Lepage and The End

Posted on January 28, 2012 by barczablog
Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage (Canadian Press photo)

As I listen to the Metropolitan Opera premiere the last of the four operas in Wagner’s Ring Cycle –streamed for free to an eager audience worldwide—I have to say, the natives are restless.  While Canadians are just fine with Robert Lepage (those who care, at least), the verdict so far in NYC seems quite conflicted.  I am basing this on the reviews I’ve seen, before having checked anything written about the new production I am listening to tonight (I am posting this while Act III is still on so i should think the reviews would at least wait for the end of the piece?).

But there seems to be a lot riding on this.  I suppose money is part of it. I want to take a moment just to remember the things i liked, because when i read what some say, you’d think it was a mess, a disaster.  Lepage even went as far as issuing an interview that sounded like an attempt at a defense; and under the circumstances i can’t blame him.  There’s been a great deal of magic for me in each of the previous three operas, yet all I’ve heard were a series of negatives.

Das Rheingold?   We heard about the rainbow bridge failure on the opening night, the relatively under-powered Wotan & Loge.

Have people forgotten the magical parts?

  • For starters wow, the appearance of the Rhine Maidens, doing that trademark thing Lepage seems to love, namely hanging on strings.  It was stunning.
  • down down down

    The descent to Nibelheim

    And the descent to Niebelheim is surely something nobody can take away from Lepage. Has anyone ever ever ever done so much with that sequence? Yes I’ve seen marvellous moments in productions, but never the overtones of elfin magic, visual echoes of styles we see in Lord of the Rings (although to be fair, the debt is really the other way, correct? Even if Tolkien still refuses to admit any debt or influence).

  • Loge walking backwards up the wall… fire and the lie, captured in a wonderful image, and sung beautifully.
  • Wendy Bryn Harmer… at the risk of sounding crude, shouldn’t Freia, the goddess who embodies youth and fertility be beautiful? This time at least, the casting is brilliant. When the giants want her, can you blame them?  The camera loves her.
  • When  Loge sings that lovely arioso about his quest for someone willing to sacrifice woman’s wonder & worth (“Weibes Wonne und Wert”), and leans across Harmer, his hands glowing magically, I couldn’t see for the tears.  In the encore it was every bit as powerful even though I knew it was coming.
  • The relationships between the principals makes so much sense in Lepage’s reading.  One of my favourite moments in the Chereau Ring is that lovely climax when Wotan tells the giants to take the gold, and declares Freia free.  She runs away from the giants… and runs PAST her waiting family, to stand alone, distraught, as she ponders her family relationships.  Lepage takes it a step beyond that.  Farmer seems to respond to Fasolt’s rough love.  Her glances at him are so sweet, so sad when we see what happens to Fasolt, and problematic to be sure.

Die Walküre?

  • Love that pursuit through the forest, Siegmund entering to…
  • A twin sister who really looks like a twin! Casting again!
  • I said little about Bryn Terfel’s Wotan –whose portrayal I liked in Rheingold—but Terfel upped the ante substantially in this opera, particularly his long monologue in the second act.  I loved that peculiar “eye” that carries so many possible meanings.  Wotan has given up an eye in exchange for wisdom, so it makes a curious kind of sense for the eye to be a motif at this point, as Wotan explores the world, in effect using that eye.
  • I loved the Ride of the Valkyries.  I have never liked this strange set-piece, the single most over-played piece of Wagner, that turns up in movies & TV commercials, a piece that has probably never worked very well onstage.  I’ve seen several productions of this opera and have never been very happy with what the director comes up with, especially when the sisters are all suddenly dwarfed by the arrival of the much bigger woman playing Brunnhilde.  Please don’t mistake me for a size-ist, as I love big bodies, and grew up watching them onstage.  But what a difference when Brunnhilde is the same size as her sisters, and suddenly she genuinely seems to be one of a troop.   And wow that sets up the father-daughter relationship with a Wotan who truly is a godlike figure, namely Bryn Terfel.  Terfel’s reading of Wotan’s farewell at the end of the opera was truly special, beautiful, moving, and in a close-up.

Siegfried?  Here we meet the other main character of the ring, the title character, played by Jay Hunter Morris, and both physically and vocally we’ve got someone who’s up to the task.  And what about Lepage’s contribution?

  • The physical reality in this opera brings the technology of Lepage’s design a step further, a curious hybrid of projections, props, puppets, live action, tromp l’oeil… We are in something artificial, a presentational space that’s believable but not fully real either.  It means that the nature music, the dragon, the forest-bird, will all have a different kind of impact than what we’ve seen in other productions. It’s not pretending to be symbolic or archetypal; if anything it’s surprisingly real, very simple.
  • There are again several moments illuminated at the simplest level of text.  For example, I’ve never seen the segment where Siegfried tries to talk to the forest bird with his own inept flute playing made quite so enjoyable, simply by giving us the comedy that’s in the text.  Similarly we actually see Wotan’s ravens chase the forest bird away as indicated in the text.

A lot has been said about Lepage’s “machine”, a large computer-controlled device manipulating a series of rectangular shapes that resemble planks.  There’s been a great deal of resistance, complaints, objections.  Yes there was a malfunction causing a delay of the Walküre high definition broadcast.  Of course, another negative complaint to fasten on.  But has anyone really wrapped their head around this achievement?  It’s something new, and I can’t quite grasp what it means.  Projections change the reality of the playing area, and have been doing so for decades already.  This is something else again.  The chief components of that machine are reframed over and over again, in slightly different configurations.  The machine is like a mannequin, a colossal Barbie doll, except that it doesn’t wear clothes, it wears people in costumes.  This world is Protean & malleable.  Any administrator knows that the one constant in the world is change;  Lepage gets it too, and makes change something fundamental to his Ring.   That is the message of the machine, that everything changes.  Erda told us something just like that, in the last scene of Das Rheingold:

Alles was ist, endet.  (Everything that is, ends)

Lepage makes change a fundamental condition of his Ring.  For those who are bemoaning that there’s nothing profound in this Ring, perhaps they should have another look.

(I am listening to Act III of Götterdämmerung, my favourite act of the cycle… the audience giggled audibly when the Rhine Maidens came out of the water… Did the nymphs make the audience laugh, or Siegfried with his facial expression? I guess I’ll see next week).

