer
finding personal meaning in performance
I am living a kind of lesson this week and because ego is so much a part of this I am determined to talk about this in the blog as well.
On Sunday the choir resumed its regular activities at Hillcrest Church in Toronto. Some Sundays I am tenor soloist, other Sundays I am the organist.
I am not sure whether I began my musical journey as a singer or as an accompanist. That’s probably very uncommon, because most people begin their musical lives alone, singing or playing (or both). But while I did some singing in school, I was accompanying at home at an early age, coming from a big family that included some older siblings who were singers.
What this has meant to me is that my musical journey has included long stretches of service, playing for others, understanding music as a kind of support function. It’s the reason I was drawn to film music, where music is disciplined like a child (the phrase “seen and not heard” absurdly comes to mind) to know its place, unlike the function of music in opera or the symphony hall. I am reminded of the title of Gerald Moore’s autobiography, which could have been my personal motto, to whit “am I too loud”?
I only started vocal study after my 40th birthday, after I started to notice how much fun it was to sing along with various cast members when I was a music-director of a musical. People started telling me that I should sing, given that I was usually louder than anyone else, even if it wasn’t necessarily pleasant sounding.
Hm, there I go: judging.
When I sing I am always unable to measure up, because of course inside my head I still hear the voice of my older brother, as he sounded to me when I was a teenager, and he was a professional.
But even though I am haunted by my past, let’s get back to 2012.
As I started to say, before I segued off into neurotic free-association, the choir resumed at my church this past weekend. I sang a solo.
I have usually been a very modest singer, the person who thought he doesn’t sound very good, and only starting to sing very late in the game, after having spent almost his entire life at the keyboard reading vocal scores and coaching singers, rather than standing up and singing them myself. As a result I have been very careful, perhaps too careful, always mindful of my limits. Humility isn’t only a by-product of service however. It’s also a good fundamental philosophy when one is not hugely trained, not certain of one’s technique.
While humility was my usual approach (and those who know me may be tempted to say “you call THAT humility?” ..but nevermind), this past Sunday I took a completely different approach than usual. I think I got a little carried away. I missed singing. Not only had I not sung in the church for several months, but haha I confess, I hadn’t sung for months even during the week. No practice. No vocalising. While I’ve been prudent in other years, inspired by humility to practice and make sure the voice and the high notes are still there, I didn’t do any of that in 2012. I played a lot of piano, bemused and bewildered by Beethoven and the performances of Stewart Goodyear. Instead of singing I played through the Beethoven piano sonatas several times.
And so, perhaps a bit too cocky, and missing the sound of my own voice in my own head, I attempted something this past Sunday on our first service since the summer, that was ill-advised, namely a piece from Elijah. It’s not even very high. But after a service where I’d been singing a lot of low-lying hymns & anthems, and unable to resist the impulse to pump out a loud sound and revel in that sensation (after months away), I forgot the fundamentals.
Voices usually employ two registers. There are exceptions (thinking of voices that are at one extreme or the other, using only their very high or very low register), but voices are normally a blend, with a careful management of the middle, that tricky place where the two registers overlap.
Tonight I had a singing lesson, a wonderful reminder of how it’s supposed to work.
Sunday? I suppose the way I sang the solo was also a singing lesson of sorts, and one that I am pondering this week. When the high note cracked because I’d used too much low register, I had to keep singing to the end even though I wanted to run away, or at the very least say to David Warrack (our kind & generous Music Director) at the piano “um David is it okay if we start over”?
Ha…
There may be some in the congregation who didn’t notice, but this wonderful place is so supportive and loving that they gave me generous applause afterwards (although they were also applauding David’s usual excellence).
As I pondered how I felt, this generous response to the egg I had laid in the church, I thought about ego. I have ridden this horse for years, the wild bucking bronco of performance, loving the adrenaline rush and the satisfactions of doing it well and getting not only applause but kind fellowship with a congregation, who take you to their collective bosom as though you were a member of their extended family: which we are in a very real sense. The horse didn’t precisely throw me. It’s more that the horse stepped on my foot, for one moment reminded me that I am not quite as glorious as I think I am.
Carol Baggott-Forte, vocal pedagogue
At the lesson tonight Carol & I talked about some of this. Carol is Carol Baggott-Forte, a wonderful singing teacher whom I met long ago. I studied with Carol briefly in the early 1990s, and now happily our paths have crossed once more. The timing seems serendipitous.
I am not my voice, even though the association is so automatic when one sings well. It’s redemptive to remember that we make something when we sing, that it’s a choice and a creation, because we allow ourselves to become the voice, to become the sound when it’s working well.
Carol quoted something from her mentor Cornelius Reid who said –as I roughly paraphrase—“if you destroy the voice you destroy the psyche. Heal the voice and you heal the psyche”. There I stood with Carol, so glad to hear and see her comforting presence, and enjoying a very real kind of healing.
The vagus nerve, which has the same root as the word “vagabond”. Verily this nerve doth wander.
I hope to see her again, even though she’s not usually in Toronto. I am taking some things to heart that she said in the lesson. For instance sometimes we worry too much about whether the sound is “pretty” (whatever that means) or “big” (ditto). Carol talked about the vagus nerve, which is implicated in those magical moments when we have a lump in our throat from emotion. How indeed am I to avoid identification with the instrument that’s housed inside me, when this site of intimate emotional events suddenly throws all attempts at expression into a kind of chaos.
So I have to allow the voice to make whatever sounds it wants. I didn’t recognize myself at times during the lesson. That’s probably good, because with Carol’s help I wasn’t doing the usual things I do. And I mustn’t judge. Just let the sound happen.
As Scarlett O’Hara might have said, if Tara were a church, and the American Civil War, a particularly rough service: “next Sunday is another day.”
There is much to admire in Louis Dufort’s opera Julie Sits Waiting. It’s conservative to suggest an opera “belongs” in any sense to the composer, particularly a work that’s clearly a collaborative work across several disciplines. Call me old-fashioned.
Composer Louis Dufort (Photo: Diane Charland)
But I am persuaded by the authoritative voice of Dufort, whose score won me over almost from the first moment.
I’ll try to explain myself without giving too much away, as the work deserves your attention, and calls me back for at least a second hearing.
JSW is a little over an hour long, featuring two characters, namely Julie and Mick, portrayed respectively by Fides Krucker and Richard Armstrong, as middle-aged lovers. When we’re not listening to the pair either together or in a solo by one or the other, we’re listening to some sort of musical interlude between these segments (perhaps they’re scenes?). I suppose these passages are reminiscent of what Debussy or Berg did in their operas, giving us a non-verbal/non-vocal contrast to what had just gone before, and amplified by Jeremy Mimnagh’s projections. Those reflective interludes alone –Dufort’s music withMimnagh’s visuals –are wonderful oases from the volcanic passions stirred between the singers.
The work seems genuinely operatic. I say that because a number of opera companies have been offering works that aren’t actually opera, whether it’s Queen of Puddings’ Svadba (which was more of a song cycle), Against the Grain’s The 7 Deadly Sins (and Holier Fare), the recent A Synonym for Love, or the Canadian Opera Company’s mixed program of The Nightingale and Other Tales (combining opera with songs & instrumental music). Clearly the city has such an appetite for opera, that producers look everywhere.
And so, while Dufort’s score is at times very unconventional –mixing sounds that are recognizably musical with others that are closer to what we’d call noise—there’s no denying that JSW is opera. And perhaps more importantly, it’s a work that needs to be operatic. Sometimes one encounters texts that don’t really need to be sung, or music that doesn’t connect to its story. But JSW is a synthesis of its media, requiring the words, the music, the singing & the theatrical presentation to work its magic.
It’s true that I found myself fighting Tom Walmsley’s libretto at times early on, yanked out of the story by poetic turns of phrase that killed the illusion, by reminding me of a poet trying to be a poet. And yet it made sense when I discovered that Mick is an Anglican priest, and therefore likely to make ostentatious and occasionally pompous turns of phrase. Perhaps on second or third hearing I’d be less likely to fight with the text; but it felt as though everyone else in the team –particularly Krucker, Armstrong, Mimnagh & Dufort—selflessly worked to create a seamless whole, without calling undue attention to themselves. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that Walmsley’s text was the departure point for everyone else… (and therefore not his fault)?