And yes, there’s the small matter of the musical performance of Götterdämmerung.

As I said on Facebook “I love Luisi”, and hopefully I don’t need (to use Ricky Riccardo’s charming accent) to “splain” anything.  The pace he takes –faster than James Levine, faster than the pace to which most people are accustomed—is truly breath-taking.  It actually makes the singing easier for the key performers, even if they sometimes resemble patter singers.  The entire work hangs together better when the lines aren’t drawn out endlessly in the usual way German conductors have been doing for the last half century or more.

Morris and Voigt sound wonderful, as does Hans-Peter König, possibly the best singer in the entire cycle.

Okay… I am now going to listen to the end of the world.  And then I’ll watch it again next Saturday.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Cruel and Tender

Posted on January 26, 2012 by barczablog

I feel very fortunate to have seen the story of the Women of Trachis portrayed twice within a week.  I don’t mean two performances of the same production, but two different works in wildly different media.  The comparisons are unavoidable.

Martin Crimp

Playwright Martin Crimp

Last Thursday night I was present at the opening of Handel’s oratorio Hercules at Koerner Hall, a semi-staged production by Tafelmusik invoking figures from classical Greek mythology (and reviewed that night).  The title notwithstanding, this is really a virtuoso vehicle for the women in his life sung in the baroque style (arias and recitatives, singing with orchestra), Hercules being a cameo compared to the two women vying for the leading role in his love-life.

This afternoon I saw a matinée of Martin Crimp’s Cruel and Tender, a play after Sophocles’ Trachiniae.  Directed by Atom Egoyan for Canadian Stage, Crimp’s play is also something of a star vehicle, but set in the modern day:

  • Deïanira (or “Dejanira”) from the original has become “Amelia”, Egoyan’s real-life leading lady, Arsinée Khanjian
  • Hercules has become “The General”, played by Daniel Kash
  • Their son Hyllus is now “James”, played by Jeff Lillico
  • Deïanira’s rival Iöle is now the African Princess “Laela”, played by Abena Malika.

With the earlier work still clearly in mind, it was unavoidable to make the comparisons, particularly considering the ways in which the new play updates the action.

We’ve all seen plays presented with anachronistic design elements, sometimes adding wonderful layers to the play, but often merely leaving us scratching our heads.  But interpretation is not to be confused with the bigger step taken by Crimp.  By declaring it is a play “after Sophocles’ Trachiniae” he sets himself free to make it his own, while declaring that his text is not to be mistaken for Greek tragedy.

There’s an overused word I kept thinking of watching Cruel and Tender,  namely deconstruction.  Crimp revisits the familiar territory of the older play, yet in modernizing takes everything apart, problematizing what was once simple and mythic.  But then again he is simply taking from history what has obviously changed.  I don’t believe I could possibly capture all of the categories (still haunted by the older work I saw last week), and don’t want to give too much away for fear of stealing some of Crimp’s thunder.  The General for example, does not have the freedom of the ancient hero who brings a maiden home after conquering her people.  Our modern General may emulate the savagery of his ancient prototype but must answer for his atrocities, unacceptable conduct for a modern hero, facing a new world with complex rules of engagement.  Fame is distorted by the lens of the media and interpreted by government bureaucrats, pragmatic contexts without compassion for the man.

The updates to the roles of the women are big payoffs for Crimp and the audience for Cruel and Tender.  The emotional notes struck in the Sophocles tend to be larger than life, so extreme and abstract as to seem symbolic rather than real; but then again the ancient text was presented with masks in a huge theatre, not for a society accustomed to close-ups and emotional truth.  Egoyan –perhaps with his operatic background—never mistakes Crimp’s textures for realism, encouraging a kind of post-modern virtuosity.  Each of the major parts get their moment in the figurative spotlight.

Khanjian’s Amelia carries the show just as one would expect of a Deïanira.  Although this world is defined by the General, his role is brief, only appearing near the end; for the first two thirds of the evening everyone lives in the shadow of the absent hero.  Khanjian strikes a balance between the requisite glamour for a fitting consort to the larger than life hero, and her passion.  But unlike Deïanira, Amelia’s passions are fleshed out, much more than just jealousy.  She is a pragmatist determined not to be a victim, sometimes tense, sometimes angry, a wife delivering ironic critiques with a sidelong glance, and a growing sense of misery.  This is the first time I’ve seen Khanjian perform in a live theatre setting –where she started before her much more extensive film career began—and I’m pleasantly surprised.

Malika’s Laela accomplished her chief challenge, managing to be a worthy antagonist to Amelia while being completely likeable, an innocent brought to an impossible situation.  The one question mark for me was in the production’s decision to let us hear Malika sing; if Crimp really wrote that odd and contrived scene of karaoke –the weakest thing in the production—then it’s simply that Egoyan was trying his best to make the odd writing work.  I have no idea what Crimp was aiming for in that scene, even if Malika’s singing is wonderful.  But it’s an odd shift of tone for the work that I didn’t really understand.

Daniel Kash doesn’t disappoint when he finally brings the General to us, a man who looks like a Hercules even if –speaking of deconstruction—there’s no reason why a modern general has to look like a Greek God.  Yes there is one anecdote of the General’s exploits, a rescue carrying someone on his back; but our General could just as easily be tiny, and the story a bogus fabrication.  In this respect our modern play reveals its roots, giving the General a classical heroism.  Just as Hercules suffers greatly, so too the General.  Kash does his best with the writing, which I find wordy (sorry Mr Crimp).  Speaking of heroic, Kash performs manfully considering what he’s expected to say and do.   Crimp makes wonderful use of the classical subtext when the General is raving, making delirious references to the Nemean Lion –one of Hercules’ 12 labours—and flings a bit of clothing over his shoulder as if it were the lion-skin. We thereby get the grandeur of the classical overtones that have mostly been suppressed throughout the play, in the middle of the crazed ravings of our modern man.

I was especially pleased with James (the son of the General and Amelia, corresponding to Hyllus), both in the writing and the performance of Jeff Lillico.  This is one of several places in the play where the difference between the old and new are especially edgy.  When we first meet James he’s almost gormless, a self-absorbed youth who’s under his mother’s sway: at least at first.  When sent to search for his father, all that changes. The James who returns after finding his father in Africa becomes the alpha animal, presumably from this encounter but also because of a coming of age experience in his travels.  Again, it’s partly the writing, which isn’t subtle; but I love that clarity, at least in the way that Egoyan finds the blunt truth of the family dynamic.  The pace throughout is very organic, allowing you to hear and understand, never lagging, but sometimes allowing breathing room for some of the powerful moments.