Richard Armstrong
Considering how short the work is, they grab us quite quickly, and for that Walmsley deserves credit, an economical exposition. It’s a truism that opera can’t move as fast because words that are sung simply take longer than those that are spoken. I would have wished that Walmsley and Dufort had slowed down, in fact, repeating more phrases (and not trying to make the singing quite so naturalistic). There were many moments that I wanted to last much longer. The work felt quite short to me, but oh so economical, getting down to business without any hesitation. The opera is sixty-seven minutes long, which is likely a brilliant choice when reconciling expenses & the desire to be a commercial success: but I would be very happy if the same opera were simply expanded by another 20-30 minutes. I didn’t want it to be over.
Directed by Heidi Strauss and Alex Fallis, there are many moments of great beauty, striking compositions of the two bodies on the stage. Speaking as a middle-aged man, I was delighted with the frank eroticism of the work, the genuine physicality Krucker & Armstrong display. Yet what will stay with you longest is sound. I am still hearing the echoes of their voices, used in so many ways. The title –so suggestive of passionate contemplation—is in no way misleading, even if the work is far from static.
Julie Sits Waiting continues at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace until Sept 23rd.
In the circles I share in person or online I am thinking about the question of buzz, to which I alluded recently.
I’m excited to be going to a brand-new opera tomorrow night, namely Julie Sits Waiting. It’s hard for there to be a buzz before anyone has heard a new work, so we shall see how “she” (Julie) is received at her opening. Newness excites me, so I am sure this will be fun.
In the meantime, TIFF has drowned out any other sort of buzz. When paparazzi from all corners of the globe suddenly learn how to spell “t-o-r-o-n-t-o-“ and even start clogging our streets, chasing the beautiful people, live performance, particularly of classical music & opera, can be forgiven if it doesn’t just fall by the wayside, but cowers, daunted in comparison.
And so, my question is not so much “what’s next” as “what is the next thing you’re interested to see and hear”? I will offer my answer: an opinion about what I think should be getting the attention.
One of the Fledermausketeers, in Constance Hoffman over-the-top designs. Note, the best pictures can be seen via the COC’s Facebook group (click on the image).
So far in my small corner of the world, the new Canadian Opera Company Die Fledermaus is more than holding its own, and that’s probably according to plan. I would bet that the COC are making the effort to show us flamboyant photos of the Fledermausketeers, confident in their other fall offering. When the other opera is Il trovatore starring Ramón Vargas, Elza van den Heever, Elena Manistina and Russell Braun, there’s likely no reason to worry that nobody is yet discussing it. After all, both of these operas open at the end of this month (Trovatore on Sept 29th, Fledermaus onOctober 4th)
There’s another entry, though, that deserves buzz. Nobody that I am aware of has yet said anything about it, but I get buzzed just thinking about Opera Atelier’s Der Freischütz. Set to open October 27th (when the COC operas would be coming to their last few performances in their runs) the first historically informed Der Freischutz in Canada is definitely news.
I have to wonder if that whole historically informed performance (HIP) smokescreen has been counter-productive for Opera Atelier. Not long ago, as we sat around the table for the last COC podcast, discussing our personal highlights of the past season, nobody mentioned Opera Atelier. I wish I had remembered to at least give their Don Giovanni a mention. The HIP discourse, a conversation that has served to shelter Artistic Director Marshall Pynkoski from certain kinds of criticism is like a sword that cuts both ways. I believe that as a result of their constant emphasis of HIP, Pynkoski has been under-estimated as a creative force in this city, and therefore not getting the credit he richly deserves. His Don Giovanni was a very witty take on a work that I thought I knew inside out, a breath of fresh air.
Opera Atelier’s resident Music Director, David Fallis
When they come to the romantic music of Freischütz I expect Pynkoski to be as original as he’s already been with the baroque and classical periods. Much will depend on David Fallis, back from Glimmerglass with a fresh score–and a different century– to conquer.
So what about it… what are you looking forward to?
As a Canadian I am sitting back, wondering whether Barack Obama will be re-elected or not, and what impact if any, we’ll see from these events north of the border in Canada. It makes great television, a dramatic pageant ritualistically enacted every four years.
Last week at the Democratic Party’s national convention, there were several moments that have been touted as the highlight.