I hope I haven’t given too much away, but it’s very much worth seeing.  I’d like to see it again.

Cruel and Tender runs at the Bluma Appel Theatre until February 18th.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bridal lullaby

Posted on January 24, 2012 by barczablog

Without being able to ask the artist, one sometimes wonders about the depths of meaning one encounters.  Are they intentional creations—where the creator sought for and purposefully aimed at those depths—or, are they serendipitous brilliance?  There’s a third possibility, that they could even be something in the viewer’s head that the author never intended.

Where does all that meaning come from?

The questions are inevitable as I play through a piece of music, a simple little thing really.  I can’t get over the depths I have encountered.  Maybe it’s all in my head.  Maybe it’s the convergence of the material and the music.

If one must be tormented by an earworm –one of those tunes that one can’t get out of your head—let it be this kind, a wonderful composition lodging in the brain because it’s such a good composition.  My mind is reverberating with the sounds of Percy Grainger’s Bridal Lullaby.

But that’s not how I encountered the piece.  I found it appended to the Merchant Ivory film Howard’s End.  There is a brief orchestral phrase in B-flat minor, striking a kind of tragic pall over the beginning.  Then the piano begins, in the related key of F-sharp major, a luxurious curtain of notes.

Although that opening orchestral phrase is from the film’s composer –Richard Robbins—there is a direct segue into Grainger’s composition.  As a result the combination may seem to be a single entity in your first encounter.  For awhile I assumed Robbins had written the entire composition, something like a piano concerto whose piano solo follows the orchestral introduction.  And then I had a close look at the credits, discovering the name of Percy Grainger.

I am pondering all of this after having again played through Percy Grainger’s brief piano solo, the aforementioned Bridal Lullaby.  The composition was a wedding gift to one of the great loves of the composer’s life, after their failed love affair.  As she moved into a new life and married someone else Grainger sent her the composition with its dedication to Karen Kellerman (her married name), a kind of bitter-sweet blessing and wish for her happiness.

Encoded in the music is a mixture of sweetness and sadness, a sighing resignation, parallel chords sliding downwards in a musical gesture of surrender to fate or just fatigue.

Imagine you are a composer, a young man in love with a woman for a dozen years.  You love her, or desire her but your mother hates the woman.  After several attempts to make it work, you finally accept fate because she’s found someone else to marry.  You may wonder just what that will be like, but if you’re a gentleman –as I believe Grainger was—you’d truly and sincerely wish her well, even as part of you said farewell not only to her, but also to your own truest dream of happiness.

Could your wedding gift to her be music, a composition intimately addressed to her privately?  That is the implication I see in a piece called “Bridal Lullaby,” as though –here’s a crazy thought—this man is singing his beloved to sleep in her new bed.

Is it possible to imagine that you were marrying a new man, with your former lover singing you to sleep?  That is what the title implied to me, especially when I read that he sent the original to her.  It is like a last love-letter, albeit one written and sent across the enforced and formal gulf created between them by the new marriage.

Grainger at the pianoWatching Howard’s End I had no idea of any of this, yet the conflicted and troubled sensibility in the music is unmistakeable, a good match for the two times we encounter the composition.  The first time we’re watching Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) walk around the property of Howard’s End, at the film’s beginning (click the link above).  The house represents something older in Ruth’s life, something like the memory Karen Kellerman had of Grainger and their love.  And when Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson) walks into the house for the first time, the music comes to us as if to suggest another life from before, no matter what falsehoods any liars might proclaim. And indeed although we encounter several falsehoods, the tune is truth and wins out over those falsehoods. From what I understand about Grainger it’s as though his inner life was concealed, and only laid bare in the notes he composed and/or played at the piano.

Oh sure, there’s the matter of the film & its plot.  But it can just as easily be understood as the case of the tune that would not be denied.

Posted in Books & Literature, Essays, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

“Tosca leaps…”

Posted on January 21, 2012 by barczablog
Poster for Puccini's Tosca

Poster for Puccini’s Tosca

If this were a debate, Joseph Kerman would be in one corner, dissing Puccini’s Tosca, the opera he famously called a “shabby shocker”.

Kerman is not alone in that corner.  Benjamin Britten wasn’t too thrilled with Tosca either.  But I won’t commit public seppuku by disrespecting Mr Britten, who—as a successful composer—is entitled to his opinion.  Let’s stick to Kerman’s commentary.

Now of course this isn’t a real debate.  Kerman’s words were uttered in the context of a book, not as part of a discussion, and my responses to him may seem like attacks.  But come to think of it, so do Kerman’s words about Tosca and Puccini.

So let’s be clear.  This is a superficial discussion, not a scholarly paper.  While others have already answered Kerman in various ways on his own scholarly turf, I am writing this mostly because Tosca opens in Toronto tomorrow –a night when I have a party to go to, so I can’t be there for opening night—and a friend of mine was asking what opera he should see as his first opera.  I think he could do a lot worse than see the shabby shocker even if there is the danger that he might see other operas, and that opera might become an expensive hobby, speaking as someone who can’t resist buying CDs, DVDs, tickets, subscriptions…

Let’s focus on one tiny thing Kerman said that to my knowledge he has never retracted, possibly because to do so would be to admit just how wrong he was.

“Tosca leaps, and the orchestra screams the first thing that comes into its head.”

Whenever I read this, I want to scream at Kerman.  But let’s pretend that I have learned self-restraint (if you can imagine that in the context of this big long self-indulgent rant).

When I was much younger I was sometimes guilty of saying the first thing that popped into my head.  And it was sometimes a rude or dismissive remark that I would immediately regret and be unable to unsay no matter how hard I tried.  I wonder what it’s like to have something in a book that you can’t unsay. But the book Opera as Drama has been published in several editions, and as far as I can tell Kerman has not tried to unsay his dismissive remark.  Presumably he’s happy with this dismissive sentence, particularly because his dismissal is so well-known –and part of his fame—that it could have been printed on his business card.