San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro’s charismatic presentation
Michelle Obama’s appearance
Bill Clinton’s stirring speech
…and of course there was Obama’s own acceptance speech.
These and several others are still present in my mind, yet one phrase keeps coming back to me. It came from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. The phrase, as soon as I heard it, jumped out precisely because it’s not like the usual polite language from the Democrats. Oh no, this sounds more like the kind of language used by the GOP to attack the Democrats.
You can hear the whole speech if you missed it.
Roughly five minutes into it, Patrick said the following:
If we want to win elections in November and keep our country moving forward, if we want to earn the privilege to lead, my message is this. It’s time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe.
That’s the phrase that I can’t stop thinking about, can’t stop using in my conversation. Democrats need to grow a backbone.
Why?
While I don’t really question their resolve, this is the party of civil discourse, the ones who, if confronted with a rude and irrelevant question, have typically answered politely even when it was insulting or stupid. In the process the Conservatives easily seized the initiative in almost every instance.
As I remember it, the big change was with Ronald Reagan. Before that time? Democrats stood on the moral high ground, proud of their alliance with labour and unashamed of their legacy of big government via FDR’s New Deal. These were proud achievements…!
But Reagan changed all that. Big government came to be a sin. The mythology of big government and spending was created at this time and seized the public imagination. Being “liberal” went from being a synonym for being caring or trust-worthy, to being the ready insult, hurled by conservatives to defame liberals.
We saw a generation of liberals falter, suddenly apologetic about the things they thought they believed, suddenly hearing silence or even jeers where a few years before, they’d heard cheers. And so they dithered and became indecisive, seeking someone who might lead them because they lacked conviction and certainty. They strayed from the true path, while the Conservatives found their way.
Where Reagan or either of the Bush presidencies were firm against criticism even when they were caught red-handed, on the Democratic side? With the single exception of Bill Clinton, liberalism had lost its mojo.
In actual fact the only Democrats who broke through since 1980—Clinton and Obama—were more conservative than Canadian conservatives such as Harper or Mulroney, two Prime Ministers who never dared challenge the sanctity of our social safety net or our national medical plan. It’s sad that the only way Democrats could win was by becoming ersatz conservatives.
And what good is that, really?
No, things seem a little different this time. The language at the convention last week was no longer apologizing for the achievements of government and the rationale for taxes and cutting the deficit. At last I heard Democrats willing to stand up for what they believe in.
This is the payoff for the downturn in 2008: that capitalism has a lot of explaining to do, that the GOP rhetoric has less and less conviction. For once, the Democrats don’t have to be just another version of conservatism. They can actually move a bit to the left for the first time since George McGovern.
The idea that the Democrats can stop apologizing and actually be brazen and arrogant about their beliefs is still a new idea.
What does a Democrat with backbone sound like?
Calling trickle down a fantasy, rather than politely discussing it.
Left to right: Chris Kluwe of Minnesota Vikings, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo and Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr
If this is what Deval Patrick calls “the election of a lifetime”, one needs to be ready. Whatever side you’re on, a backbone is going to be handy.
Canadian conservatives have long had role-models in the USA. I have to wonder whether liberals (and the NDP) might also pick up some tips from south of the border.
We know that technology is changing rapidly. Can you imagine that human perception would somehow remain unchanged, or is it more likely that with all the new platforms, applications, and media, that our brains might work in new ways?
Such questions are on my mind because…
1) I was watching the American conventions on television (last week was the GOP, this week it’s the Democrats’ turn). It’s been at least a half-century that we’ve been speculating about the impact of media on the electoral process. The results of US Presidential election in 1960 were among the closest in history, likely influenced by the televised debates. Since that time we’ve seen increasingly sophisticated forms of persuasion, from the use of attack ads to the recent mobilization of social media.
2) September is the traditional back-to-school month, a time to reflect on education and the educated. The nature of intelligence seems to be changing, with new skill-sets emerging from our recreation.
3) September means TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), as film-goers’ thoughts turn to cinema. The new technologies have changed the ways films can be made, but also changing the nature of the filmgoer.
When the sensibility of the circus was confined to a different place & culture to the mentality of academic scholarship –to name two usually distinct discourses segregated by genuine boundaries—there was no problem. You might occasionally see circus acts on Ed Sullivan or on a street corner, but never at a conference or in a journal; and nobody expects to hear a conference paper at the circus.
Modern media have changed that, probably forever. While I can find PBS or some other educational channel on my television, offering a patient and thorough analysis of news, a click of the remote takes me to music, sports, or a host of other sorts of instant gratification, requiring far less time to unfold. The juxtaposition of wildly divergent media is far more extreme on other platforms such as your iphone or PC.
Or maybe the changes we seem to see in humans are a matter of taste. Whether we’re talking about a political speech, a lesson in a classroom, or the cinema, communicators have been told repeatedly that humans have a shorter attention span than in former times. It may not even be true, but just a low estimation of human behaviour that encourages our audiences to sink to the lowest level, a cowardly refusal to challenge the listener.
No wonder that all discourses seem to be different.
When I go see an opera nowadays, it’s a rare director who allows the overture to play with the curtain down, and no visuals added: trusting the musical text to do its job. No, the usual practice is to add something, as if the audience might pull out their iphones and start tweeting their bored displeasure. While I am open to adventurous direction –and embrace the wildest examples of Regietheater—I still feel estranged from these classical media. I am intrigued to see concerts with additional visuals added (for instance, the butoh-influenced movements of Melati Suryodarmo during the Beethoven Marathon), and accept changing fashions. But in another time, I recall being hypnotized by performers in black, a bottomless well of inspiration to be found simply in the body language of a performer in concert even before the music starts.
And some works simply don’t unfold in a single hearing. Gustav Mahler is my touchstone for the way our ears and eyes may be educated. Mahler only came into his own in the half-century after his death through the medium of recording. Curiously, technology (regularly dissed for changing us into an ADHD world with no ability to concentrate) was part and parcel of a change in how we understand music. Richard Wagner’s Ring operas (once among the most popular operas in the world, if you go back a century) are again being produced more and more in the last decade, likely because of such influences as
The saturation of the market with many recorded audio versions
DVDs capturing different directorial interpretations
Social media to generate buzz for particular directors, productions & opera houses
Philosopher & Freudian Slavoj Žižek
For much of the past century it’s been a truism that opera is dead. Slavoj Žižek– a Freudian critic writing in Opera’s Second Death—alleged that opera had been killed by Freud. How? Opera had been our therapy, our place to go to cry in the dark, and now, said Žižek, western culture uses a shrink instead.
I don’t buy it. If opera was killed –and I don’t think it was—there’s a smoking gun. The last opera to enter the ranks of the most popular was Puccini’s Turandot in 1926. Coincidentally, talkies date from 1927. Since that time? One can look to Prokofiev’s operas, but must also remember his scores to Alexander Nyevsky or Lieutenant Kijé. Bernard Herrmann set Wuthering Heights, but does one need to even bother to ask who’s heard it, compared to those who might have heard the scores to Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Psycho, or Taxi Driver?
Oh sure, I can hear you say. Opera isn’t the same as film. Perhaps not. But what is the real difference?
That in film, the composer is cut down to size (as one of several post-production collaborators held to firm deadline), whereas in opera –to paraphrase Kerman—“the composer is the dramatist” (and therefore the deal-breaker).
That in film, the composer makes a ton of money, whereas in opera, a composer might make money but needs another job, perhaps at a university or working in film & TV.
That in film (at least the commercial sort of film), the audience usually expect the work to be intelligible in a single viewing, whereas opera is more demanding.
Remembering the Mahler-Wagner dynamic I spoke of above –where some works require multiple hearings to really be understood and find their true audience of devotees and maniacal fans—new opera is in a difficult place. But it’s been in this difficult place for a long time, perhaps its entire history. In 1800 –when there was no alternative, and when a composer such as Rossini could pump out an opera in 3 weeks—this was a viable model for a commercial money-maker; note too that Rossini’s operas were eminently intelligible. By 1900 this was still possible, even though composers were becoming increasingly remote from their public, whether in the complexities of their sonic world or their stories. And so I believe opera was later in competition with film, just as it had previously had to compete with other public entertainments throughout its history.