Let’s think for a minute about orchestras, whether or not they say the first thing that comes into their “head”.  It’s a funny image, really.  Operas are a hybrid of words and music.  If anything in an opera is the “head” it’s the words. The orchestra is the engine of emotion, the involuntary place of feeling and gut response, not the head.  But let’s not split hairs, even if Kerman’s metaphor in some respects resembles the first lame thing that popped into HIS head.

Orchestral writing is a colossal job, sometimes written and copied and revised over a period of years –or if it’s Rossini, maybe a few weeks!—even though the effects can’t be purely cerebral.  The orchestra is not the place for rational discourse, not the place to make precise statements, oh no.  The music is a conduit of emotion.  So when the effect seems calculated I don’t believe we are nearly so moved as when the effect seems –wait for it—spontaneous.

Hm… spontaneous.  That reminds me of something.  When I am spontaneous, I am not thinking and pondering and being fake.  I am saying the first thing that pops into my head.  Funny isn’t it?  Is Kerman criticising Puccini at some level for doing something that resembles a kind of ideal(?): orchestral writing that seems spontaneous?

Okay, let’s set Mr Kerman aside for a moment.  I want to look at Puccini and actually speak of Tosca, shabby or otherwise.

Act III is a marvellous piece of music theatre, a fact not lost on the many people who see this opera again and again.  Tosca has been identified as number eight among the twenty most popular operas in a study by Opera America known as “cornerstones”.

The first two acts set us up for the last act, particularly the last five minutes.

  • Tyrannical police chief Baron Scarpia loves the beautiful singer Floria Tosca
  • Tosca loves the painter Mario Cavaradossi; Tosca is so despondent that she offers herself to Scarpia, to get Scarpia to promise a fake execution & a safe conduct pass to allow the lovers to escape;  when Scarpia claims his reward–to possess her body (and that’s as polite as i can put it)– she stabs him just as he expects a consummation
  • Cavaradossi loves Tosca; the painter is imprisoned awaiting execution as the last act opens

Got that? It’s not really complicated, not once you’ve watched Scarpia’s henchmen torturing Cavaradossi in Tosca’s presence (Act II), sadistically pushing her to the point where she betrays Cavaradossi, thinking she is saving him.  While some operas can move as slowly as a glacier, that’s not what Tosca is like.  And then we get closer to the last five minutes.

Cavaradossi is alone in prison, wondering if he will ever see his beloved Tosca again.  He sings one of the prettiest arias anyone has ever written, e lucevan le stelle.  This simple reminiscence of the pleasures of life and love in the despairing moments immediately before execution is one of the many reasons this opera is so successful.  From the first note you hear a kind of existential loneliness.

Not long after this solo, Tosca shows up.  In the previous act, she suffered a horrible ordeal, watching her lover dragged away to execution.  She sank so low that the only way she could bargain for her lover’s life was to offer herself to Scarpia, the police chief.  He promised to arrange a fake execution for Cavaradossi.  It’s not as unlikely as you might think, for Scarpia wanted Tosca’s body, and so was completely vulnerable to her at the moment when he expected a kiss. Tosca carries the safe conduct paperwork that is the last logistical detail to enable her and her lover to have a happily ever after, against all odds, and of course has no idea that Scarpia has double-crossed her as surely as she double-crossed him.

And so, the deal as Tosca understood it is that the execution is fake.  The guns will fire blanks, so Cavaradossi must fall down as if he has been shot.  This is what Tosca tells Cavaradossi, hoping for the best as she watches what she believes to be a fake execution.

But Tosca has underestimated Scarpia even in death.  Although she double-crossed Scarpia (stabbing him just when he expects something tender) it turns out the police chief has double-crossed her too, as he simply wanted Tosca’s body with no expectation of giving her anything in return.  Tosca watches what she believes to be a fake execution, even though it is actually genuine.

And so we come to the last five minutes of Tosca, as if it were a little pantomime-within-an-opera.  Tosca is the audience, watching what she believes to be a fake execution, hoping her lover will make a convincing imitation of death, never guessing that his performance will be perfect because it’s not an imitation.

The soldiers trudge in to a remarkably banal little tune, because the soldiers are just doing their jobs, bored, and indifferent.  And the music builds gradually, Cavaradossi takes his place, is offered a blindfold which he gallantly refuses.  He smiles boldly because of course he doesn’t think he is going to die.  Tosca is eating it up, as the music gradually builds.  The soldiers lift their rifles.  The music inexorably gets louder.  They take aim.

They fire and the sound is terrifying, particularly when we see Cavaradossi fall.

Tosca is moved by his artistry.

And then the music gradually quiets from its climax, as the soldiers finish their boring job, inexorable and completely insensitive to the man before them whether he’s dying or pretending.

They march away.

When the soldiers are gone, Tosca tells Cavaradossi it’s time to wake up, and runs to him, all eager and innocent as a little girl on Christmas morning, because now she can have her happily ever after.  She runs to him, tells him to get up.  And when it dawns on her that he is really dead her heart breaks very quickly, no arias, no time to comment: because the cops are now coming for her.

They have found Scarpia’s body.  The execution took place in a fortress in Rome.  To escape the pursuit, and indeed, devastated by her loss, Tosca runs to the parapet, hurls a defiant word at Scarpia—that they would be judged together before God—and then jumps.

What is the first thing that pops into the “head” of the orchestra? (recalling Kerman)

The prettiest tune we heard all night –e lucevan le stelle– was a celebration of love and romance in the face of imminent death. But the orchestra is now as powerful as it was previously gentle,  flooding us with this passionate and beautiful tune.

It makes perfect sense doesn’t it?  The orchestra is telling us the subtext for the moment: love and the brevity of life.

I feel kind of sorry for Kerman that he doesn’t get it.

Here’s a film version of those last few minutes complete with titles.  Have a look…

Posted in Books & Literature, Essays, Opera | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Herculean

Posted on January 20, 2012 by barczablog

Tonight’s premiere of Tafelmusik’s semi-staged version of Handel’s Hercules was dramatic in more ways than one.

Jeanne Lamon

Jeanne Lamon, Music Director of Tafelmusik (Photographer: Sian Richards)

We came to honour Jeanne Lamon, to celebrate her thirty years leading the baroque orchestra.  While it was a commemoration of past achievements in the presence of friends & collaborators, it also represents the beginning of a new era, with the announcement of a new media label “Tafelmusik”.