Nowadays? “Opera” normally means something rarefied, complex, difficult. Opera could also include something written for immediate consumption, but considering the expense & the challenges of production (for one tiny example, getting a cast of singers to learn all the parts), it rarely works that way.
Fides Krucker, who appears in Julie Sits Waiting, beginning Sept 14th
Those devoted to the medium include composers & performers willing to invest the time even if there is no promise of a future production. My recent 10 Questions for Fides Krucker brought me into contact with someone committed to the medium of opera and theatre. From a commercial standpoint, it’s almost incomprehensible to picture opening a factory with an assembly line to pump out a single widget, and then close the factory. Clearly artists like Krucker aren’t motivated by money, but are as devoted to voice and theatre as if this were their religion.
I fervently believe we’re talking about changing taste not actual changes in cognition. Media and technology are supposedly the problem (for the alleged change in our collective attention span) but also sometimes offer solutions (ie in helping Mahler & Wagner find their audience). Can there also be a solution for the composer of the new opera?
I think for example of the way Justin Bieber or Valentina Lisitsa invented themselves on youtube. Could someone do the same thing with an opera?
In any case I think it’s premature to suggest that opera is dead, too soon to dismiss technology as bad for culture. For every Bieber there’s a Lisitsa.
“Crossover” is a word used to describe artists venturing into a new discipline. It’s not always a complimentary epithet, considering that
What some will celebrate as a new arrival others may perceive as an invasion
Expectations aren’t necessarily very high, given that the artist’s expertise is understood to lie in the area they have deserted rather than the one to which they’ve migrated
They may have some of the qualities of an exile, looking back from their new location to their former home
The exuberant colours of Kaffe Fassett
I’ve been looking at Kaffe Fassett’s new autobiography Dreaming in Color, and that’s what provoked me to contemplate the subject of crossover.
In Fassett’s case there are a number of ways in which the epithet might apply. Fassett is a visual artist who found himself in his ventures into such diverse media as the design of yarn & fabric, patchwork quilting and needle-point, making an impact far greater than anything he achieved painting. His disciplinary moves parallel his physical displacement from his roots in America to a new home in England (since the 1960s).
I found myself thinking about crossover looking at the images in Deaming in Color, a book unlike any autobiography I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it’s a picture book, which would only seem like an odd way to write an autobiography to a biographer. In effect the book flouts the usual procedures understood for such an undertaking. A picture book to tell a life story? That’s odd only to someone whose discipline is words, whereas a visual artist would think it odd to work any other way.
Red Red Bobbin is hosting Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably to conduct a Lecture October 2nd (click image for details)
The book is a perfect example of crossover. Only the most consevative critic could find it deficient (for having departed from usual procedures) but its breakthrough is precisely in disregarding procedure, while instead allowing the new disciplinary influence to illuminate and inspire. Who cares if it’s an uncommon approach to biography, if good visual art & design practices inform the book? I had a hard time putting it down.
Of course Fassett is now a mature artist looking back on decades of creativity. Dreaming in Color is a comprehensive survey of his development, now available. The title is perfect considering this man’s obsessive love of color.
Fides Krucker is an inter-disciplinary vocalist, a performer, creator and teacher specializing in contemporary vocal repertoire: prolific, versatile & regularly involved in new creations here and abroad.
Krucker is known for her performances of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer’s works and has also premiered new operas by several dozen composers both at home and throughout Europe. Krucker is particularly interested in bringing extended vocal techniques into the development of new work. Her interdisciplinary work has included work with dance theatre company Jumpstart!, hologram artist Mary Alton and writer/director Thom Sokoloski for the music drama Artaud’s Cane (for which she received a Dora nomination in composition). Krucker started Good Hair Day Productions, and is a founding member of and producer for the interdisciplinary female collective, URGE.
As a teacher Krucker is in high demand for private and group voice classes in Toronto by singers, actors, dancers and non-performers. Krucker’s writing on voice/body work has been commissioned and published by the Canadian literary journal Descant and her teaching has been profiled in magazines such as Chatelaine.
Krucker’s next project, Julie Sits Waiting, from Good Hair Day Productions, with libretto by Tom Walmsley and music composed by Louis Dufort, opens Sept 14th 2012 in Theatre Passe Muraille BackSpace.
I ask Krucker 10 questions: five about her and five more about Julie Sits Waiting.