Hercules was a wonderful choice of vehicle, and an apt symbol.  While the work might suggest heroism yet it is remarkable for its wonderful opportunities to showcase female talent, just like Tafelmusik itself.  And the team responsible for the production, including long-time collaborators Marshall Pynkoski & Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg (Opera Atelier co-artistic directors, who staged & choreographed) suggest that the Tafelmusik brand will be more than just the orchestra, on different media platforms.

Tafelmusik media

Tafelmusik media: a new label

I didn’t know the work being presented (Handel’s Hercules surely deserves to be better known), and came away quite happy with the semi-staged format used on this occasion.  No one was really in costume, except perhaps Laura Pudwell who wore the generic male outfit: because she was playing a man.  Within the first 15 minutes I was completely drawn into the classical world being presented.

Some passions are more conducive to a baroque sensibility.  While I resisted Hercules’ great aria of rage –partly because there seems to be something oxymoronic about a man in pain singing an aria, partly because it feels unseemly for a great strong man to go on at such length—the various complaints of the women carried me away immediately, because I suppose they are what I expect from baroque opera.  And my prejudice echoes remarks from Lamon, who said that she found ” the male characters a bit less interesting, perhaps a bit more two-dimensional” compared to these wonderful women’s parts; after seeing the work tonight I think she’s absolutely right, and there’s nothing Herclues could ever do to steal the spotlight from his wife.

Allyson Mchardy

Soprano Allyson McHardy

Sumner Thompson brought a genuinely heroic presence to Hercules, but I believe Handel was more interested in the passions of his women.  There was Hercules’ jealous wife Dejanira, a wonderfully varied part that in some respects seems well-served in an oratorio or semi-staged context, precisely because we have no visual distractions to upstage the vocal fireworks.  At times quietly brooding, then explosively angry, and uncontrollably jealous, Dejanira is a wonderful role that was fully realized in Allyson McHardy’s wonderfully passionate singing.  And McHardy had a particularly affecting moment in a silent embrace near the end.  Soprano Natalie Paulin was the catalyst for McHardy’s rage, as the captive princess Iöle, a plaintive contrast to Dejanira.  And a third female, the reliable Laura Pudwell as the herald Lichas, had possibly the most poignant moment of all, quietly describing Hercules’ agony.

Perhaps it’s a foregone conclusions that Jeanne Lamon’s music direction should be masterful.  I’ve marvelled at the generosity of the orchestra, made available to Opera Atelier and then conducted not by Lamon but by Ivars Taurins for the annual Messiah concerts, where I have seen so many other orchestras controlled by one person –usually male—regardless of whether that leader was good or not.  The sharing has made the ensemble stronger, a wise strategy.

Tafelmusik repeat Hercules January 20, 21 and 22 at Koerner Hall.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Operatic alchemy

Posted on January 19, 2012 by barczablog
Alchemist at work

Alchemy: science or art? or a bit of both

The Canadian Opera Company announced its 2012-2013 season today, January 18th, a combination of works old and new.  I don’t pretend to understand how an opera company chooses their repertoire, although I think I understand some of the issues involved.  There are operas that are known to be popular, others that are considered risky.  Somehow one attempts to reconcile the desire to sell tickets and make money on the one hand, with the riskier agenda of fulfilling artistic aspirations on the other.  One can picture both a financial and creative bottom line, even if there are no actual formulas to turn base metals into gold.  Genuine quality costs money, particularly in opera, a medium known to be the most expensive of all art-forms.

The upcoming season?  We’ll get seven operas (in order of the date of premiere):

  • Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito
  • Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
  • Verdi’s Il Trovatore
  • Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
  • Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus
  • Richard Strauss’s Salome
  • Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites

I believe this is a safer season than the one the COC is currently presenting, and I say that meaning no disrespect.  I feel confident that the company will improve on their box office returns with this lineup, whereas their current choices feel riskier to me.  As someone who admires and welcomes risky programming I am eagerly looking forward to Saariaho’s Love from Afar that premieres very soon, and hope that the COC audience embrace it, one of the first operas of the new millennium to gain some popularity.  In addition I am hopeful about the success of the double bill of Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and look forward to Handel’s Semele, all of which are riskier choices than the other two operas still to come, namely Tosca and Tales of Hoffmann.

You may wonder what I mean when I claim that there’s nothing as risky as the Saariaho, the Zemlinsky or the little-known Handel in the 2012-2013 season.  I refer first, to Opera America’s “Cornerstones”, a list of the 20 most popular operas that the organization compiled from box office statistics.

In 2010-2011 the COC chose three operas from that top 20 listing (namely Aida, The Magic Flute and La Cenerentola).  The current season only boasts two operas from that list (Tosca and Rigoletto), but 2012-2013 goes back to three cornerstone operas (Lucia di Lammermoor, Il trovatore, and Die Fledermaus).

And next let’s consider the operas that aren’t “cornerstones”. In 2010-2011 that meant

  • Orfeo ed Euridice (Robert Carsen’s breathtaking Toronto debut, the COC’s first Gluck opera),
  • Ariadne auf Naxos (Andrew Davis’s return to Toronto, phenomenal cast, Christopher Alden’s production),
  • Death in Venice and
  • Nixon in China (one of the best things the COC has ever done)

For 2011-2012 (this season) the previous season’s excellence was a difficult act to follow, especially given the inevitable comparisons:

  • Robert Carsen’s second Gluck opera Iphigenia in Tauris
  • Christopher Alden’s second Toronto production, an edgy Rigoletto (which I liked very much, but that was risky if the cornerstone operas are expected to be money-makers)
  • the new Love From Afar (hoping people embrace it… it’s a beautiful score and a romantic story)
  • Handel’s Semele
  • the tuneful Tales of Hoffmann and
  • an intriguing double-bill of an unknown opera (the Zemlinsky Florentine Tragedy) paired with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi.  I hope the popularity of Puccini encourages people to take the plunge with Zemlinsky.

That’s the context for saying next year feels safer, namely in comparison to the current—brave—season underway.  The cornerstone operas are once again up to three.  But the other four are all safe choices as well, without anything that one could call risky.

  • While La Clemenza di Tito isn’t well-known Mozart, he is nonetheless one of three composers (with Verdi & Puccini) who has four operas in the top 20, and therefore should be a sure thing.
  • The production of Tristan und Isolde is also a safe bet even if Ben Heppner is forced to cancel, and likely to attract a sell-out crowd of Wagnerites from far and near.  I am eagerly hoping to hear him, and confident that this small house with its sweet acoustic will feel safe enough for him to undertake all the performances, notwithstanding his recent vocal vicissitudes.
  • Atom Egoyan

    Director Atom Egoyan (Canadian Press photograph)

    The chance to once again see Atom Egoyan’s Salome is another special treat, with some promised upgrades to the technology.   My only request –tongue-in-cheek–is that Egoyan take the logical step with this voyeuristic production, namely to please put a hand-held camera (or a convincing prop imitation thereof) in one of the characters’ hands.  Perhaps Herod? or Narraboth as he stalks the Judean Princess?  But in this production we are all implicated, all  voyeurs.

  • Finally, a Robert Carsen production of Dialogues des Carmelites would also be a sure thing, even if it didn’t also star Bayrakdarian, Pieczonka, Forst and Mishura.
  • And while we’re on the subject of star power, I am looking forward to hearing Stephen Costello and Anna Christy as the lovers in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Ramon Vargas as Manrico in Il trovatore. 

Next year?  Pure gold.

Posted in Essays, Opera | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

What’s under the tree?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by barczablog
Alexander Neef

Canadian Opera Company General Director Alexander Neef, aka Santa Claus (Photo: Michael Cooper © 2008 )

The recent High Definition Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha offered another look at one of the most popular operas of the past few decades.  I am posting this the night before the Canadian Opera Company announces their 2012-2013 season, like a kid wondering what he’s gonna get for Christmas.  I know Santa needs to make sure the company stays solvent, no matter how risky the programming he offers his kids, er I mean subscribers.  I was hoping Santa (aka Alexander Neef) would offer something edgy and exciting:

  • Satyagraha would be my first choice, but I’d settle for anything by Philip Glass.  Akhnaten?  Yes please! Or barring that something from John Adams such as Doctor Atomic.  Okay, the items on this bullet are perhaps a long-shot, although i believe either of the Glass operas would draw a big crowd.
  • Something that’s mostly theatrical in its conception.  The Nightingale & Other Tales was another wonderful showcase for both Robert Lepage and the youthful talents of the COC.  Whether or not Lepage is part of the package, there are many other works that could exploit the COC’s strengths.  I am still remembering the Met’s Damnation of Faust, a showcase for the orchestra & chorus, a work that’s not really an opera at all, and a fabulous template for a designer to show us what they can do.
  • A revival of a great COC production!  How about War & Peace, so powerful & so accomplished just a few years ago.  Or maybe one of the Ring operas?  Das Rheingold would probably be the easiest from a talent stand-point, whereas the other three operas are much tougher sledding as far as finding the talent.
  • Louis Riel

    A double threat: an opera not just by Canadians, but an opera that tells us about a Canadian icon

    Ah but if we are really talking about a radical wishlist, there should be an opera by a Canadian composer somewhere on the list, whether it’s a new work or a production of an existing work.   Actually any Canadian opera that has been revived must be understood as a success, considering how many only manage a single production.  Louis Riel, Nigredo Hotel, Heloise and Abelard…. I can’t think of any other Canadian operas that have been produced multiple times.

And of course there would have to be something from the standard repertoire to balance it all out, ideally in a new production.

  • Mozart?  We’ve recently seen The Magic Flute, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro from the COC, so why not Clemenza di Tito or Abduction from the Seraglio?
  • Verdi? We’ve had recent productions of Rigoletto, Don Carlos, Aida, and Otello, all heavily dependent on a few key singers.  I’d love to see their Falstaff and Ballo again.
  • Puccini?  I suppose the one I am hoping for is Girl of the Golden West, admittedly another opera that can be difficult to cast.
  • Rossini?  Ah yes, this could be a promising composer to exploit, with so many fabulous compositions both popular and unfamiliar.

I’m going to post this, and then go to bed.  In the morning, I’ll see what Santa brings.  By the time anyone reads this, I suspect you’ll know what the COC are producing next year.

Cross your fingers.

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Thank you, Rob Ford

Posted on January 14, 2012 by barczablog
Seligman's book

Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness

I learned about gratitude in Martin Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness.  Dr. Seligman is a key figure in a new kind of psychology, called “Positive Psychology”, positive because it’s oriented not on disorders and dysfunctions, but on happiness.  I am not saying I was never thankful before, but I now actually use gratitude as part of a deliberate practice, hoping to feel better by appreciating the blessings of this world.

At bedtime–although one can do it anytime you wish—I like to look back on my day, remembering people who have done something helpful, and then feeling gratitude for what they did.  It might be a good deed.  It might be something indirect, like remembering your mom who brought you into this world, or the choir who sang so well in church, or the joy you felt with some member of the family.  I try to say five “gratefuls” each day, and am especially pleased when I take something I might have found aggravating or upsetting, and reframe it as a reason to be thankful.

It occurs to me today that I should be thankful to Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto.  Depending on which Torontonians you speak to, you’d get some very different answers about how Mr Ford might inspire gratitude.  Conservatives seem to like him, but I am not a Conservative.

For a person who thinks of himself as left of centre, though, it might seem like a stretch, that I say “Thank you, Rob Ford”.  But I mean it sincerely.

Ford came into office as a kind of crusader against the “gravy” of over-paid workers & excessive taxes.  The Toronto Public Library emerged as a likely target for cuts.  The local media delighted in the bizarre battle between Rob Ford and his brother Doug (also a Toronto city councillor), against defenders of the Toronto Library system, especially Margaret Atwood, an especially articulate champion of books & literacy.

It’s too early for me to report a happy ending in that battle between the forces interested in promoting the reading of books, and those who seek to balance the books.  But it’s at this point that I realized I wanted to thank Rob & Doug Ford for their gift.

I thank them for making me think about libraries.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not a big user of the Toronto Public Library: because I have privileges at the University of Toronto Library system.  But I am thankful for libraries, for the books I have in my home, for the books I dream of reading, and the blessed privilege i possess to look at a page and read.