1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?
I think I resemble my father…he is Swiss…both my looks and certain aspects of my behaviour. As I age I feel my hips tighten a little further – like his – and the bags under my eyes become more pronounced. My dad was always fiery and the ‘Krucker temper’ a bit legendary. The good part of that…his drive…was something I absorbed when I ran his business, a large wholesale bakery, in the early 80s. I feel it is the engine of the urge that has had me take on creating, commissioning and producing new work since 1991. During the time I was working for him I remember being surprised by a very astute comment he made about Faure’s Requiem. He was far more creative and sensitive than his career path might have indicated. I look less like my mum (she is a red head whose ancestors came from Scotland in the late 1700s) but feel more and more respect for her way of being – patience, a certain non-explosive grace under fire, an ability to reframe things once reality has made its point. She is my ‘Yoda’ these days. There is a history of art and music in her family as well as his, and a deep loyalty to ideas and people. I feel I am rediscovering my inheritance from her now that I have had my 3 decades of rebellion and individuation! Still, I am slightly spooked when my voice sounds like hers in a random moment.
2) what is the BEST thing / worst thing about being a singer creating original work?
I love being involved, through improvisation, with a composer’s process of creation. It varies with each project – sometimes I may feel more like I have co-created or even composed my vocal lines and other times I feel that the raw material I have provided gives the composer a different shape for the sound of the female voice. Following the textures that I find interesting and pleasurable and the melodic curves that speak to me feels really satisfying on a visceral and emotional level. So it is freeing! But then it comes back on the page – and whether it is really similar to the original improvs or wildly transformed through the composer’s aesthetic – the hard work of ‘learning the freedom’ has to happen at this point. Sometimes finding a way to integrate apparent freedom with technical repeatability and musical precision makes me wish I had offered an easier sound idea in the first place!
3) who do you listen to or watch?
I get youtube crushes. So Anne Wilson of Heart singing ‘Crazy on you’ at the 2000 Women Rock Concert – so connected and so beautiful. Diana Damrau in the Queen of the Night – steely precision – spine and sparkle! James Brown and Pavarotti doing a duet of ‘This is a man’s world’ – each of them animal in his own way. Janis Joplin and Tom Jones trading off in “Raise your hand” ….the hip action is fantastic as well as the joy in one another’s prowess. I love to contrast two performances of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – Robert Plant with Mary J.Blige – the feminine and the masculine illuminated in new ways. This makes me laugh as I used to think my younger brother was an idiot for liking Led Zeppelin as a teenager. I loved Bach!
As for opera, I have really enjoyed the joy in Adrianne Pieczonka’s voice and the balance of light and dark in Russell Braun’s performances. We are lucky to be able to hear them live here in Toronto. I was brought to tears watching a dvd of Dawn Upshaw in Peter Sellar’s production of Love from afar just a few months ago.
I was very soothed at one point in my life by Eva Cassidy’s voice and inspired by her abandon and clarity.
Matti Salminen – a Finnish bass – encouraging a type of carnal reaction deep within me to his sound. Jackie du Pres on cello – arriving at a rehearsal and asking “what will we be doing today?” – her repertoire so much a part of her that she could manifest extraordinary ease as well as passion. Eve Egoyan playing Alvin Curran or Ann Southam and guiding me to new ways of hearing.
I am curious about hybrids that could form – morphing Disney’s Snow White with Etta James. Can we map our own evolution through borrowing from others? Can we make our own models when we can’t find existing ones to learn from?
4) what ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
I wish I was better at relaxing or letting go of things which bug me. I wish my tenacity was a little more tensile. I wish I could sail really well. I wish I could be in the full throttle of an emotion and slow down my sense of time enough to have my mind and maybe even some other balancing feeling come into play. I wish Compassion and Play were my middle names.
5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favorite thing to do?
Oh God – I did not see this question before answering the last. I love to cook and eat. I LOVE DUCK. I love to walk someplace beautiful and thrilling like the Pembrokeshire coast. I really love to laugh with people in a way that invites lots of chaos and sparkiness. I love my old friends – just hanging out – knowing that the layers of experience – good and bad – are holding every moment. I love looking across the Prairies or a large body of water.
Five more concerning Julie Sits Waiting
1) How does your role in creating Julie Sits Waiting challenge you?
She needs to think that this opera is a good idea…that falling in love with a strange and difficult man is the right choice and that passion is of supreme value – despite the fact that she is married to someone else. She has to be unable to choose the right path but not be pathetic in her inability to choose. There is an extreme vulnerability to her because she is taking such a risk in order to change…to evolve. It happens within a fairly conservative idea of what a woman is – from the outside – and I have to love her where she is at in her life’s journey and see how it is like mine and not like mine. I can’t question her logic but find it and live in it.
2) What do you love about Julie Sits Waiting?
I think it is really good art. I think that this opera doesn’t pull its punches – neither with story nor with form. It gives Richard and me a chance to do what we do well – work with a wide range of connected sound. I really like the maturity of the creators. Tom is a shocking and expert writer and Louis is a unique, incredibly current composer who has really ‘gotten’ Tom and infuses the piece with beauty and grit. The production team has a wealth of experience…beyond fad and favour…and I love what they illuminate with all of their choices.
3) Do you have a favourite moment in Julie Sits Waiting?
I love being in the passion, the anger, the frailty and the need of this character. I love it whenever singing the music, listening to the tape, fulfilling the staging and looking into (or away from) Richard’s eyes all add up to a moment I could not have designed but am thoroughly engaged in. I love the authenticity of the story emerging between Richard and I.
That is maybe more process than moment but it leads to moment by moment inhabitation of this incredible story and a reality I would not otherwise know.
There are many lines that feel great in the mouth.
4) How do you relate to Julie as a modern woman?
We are very different. I have a job out in the world (several really – teacher, singer, producer) and I identify strongly with my ability to do things and to have a kind of freedom through that. She is married and she has a daughter but we don’t learn about what she ‘does’ apart from that. In the opera she is caught in a moment of extreme and merciless transformation. I can relate to that. And the dilemma she is trying to unravel around love is one I can also relate to. “What is love at first sight?” “What is sustainable love? Passion?” She gets to make big mistakes trying to figure this out and then the opera is over. The big risks I have taken (or not) around relationship are with me today. And they have affected my family. I think the way the daughter is brought into the opera, and the woman’s role as a mother, make this a very modern cautionary tale. Or at least that is how it resonates for me. The story is not saying how to behave in any way but it is saying that decision or indecision both have consequences. I had already been separated six years when I commissioned the opera and in the years since then have watched many of my friends with children come close to separating or in fact divorce. It is not pleasant. But looking for sustainable passion is a really decent human desire….
5) Is there anyone out there who you particularly admire, and who has influenced you?
Sally Potter. Her film “Yes” blew my mind. The whole thing is in iambic pentameter. It is audacious and she found a way for the characters to inhabit it. I think I cried about 5 times in the first 25 minutes from the sheer beauty of the pull between this formal language and the emotional discoveries of the characters. It seemed to allow very large and sophisticated thought around love and difference to flow between the characters. And it invited amazing composition for each of the shots.
I love it when someone lets form break apart – pushes what is known until it has to reassemble as something new – Beethoven and Schoenberg are two composers I really feel passionate about.
The women of URGE – a collective I was part of for fourteen years. It is hard to collaborate and we struggled – but phrases each woman said in rehearsal and moments of unbridled creativity pop to mind more and more in the decade since we last created and rehearsed.
My students – they keep shining a light on themselves, through their voices, with such diligence – and they also look at their peers with unflinching affection and honesty. Richard Armstrong…he has such grace. My partner Nik – he is so kind and has a very particular wisdom and sense of humour, which I find helpful and really amusing.
My daughters have likely influenced me more than any other person or experience. They arrived so fresh on the planet and they keep sticking with life in such a glorious way.
~~~~~~~~~
Julie Sits Waiting — September 14-23
Librettist: Tom Walmsley
Composer: Louis Dufort
Starring: Fides Krucker and Richard Armstrong
Directed by: Heidi Strauss and Alex Fallis
Set and Costume design by: Teresa Przybylski
Video Design by: Jeremy Mimnagh
Lighting Design by: Rebecca Picherack
Sound Diffusion by: Darren Copeland
Co-Produced by: Aislinn Rose
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