Earlier this week I took out a copy of the score to Saariaho’s Amour de Loin, the new opera (composed about a decade ago) to be presented by the Canadian Opera Company, and that I watched on a DVD a little while ago.  Yes I can go see the opera in the theatre.  But it’s in the piano-vocal score that I actually see what the composer has notated, shedding light on sounds I haven’t previously encountered from an opera singer.  I can play through the score –although in places it looks very challenging to execute—or follow along with the DVD.  It’s a kind of magic, to look at a score, and ponder the interpretive choices one sees or hears, springing to life on a stage or in my TV, that came to life on a page covered with words & lines and dots.

In The Dragons of Eden Carl Sagan spoke of extra-somatic memory, in other words memory outside the body.  I can remember things by trying to hold those images or thoughts in my head.  Or I can take notes, sketch a picture, and thereby recall what I notated or drew.  A camera or a tape-recorder enlarges my ability to recall.  These are all ways to help me remember, tools that enlarge our abilities.

Books?  They up the ante, being a kind of social memory that offers humanity the ability to remember together, as we recall what we never saw or felt through the virtual eyes of authors, composers, poets, painters, and so many others.

Before there were DVDs or CDs, before anyone had heard a Victrola, music was still made available to an eager public for home consumption.  Great works were made smaller, transcribed for instruments people could play in their parlour, if not in a concert hall.  It’s enormous fun to chase down a reduction of a large-scale composition (i.e. orchestral or operatic works), and then plunk it out on a piano.

This morning I renewed a few books that I had out over the Christmas holiday (when one has extra time for fun):

  • Shchelkunchik, which never seems to go out of the library possibly because the title doesn’t betray the contents: a piano arrangement of the entire Nutcracker ballet.  Some parts are silly & dramatic, such as the battle with the mice, other parts are lyrical and remarkably lovely even for solo piano.  Often the textures are greatly reduced, because there’s just so much going on in the orchestra that the transcription had to choose what to paraphrase from the much denser whole. As this version was likely meant for a rehearsal pianist, it’s not very challenging, but that doesn’t stop Tchaikowsky’s melodies from coming across.
  • The library recently acquired a solo piano transcription of the first two Nocturnes in Debussy’s triptych, namely Nuages and Fêtes.  I had previously taken out the four-handed transcription by Maurice Ravel, attempting to fathom Debussy’s composition.
Gustave Samazeuilh

Composer and pianist Gustave Samazeuilh, 1877-1067

This reduction by Gustave Samazeuilh led me to ask: who is this man? I found a Wikipedia page in French only, describing him as a composer & pianist, who died in 1967 at the age of 90, a student of Debussy’s intimate friend Chausson, and known for reductions of some of the works of his contemporaries.

My extra-somatic memory is enlarged by Google and Wikipedia, telling me of Gustave Samazeuilh, but nothing can enlarge my appreciation for him as much as opening his score.  When I play through his exquisite reduction of Nuages and Fêtes, I am surely playing notes that he played, a paraphrase he made as he puzzled over Debussy’s complexities, wondering which notes to include and which to omit.

We have access to a hive-brain whereby we are all able to hear what the hive has produced, feeding off the honey of our brilliant forebears, as well as the poisons of madmen who are also part of our heritage.  Painful as it can sometimes be, we must listen and read, or fail to learn the important lessons.  I repeat my thank you to Rob and Doug Ford: thanks for reminding me of the treasure of our libraries, more than i can sample in my lifetime.

I’ll add one last little bit of gratitude.  Alexis Weissenberg passed away this week, a fascinating soul.  I am so glad I was able to hear some of his wisdom online, preserved even though he’s now gone.  I shared one of his performances of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desire on Facebook while musing a bit sentimentally that he has gone to another salon where he’s playing in the presence of JS & Jesu, and being critiqued by both the author and the subject.  Or listen to his amazing versions of the Trois Movements de Petrouschka, a work that seems to have been an unending source of fascination to him, filmed when he was still at the height of his powers.

Years later, we get a wonderful retrospective commentary on Weissenberg’s process, and a lovely glimpse of the man recalling  his magical first encounters with music

Posted in Books & Literature, Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Descent of Psycho

Posted on January 11, 2012 by barczablog
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

I don’t know very much about Charles Darwin, but have always been fascinated by the profound reverberations set off in my head by the title The Descent of Man.  I am not a naturalist.  I understood that Darwin meant “descent” in the same way that I might speak of genealogy and my own descent within my family, speaking of the people (or animals) from whom I am descended.  I can’t help but wonder whether he also meant that second sense that inevitably resulted from dethroning humankind?  I don’t know whether he recognized that his work seemed to necessitate our descent from our throne from whence we rule over nature & the animal kingdom, to a place much more equal to that of other creatures on this planet: but that’s what the title’s “descent” first suggested to me and still suggests.  Perhaps I am not the only one, considering Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man…?

So even as I continue this digressive preamble, I should mention that when I speak of Psycho I am speaking neither of family relationships nor evolutionary ones.  As so often happens in criticism, I am employing a metaphor borrowed from the sciences to lend a certain credibility to the analysis.

Bernard Herrmann

Composer Bernard Herrmann

And any film scholar coming to this essay expecting a discussion about Hitchcock will be surprised that he’s completely absent from this essay, because I am concerned with the real star of Psycho, namely composer Bernard Herrmann.  Can it be disputed at this point?  Without those strident strings Psycho would never have been so powerful.  I believe the effect is mutual, by the way; if one listens to the score without any accompanying visuals, the dissonance cannot move you in quite the same way, even as one involuntarily remembers imagery from the film.  Herrmann & Hitchcock were a magical partnership in several films (such as North by Northwest and Vertigo), and never quite as good when they went their separate ways.

As I look at the lineage of Herrmann’s score for Psycho I can’t help thinking about the family relationships in the most literal sense.  Would the grandparents be proud of the young rebel?  And how does the upstart view the generation that came before?  This latter question –really a question about Herrmann himself—is also a question of influence and inter-textuality.  I can’t help wondering whether Herrmann wanted someone to notice family resemblances, because they offer additional ways of decoding the film.

I suppose I should apologize for this introduction which promises more than I can deliver.  I am not really proposing to unpack all of Herrmann’s influences: which would be a huge job.  But I did think it might be fun to point out some prominent influences in one small part of Psycho.

First, let’s listen to the introduction to the film, as a reminder of what Herrmann’s music sounds like.  The film is  scored entirely for string orchestra, but in this brief sample you can hear the quality of the writing in a transcription for string quartet.

This corresponds to the music in the titles.

Herrmann’s next cue is very different.  Where the “prologue” is a fast composition full of repeated figures, the following passage is much slower, and more lyrical.

While there is less urgency, I’m hesitant about how to describe this passage.  Instead, perhaps I should play the music that it always suggests to me, music so similar –to parts of Herrmann’s score—that I can’t help but think that the American film composer was consciously emulating this influence, one of two.

Notice that this composition–much longer than the passage from Psycho— is the first of Debussy’s Nocturnes titled Nuages or “clouds,” or in other words a skyscape.  Pay attention especially to the passage roughly 60 seconds into the piece, where the descending parrallel chords are almost identical to what Herrmann employs, except that the film’s music has a few extra accidentals, further clouding its harmonies.  Whereas Debussy’s sky feels like an organic portrayal of natural phenomena undulating in the wind, Herrmann is showing us the urban sky, which is neither natural nor organic.  If you go back and listen again to Herrmann’s skyscape, the contrast is quite pronounced.

In comparison, you might think the difference is so large that I’m deluded to even mention Debussy, whose clouds float without any of the troubled human energies one feels in Herrmann’s score, as if emanating from those buildings in Psycho before we see our first human being.

Let’s hear the other influence, representing not just the subtext for Herrmann, but a composer who influenced Debussy himself, namely Richard Wagner.  In the orchestral opening of the last act of Tristan und Isolde we encounter another skyscape, setting the tone for the act, in its evocation of loneliness and frustrated sexual desire. Tristan waits for death, longing for one last encounter with his beloved Isolde.  The lookout stares at the empty sea, hoping for the appearance of a sail on the horizon.

Will Isolde come back?  A shepherd looks out, and utters a line that TS Eliot quotes in The Waste Land, namely “öd und leer das meer” (barren and empty the sea), as if to sum up the human condition.

Herrmann finds something that is suggestive of the two compositions, as though Tristan’s desperation had transformed Debussy’s organic sky into one of permanent sexual frustration and futility.

Whatever their relationships, it’s remarkable how one composition transforms the experience of the other.  Remembering the two senses of “descent” –both lineage and a physical trip downwards– I believe the only relevant descent in Psycho is that of the car going into the water.  With every decade, I believe the estimation of Herrmann and his film rises ever higher.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Essays, Opera | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

10 Questions for Britta Hansen

Posted on January 7, 2012 by barczablog

Britta Hansen is the Leader of the Technocratic Party of Canada.  The role of the “technocrat” has been getting a fair amount of attention lately, particularly in Europe during its debt crisis.  Is a government run by technocrats –the most technically skilled and knowledgeable among us–on technocratic (fact-based) principles the answer?  That’s what Hansen and the TPC believe.

I ask Hansen ten questions: five about herself, and five about her work.

1) Which of your parents do you resemble (what’s your nationality / ethnic background)?   

Britta Hansen

Britta Hansen, Leader of the Technocratic Party of Canada

In terms of interests and activities I most resemble my father. We are both very interested in science and politics, and myself being the leader of a political party and a student of science, I have certainly endeavoured in both. My father is Danish and my mother is Canadian.

2) What is the best thing / worst thing about what you do?

The best thing: I love speaking to people. No matter where I am, somehow politics comes up and I get the opportunity to converse with them with respect to current affairs, technocracy, and how politics affects their everyday lives. I think it’s of paramount importance to get everyone’s perspective on the same issues.

The worst thing: dealing with apathy from my peers. Many people don’t care to involve themselves, for whatever reasons, and it takes a lot of work and persistence in order to gain and retain their interest.

3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?

Dr Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

Mr. Bungle and Primus are two of my biggest musical influences, and I don’t think I could ever get sick of them. On the radio I almost only listen to CBC Radio 2.

For films I adore Dr. Strangelove and the works of David Lynch. I’ve recently been watching alot of Robot Chicken.

4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

Sticking to just one project at a time! I can’t help but wear myself thin with too much on the go; hard work is an addiction.

5) When you’re just relaxing (and not working) what is your favourite  thing to do?

Play video games.

logo5 more questions concerning leadership of the Technocratic Party of Canada

1)How does leading a political party challenge you?

The most challenging aspect so far is having an answer to every single question on the spot. People will ask me questions out of the blue that I may feel have absolutely no relevance or that I really don’t want to answer, but when  I’m prompted, I only have a few seconds to gain their confidence, so I must think on my feet and be prepared.

2) What do you love about being leader of the Technocratic Party of Canada?

Learning. I am constantly learning about the history, current affairs, and structure of the country, as well as any details I should make myself familiar with on specific issues. For instance, in order to properly defend our stance on alternative energy, I studied a multitude of energy sources and implementations and compared their efficiency, safety, ease of use etc.

3) Do you have a favourite plank in your party’s platform or some goal you dream of fulfilling if you come to power?

Absolutely! I would love to reduce the validity of patents on drugs from 20 years to 5 years. Other countries that have done this (namely Brazil and India) are able to distribute medicine for one tenth of the price. This would save our healthcare system millions of dollars, save families hundreds of dollars, help lift people out of poverty, and would have virtually no effect on our economy.

4) How do you relate to contemporary politics as a modern citizen of the world?

From my perspective, the biggest change in contemporary politics is the introduction of social media. Everyone’s on Twitter and Facebook, so if people are to keep up with politics we need politicians to be organizing via social media outlets. I’ve been slowly learning the ropes of social media, but it’s hard to wear your heart on your sleeve in 140 characters or less!

Wikileaks and other whistle blowing outlets have also become highly influential as of late, which is teaching everyone we have to be open and up front about politics, not sneaky and subversive. There is increasing demand for accountability in politics thanks to Wikileaks, and I endeavour to be accountable and transparent in my politics with the Technocratic Party of Canada.

5) Is there a political figure you especially admire?

Lester Pearson

Lester B Pearson; click the picture to see Pearson's bio on the Nobel Prize website

Lester B Pearson. He showed us that you don’t need a majority government to get things done, although modern politicians are telling us elsewise. With just a minority his government was responsible for universal health care, the flag, Canada Pension and student loans. Not to mention that he won a Nobel Peace Prize.

~~~~~

Britta Hansen and the Technocratic Party of Canada will continue their efforts to win the hearts & minds of Canadians.

Posted in Interviews | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments