Move(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied

Posted on March 1, 2012 by barczablog

There are so many things going on in Move(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied that it helps to be a good multi-tasker.  Its first public preview Tuesday February 28th gave us much more than a play. This student production at York University in Toronto claims to be “the world’s first interactive play,” combining live performance that we see before us in the flesh, while also glimpsing the same actors captured on camera through one of the social media channels (either on one of the huge screens within the theatre space or on your own personal device).  And some occasionally contributed their own content to one of the interactive pathways such as ustream, twitter or facebook.

And that one paragraph isn’t even enough for a descriptive preamble. Adapted from Weiss’s play Marat/Sade (the full title is immense) by student Dan Pelletier, the interactive Marat/Sade Occupied is modernized on two broad fronts:

  • Pelletier re-frames Weiss’ play around the Occupy Wall Street scenario, complete with tents, cops, and media coverage
  • The interactive element of social media already mentioned

With such a rich smorgasbord everyone’s show will be substantially different.  Some people were clearly immersed in their virtual world, heads down, while others (me for instance) concentrated more on the live experience.  And the nature of the online response –including messages from remote viewers– changed the nature of our experience in the theatre.  Even so, the big screens at either end often gave an instant replay two to three seconds after the fact of anything happening live on the stage.  One didn’t know where to look, in this flood of fascinating images, sounds, songs, dancing figures, and yes, echoes of what we’ve seen so recently in the news.

Aleksandar Lukac

Aleksandar Lukac

Instructor and director Aleksandar Lukac must be proud.  As a teacher of political theatre, what better way to show the students than to turn the stage into a kind of cultural laboratory?

If this is the future of live theatre –not just allowing you to keep your phone on, but allowing you to photograph the show and submit comments or pictures throughout—there’s likely to be a learning curve.  For instance I should have realized that a photo of Charlotte Corday as she walked by in front of me would be blurry (fool that I am).  With a rowdier crowd the line between performers and audience might have become blurred, whereas this friendly first-night group was very polite, indulging the performers. It’s too early to have any real sense of how this kind of theatre works, except to observe how exciting and new it all felt.  And while the behaviours of the audience on this occasion were very much up for grabs –because there are no real rules, at least not yet—conventions develop with usage.

Some of the choices left me wondering why.  The Marquis de Sade is a woman, Marat is a strong healthy man, played by Pelletier himself.  Was that because Pelletier himself wanted to utter Marat’s lines himself?  It was certainly Brechtian to make Marat so strong, even as he complains of his wasting disease.  I found myself playing devil’s advocate, wondering how the play might read –modernized or not—with different approaches to the genders of the two leads:

  • Staying with the usual pair of men in the leads invites comparison with every other production, and so I could see why one might want to change this up
  • A pair of females? which would be what one might expect in a theatre school setting, normally a place where the talented women outnumber the talented males two or three to one.  By changing both genders one at least partially takes gender out of the equation
  • A female Marat with a male de Sade?  To me this might have been optimum, and perplexing, but of course not this time…

There’s so much in this adaptation –both the occupy component and the social media circus—that I think one could present it several times before one exhausted the possibilities.  For me the most interesting aspect of the adaptation by far was the ballad opera re-settings of several popular tunes, sung by members of the cast.  In particular, a group of four females working as a kind of chorus were the best thing in the show.  Maybe it’s just me, but I find shouted slogans –especially those slogans that we’ve heard over and over again—less persuasive than an ironic twist of a familiar song.  That the songs were sung well made it that much better.  As Lukac mentioned in his recent interview, “Lea Pehar has orchestrated all the original and new tunes with the help of singers Julia Heximer, Katarina Kovacevic, Catherine Garisto and Christina Helvadjian. ”  In all versions of Marat/Sade one usually sees a struggle between the rational discourse of the political dialogue vs the irrational elements of the madhouse and the music; but in this adaptation there is such an urgency to the struggle (possibly because it’s contemporary, possibly because it’s so densely layered & complex) that I found solace  in the musical interludes, those four women offering the one solid bit of sanity & order we can cling to as everything else goes to hell.

On this occasion –in a preview largely among family and friends—I felt Marat/Sade Occupied had not yet found its real audience.  The music was powerful, yet the audience was sitting impassively, rather than clapping along.  Partly that may be due to the power of the singing, which was so good that it silenced a crowd who could just as easily have been clapping in time.  Perhaps that’s part of the learning curve, getting comfortable, although I suspect that with the right audience, a very different dynamic will likely emerge, where the audience unites with the performance and joins the actors in occupying the space.

Move(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied continues at Theatre Glendon, every night at 7:00 pm until March 3rd or online via the following social media channels:

Ustream: http://199.66.238.56/user/occupytg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyTheatreGlendon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyTG
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/OccupyTG

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

COC Parsifal

Posted on February 25, 2012 by barczablog

Richard Wagner figures prominently in the Canadian Opera Company’s plans.  Two Wagner operas, not one were announced for the future.

You may have missed any mention of the second opera.  The announcement of the 2012-2013 season (a year of world-wide commemoration of the centennial of Wagner’s birth) mentions that the COC will be staging Tristan und Isolde. 

But there’s another COC Wagner opera, a co-production.

Francois Girard

Film-maker and opera director Francois Girard (click picture for an interesting interview)

This week, the Metropolitan Opera announced that among their new productions, François Girard will direct Wagner’s Parsifal.  Their online brochure includes a brief interview with Girard and a glimpse of the design.

But the production will see the light of day long before next season.  In fact in less than two weeks, on March 6th  Opéra de Lyon will give the premiere.  Their website includes the following magic words:

En coproduction avec le Metropolitan Opera de New York et la Canadian Opera Company.

In other words the COC will be the third of the three partners to present the work.  I’m excited by this for a number of reasons:

  • The COC has never co-produced with the Metropolitan Opera before.
  • Girard is the third high-profile Canadian director to make a recent Met debut (last season’s was Des McAnuff, while Robert Lepage takes on his sixth opera next season, since his debut in November 2008, an extraordinary output by any standard)
  • Girard will renew his collaboration with Michael Levine, who designed Girard’s COC Siegfried and Oedipus Rex/Symphony of Psalms in the 1990s.

image from Opera de Lyon’s website for Girard’s production of Parsifal (linked to their website)

No, we don’t know what season it’s being presented.  We don’t know who will play any of the parts.  But I’m still thrilled.

As I remember the elegant simplicity of Girard’s ideas for Siegfried (as you can glimpse in the photo, in this NY Times review), his powerful Stravinsky double-bill from the 1990s, again informed by wonderful simplicity, I  get very excited about the upcoming Parsifal.  With luck, the Met will make Parsifal one of their high-definition offerings, and we’ll get a peek at Levine’s set.  Even if the COC are the third to get the production, we’re in good company.

Not too shabby, I’d say.

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

10 Questions for Aleksandar Lukac

Posted on February 23, 2012 by barczablog

Former Artistic Director of the National Theater, Belgrade, Aleksandar Lukac has directed close to a hundred professional productions internationally including Yugoslavia, Holland, Canada and Serbia.  Lukac has also been an Artistic Director of Theatre Zoran Radmilovich and the independent political theatre, Plexus Boris Pilnjak, which was a catalyst of political controversy in Belgrade in the years prior to the civil war. He has been awarded Best Director at The Festival of Serbian Theatres a record six times. Notable Canadian productions include ARC’s North American premiere of Family Stories-Belgrade, Hong Kong Idea Festival bound Unicorn Horns, Company of Sirens’ Black Magic and a series of productions at Talk Is Free Theatre including Bulgakov’s Moliere (Kiev Festival) and

Moliere TIFT LUKAC

Milosh Rodic (left), David Dodsley and Dusan Dukic in Talk is Free Theatre Inc.’s dramatization of Molière, adapted and directed by Aleksandar Lukac. Photo by Susan Benoit

Ivan vs. Ivan which has recently returned toured Europe including Moscow, London and several cities in Serbia. Lukac is in a process of completing his PhD in political theater, while he holds two Master degrees in Drama and Directing from U of T and York University respectively. He currently teaches at York University.  He has recently also revisited Serbia where the productions of Newcomers, Victor Or the Children In Power, Master and Margarita and the most recent, Brecht’s Drums In the Night, keep garnering media attention, festival invitations, and awards for production, acting and design. At Glendon College he has taught Brecht’s Epic Theater for a number of years.

Next week, Lukac will be opening a new adaptation of Weiss’ Marat/Sade, called Move.(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied, as part of the political theatre course at Glendon College incorporating not only the current politics of Occupy Wall Street, but social media whereby the audience’s comments and Twitter dialogue with the actors will be displayed throughout performances (for urls see below). 

Aleksandar Lukac

Aleksandar Lukac

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

I think I resemble both of them to a certain degree. The best way to describe my background is Bosnian Serb. Born in Sarajevo to a Serbian/Russian combo. Don’t ask.

2) What is the BEST thing / worst thing about being a director?

The best thing about being a director is to feel that you hold a certain control over the overall creative process. That is also the worst thing, as you have the most responsibility for the result. Of course, for me the first outweighs the second, every time.

In terms of the differences of being a director here and in Europe I think I never really became a director here. I was always a European director “on loan” here. Very long loan. Directors in Europe have or take far more liberty with the text and related materials then is customary here and that really used to put me in weird situations. I don’t think I can successfully change to fit a more conservative approach to theatre, so I stopped trying. I am glad that I have the opportunities that I have to “flex” my European directing muscle when I can (in independent productions, student shows, as well as in Talk Is Free Theatre) but I have really refocused on working back in Europe/Serbia.  The theatre there is still extremely vital and I find that I don’t have to muzzle my process in as many ways. It has also brought me several exciting shows in the past few years – including Drums in the Night, and Master and Margarita – both scripts that would be impossible to direct here for many reasons including the economic ones. Large casts, huge sets – relatively obscure or non-commercial  plays. Long live state sponsored theatre! While it lasts!!! We should really try that model here – it actually works – providing you agree that art, and theatre specifically, is of any importance for the society.

3) who do you like to watch or read?

I love watching Polanski, Kubrick and Fassbinder. And Will Farrell. I know. Don’t judge – I am being brutally honest.

As for playwrights it is so hard to keep up because there are many coming from different countries, finding very specific voices – changing and reshaping everything theatre. It is great to have access to these materials and even entertain possibilities of  production.

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

To play music and sing. Write an opera.

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

Really? ‘Tis love one must give. And take. But working in theatre is that too.

Five more concerning Move.(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied.

1) How does adapting & directing Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade challenge you?

I answer this question in more detail later. A student of mine has written the adaptation. The crucial moment was when we made the decision to live-stream the production and invite live comments via Twitter, Facebook and Ustream. This decision gave the basis for the adaptation because we incorporate a lot of actual news items and documentary footage into the show. The strategy is carpet bombing of sound and information bites. We are trying to leave as much stuff unfiltered because we don’t even trust our own filters.

2)    what do you love about Marat/Sade and this type of theatre?

Well this is a prime example of a highly sophisticated intellectual theatre that also has great entertainment potential. It juxtaposes several concepts of revolution in a brilliant interplay of historical and theatrical contexts. I would almost say that it is too complicated for a contemporary audience’s expectation because it requires some previous knowledge for full enjoyment. However, it also works on multiple levels so you are sure that there will be something for everyone.

The concept of involving the audience across the world via live/stream hinges on the enormous interest and impact the Occupy movement has created. I am hoping that the Twitter, Facebook and Ustream lines will be very busy with comments on the movement itself as well as our take on it. It is really  a variation on the many themes that Weiss has already explored in the original text, juxtaposed with the very different and original revolutionary sensibility of Occupy. So, the production of Marat/Sade Occupied really is not concerned with a specific message.  It wants to provoke an international mash/up of so many different  influences, opinions, representations and misrepresentations (both malicious and not), all triggered by the terrible economic and political situation the world is in.

I think we are facing crunch time in terms of the freedoms of expression and maybe even more importantly, the dispersion of expression, so one should enjoy the fact that we can reach all of the world from a college stage and ask some very important questions. And, possibly, get some answers.

I have two tech wizard students, Andrew Gould behind the live-stream and videos, and Allie Gardiner handling the Twitter, Facebook and Ustream messages, making sure that if there are answers we get to hear them, read them, and share them with the world.

3)    Do you have a favourite song or moment in the play?

This is actually a very musical play. We are using some of the original score and a number of contemporary songs with lyrics changed to fit the play. Lea Pehar has orchestrated all the original and new tunes with the help of singers Julia Heximer, Katarina Kovacevic, Catherine Garisto and Christina Helvadjian.  At this point my favourite has to be “Because I Got High” – with the lyrics changed to “I was going to Occupy, but I got high, I got high, I got high…”

4) how do you relate to Marat/Sade Occupied  as a modern man?

Well, I found that the key to the “modern man” bit is to listen to the younger generations. In fact the original play was adapted (I might say very well) by Dan Pelletier who is a student in the course. The problem with political plays is that if you had been doing them a long time (as I have, albeit in different countries) you risk remaining in a frame that you have built yourself. The times are really changing  and the “enemy” has long learned how to incorporate or simply spin all the traditional tools of political theatre. (I call this the “inoculation” of the opposition. The theatre does what it can to stir up the thought process – sometimes even shocks the other side but the absorption of that shock allows the opponent to be stronger the next time) So you have to be always ahead of the game and this show is an attempt to do exactly that. The issues of the original Marat-Sade may not be the issues of our Canadian audience – although they may be much more adequate in some other parts of the world. But the issues of Occupy hit much closer to home (even though there is a firm school of thought out there which argues that this is a very American event with not much to do with us here). Of course I disagree and during the rehearsal process I think I made the discovery that my students share some or a number of concerns raised by the movement. If we manage to engage our audiences both in the theatre and online in a live discussion about all of these issues – I guess I can consider myself a “modern man”. Please note that the actors in the play will see all the comments as they are streamed into the show and will be able to answer them – hopefully providing for a very live, interactive dynamic. So here are our links – I hope your readership can join us at:
Ustream: http://199.66.238.56/user/occupytg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/OccupyTheatreGlendon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyTG
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/OccupyTG

5) Is there anyone out there whose approach to Marat/Sade you particularly admire, or who has influenced you?

I love Peter Brook’s version. It is so beautifully theatrical and such a serious analysis of all of the aspects of the play. You rarely today see a play that carries such weight in it.

Move.(me)ant. The Marat/Sade Occupied adapted by Daniel Pelletier from
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, by Peter Weiss
Directed by Aleksandar Lukac
February 28 – March 3.
2275 Bayview Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3M6
Telephone: 416-487-6722
Theatre Box Office: 416-487-6822
www.glendon.yorku.ca/theatre

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Beckett: Feck It!

Posted on February 23, 2012 by barczablog
Beckett

Illustration of Samuel Beckett by Marilyn Koop

I just saw Queen of Puddings Music Theatre’s production, in association with Canadian Stage, of Beckett: Feck It!  You hear a title like that and you may well wonder what they were thinking, what they were trying to say.

I thought the title was an attempt to humanize a playwright who is if nothing else, challenging.  Beckett’s not for everyone, sometimes difficult to decode.  As a fan of Queen of Puddings (QoP) my tummy lurched a bit when I heard about this project; so perhaps the title is an attempt to assuage our fears.  At first glance B:FI! appears to be a pragmatic hybrid, parts grafted together for no clear reason.  And when you cook something in a pot and don’t know what to call your concoction, you may well say “feck it” either in jest or frustration.

Last year QoP gave us Svadba, a song cycle trying to leverage something operatic out of its lovely world.  The brilliant pragmatic move was to commission an a capella song cycle.  This not only eliminated a colossal expense (the orchestra & the complexities of rehearsal time), but probably shortened the development cycle for the work, which had already seen the light of day in other versions.

This time?  QoP gave us four short Beckett plays sandwiched around a song-cycle in German by Andrew Hamilton plus two short trumpet interludes.  I was reminded of the Canadian Opera Company‘s production of The Nightingale and Other Tales, an evening cobbled out of several short works by Igor Stravinsky, including instrumental solos (for clarinet in the case of the COC work) & songs.  As with the COC evening, these four plays are rarely staged because they can’t fill an evening.

I loved the four Beckett plays, especially Play, which was a bit of a tour de force (did the cast do their own lighting cues?  How else could they synchronize: which is to say beautifully).  I wonder if I would have liked them so much without the additions made by QoP.

Shannon Mercer

Soprano Shannon Mercer

The songs take it to another level, as if they were the heart-beat or the subconscious underlying the words in the four plays; Hamilton’s logic matches that of Beckett.  The emotions in these plays are often arbitrarily split between two personas as if the two were aspects of the same person, divided on the stage.  The manic back-and-forth we get in the plays happens in these songs as well, only this time, crazily veering back and forth inside the same performance from one person, namely Shannon Mercer.  Her singing was wonderfully tuneful and fastidiously on pitch throughout even as she veered between precision and wildness, containment and explosiveness.  Whenever she appeared I felt the work probe deeper than it had during the plays.

As I listened  I thought of older practices in music theatre, echoed by QoP.  Number opera is nothing if not pragmatic, a segmented discourse allowing one to rehearse different parts separately, and, at least in the old days, to substitute when you didn’t like what was offered.  And substitute they did, unfazed by the language barrier.

The relationship between the music and the plays is problematic, to be sure.  This is a sandwich, but I wondered which is the bread and which is the meat?  For pure intelligibility the plays were easier to digest, like an operatic recitative, whereas the songs were like arias, giving us a more reflective discourse.  I am thankful that Toronto audiences have an appetite for ambiguities & challenges, voraciously devouring whatever is set before them.

QoP’s Beckett: Feck It!  continues until February 25th at Berkeley St Theatre.

Posted in Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Topic of cancer

Posted on February 20, 2012 by barczablog

Spoiler alert: unavoidably I have to talk about the way some films end because that’s central to this discussion.  If you don’t want me to reveal how 50/50 ends please stop reading…Anyone still there?

Having seen Dani Girl, a provocative musical being presented in Toronto about a child with cancer, I decided to watch 50 / 50, a film about a young man with cancer.  Although I’d meant to see 50/50 somehow I missed it.  I think I may have been afraid of it, and so conveniently let it come and go.  I knew I’d eventually catch up to it on the small screen, where I watched it last night.

Linda & Michael Hutcheon

Linda & Michael Hutcheon

Linda and Michael Hutcheon have written extensively concerning the way disease and death are represented in opera. Their book Opera: Desire, Disease, Death (1996) looks at several topics; one section compares the way tuberculosis is portrayed in Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La bohème, suggesting that we can learn something about a culture from the changing ways a disease is represented in art.  I am mindful of their readings of different versions of TB as I ponder Dani Girl, 50/50, and think of other films that include cancer.  I don’t propose to offer comparable analyses in this small space, but I am simply remembering that Hollywood doesn’t undertake big subjects lightly.  If we notice any trends they are probably meaningful, and possible signals of important cultural shifts.

There have been films about cancer for a long time; perhaps there are several genres we can identify.

Dark Victory (1934) is an example of the malignant storyline, where a tragic outcome is more or less a foregone conclusion reflecting the usual perception that cancer is incurable.  Wit (2001) is another example of the same powerful plotline.

There are gentler ways to tell these tales.  My Life (1993) and Life as a House (2001) frame that same dark journey in terms of the impact on family and the romantic attempt to find meaning in the struggle.  These are uplifting films that make one feel better about the outcome even if cancer is still presented as invincible.

Cancer can figure prominently in the background of a film.  Terms of Endearment(1983) resembles Wit and Dark Victory in some respects, yet is largely framed by a relationship between the mother and her sick daughter, and not solely concerned with the daughter’s death. In both Stepmom (1998)  and Erin Brockovitch (2000) cancer is also key element in the struggle of the protagonist; but in all of these films, the key message is that in spite of cancer & death, “life goes on”.

I think 50 /50 is a signal of something new.  I will do everything I can to avoid being a spoiler (giving away the ending).  In 50/50 I believe we get a very realistic portrayal.  Cancer doesn’t suddenly throw a monkey wrench into an otherwise successful life, as it seems to do in Dark Victory, Terms of Endearment and Wit.   The main character in 50/50 is Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young man who’s in an unhappy relationship with an artist who’s taking advantage of him, and has a terrible relationship with his mother Diane (Angelica Huston, in the least glamorous role I’ve ever seen her undertake).  Diane is watching her husband fade away due to Alzheimers, and so hangs on to Adam a bit harder than she might otherwise, a mom whose offers of help are almost completely unwelcome.

The catalyst for much of the dialogue in the film is Adam’s friend Kyle (Seth Rogen), offering his usual assortment of embarrassing adolescent behaviours.  Kyle is more than a confidant for Adam, as he seems to function as the voice in his ear as if he were a kind of goofy macho superego, reminding Adam of what a normal male does or does not do.  Instead of having to see Adam struggle with manhood issues, Kyle is a wonderful plot contrivance to externalize the more extreme responses that Adam –passive and ill—is largely unable to verbalize.  Similarly we watch Adam’s awkward scenes with his therapist Katherine (Anna Kendrick), opportunities for us to find out what he’s feeling as he copes with the different stages of his illness and confronts the possibilities of death.

Written by Will Reiser, directed by Jonathan Levine, 50/50 gives us a version of cancer that’s not nearly so daunting even if death is still front and centre in this film.  The title refers to the odds Adam faces with his particular kind of cancer.  Rogen & Gordon-Levitt are an intriguing team together.  I am not sure I believe that these two would really be friends, yet I’ve seen odder things in real life.

One film can’t really be understood as a trend, but a dose of 50/50 after seeing Dani Girl suggests that cancer is no longer quite the terrifying bogeyman, its invincibility now open to question.

I’m looking forward to seeing both the film and the musical again.

Posted in Books & Literature, Cinema, video & DVDs, Dance, theatre & musicals, Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tryst with Liszt

Posted on February 20, 2012 by barczablog

Neapolitan Connection presented “A Romantic Music Tryst with Liszt,” as a much a playful exploration as a concert, presented in the intimate Studio Theatre at the Toronto Centre for the Arts.

Danhauser's "Liszt at the Piano"

Danhauser's "Liszt at the Piano".

The piano was not set up for a recital, but hidden behind a curtain, which opened upon a tableau vivant, a living reconstruction of Josef Danhauser’s painting Liszt at the Piano.  The spirit of this painting—an imaginary meeting of different artists working across several art-forms—was also channelled by the performers in the concert.

We began with excerpts from the first year (“Suisse”) of Années de Pelerinage (“Years of Pilgrimage”), a kind of musical travelogue inspired by Liszt’s youthful travels and his literary & spiritual influences.  We saw Angela Park sit down to the piano, apparently in the company of Liszt’s contemporaries (George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and more, in period costumes, as if in a salon to hear Liszt playing) as well as the two key earlier influences on the wall (Beethoven and Byron).

Pianist Angela Park

Pianist Angela Park (photo by Helen Tansey Photography)

Park was particularly persuasive with “Au bord d’une source” and “Vallée d’Obermann,” confidently articulating every note.

After having heard from the expected side of Liszt –namely compositions for piano virtuoso—we went in a new direction with Park accompanying cellistRachel Mercer.  Although Liszt is known for piano transcriptions –paraphrases of opera excerpts, orchestral masterpieces, and more—that was flipped on its head, as Mercer played transcriptions of Liszt pieces (returning the favour he had offered to so many composers), by turning piano music into cello music.

Mercer gave us a very lyrical version of “La Lugubre Gondola”, a piece known for its ambiguous tonalities and subtle moods, followed by a soulful reading of Liszt’s most famous tune of all, namely his “Liebestraum #3”.

The last section of the concert featured another change of direction, as soprano Eve Rachel McLeod sang Victor Hugo Lieder, again accompanied by Park.  While McLeod has a voice of genuinely operatic power, she kept it gentle, always soaring gently to high notes while respecting the intimacy of the venue.  And she was fortunate to have a pianist—Park—who was capable of handling the formidable challenges of these song accompaniments.

Neapolitan Connection are to be congratulated, both as organizers of such an original presentation, and for bringing talented young performers before Toronto audiences.  Their next project is “French Impressions: Soirées with Debussy, Ravel & Poulenc”.

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Dani Girl

Posted on February 19, 2012 by barczablog

Dani Girl is an original musical from the young team of Michael Kooman (music) and Christopher Dimond (book & lyrics), now at the beginning of a Toronto run co-produced by Talk is Free Theatre and Show One Productions.

Kooman and Dimond

Michael Kooman (music) and Chris Dimond (book & lyrics)

Watching this show, I couldn’t help musing on the form of “the musical” and wondering about all the possible places that ambitious new composers and writers could take the medium.  Dani Girl is a curious combination, simultaneously ambitious and conservative.  Its music is very listenable, without anything radical or strange, while sounding like a lot of the musicals I’ve heard.

flyer

Dani Girl poster

Even so, I believe Dani Girl is a very challenging creation, taking the musical places it has never gone before.  And so while the unfolding story challenges the audience its score is wonderfully understated.  Kooman shows the mastery of an old pro even though he’s very young, never letting his ego get in the way of Dani Girl, but always providing support, diversion, or whatever is needed at that precise moment and nothing more.  If its musical score were also full of innovations (and it does have its share of passages in quintuple time) I believe it would be too much for an audience to handle.

How is it challenging? Nine year old Dani has lost her hair because she’s very sick and is possibly dying.  We get to know her, her mother, a hospital room-mate, and assorted creatures of her wonderfully vivid imagination as she goes on a quest for the meaning of life: and her hair.  It has to be a musical of course.

I suspect that Broadway has been hesitant, considering the sensitive subject matter, but I think Dani Girl will work at the box office once somebody gives it a chance there.  In the meantime—while we wait for someone to produce the show in NYC—cities like Toronto get productions of Dani Girl, wondering about its eventual success.

I found myself musing about the casting choices.  Of the four parts two are adult and two are children, although the “children” (who are perhaps nine years old) are played by young adults in this production.  The music is probably too difficult for a child of that age, so of course we need young adults.  But so much of this play is fantasy, the imaginative explorations inside Dani’s head, that we’re already in such an artificial world that we wouldn’t require such verisimilitude.  By having cute young adults portraying children we have another layer of artifice whereby we can feel a little safer with this material, than if we were actually watching sick children onstage.

But we are indeed swallowed up in Dani’s world.  Gabi Epstein (Dani) deserves  credit for effortlessly pulling us into the world of this wonderfully articulate child that we care about from the beginning.  Hers is a no-gimmick performance to match Kooman’s understated score, cutting to the chase.

Director Richard Ouzounian helps Epstein and company reconcile the high-energy extroversion you usually find in a musical, and the sensitive internal feelings that are at the heart of Dani Girl.  Ouzounian honours the energy in the text, never allowing the piece to sink under the weight of its subject matter, while giving it a fair hearing.

One reason Dani Girl will likely be a huge success, (at least once people get to know it) is because it manages to be so powerful while employing a tiny cast, namely the Mother, Marty (sharing Dani’s hospital room), and Rafe, a third, more elusive figure, who plays many different males in Dani’s life.

Rafe is the real star turn in the piece, as varied as an impressionist or a good sketch comedian, including moments when he is both God and Evil Incarnate.  Jeff Madden selflessly puts Rafe completely at the disposal of Ouzounian and Epstein, ready whenever he was required to suddenly inject life or humour or nastiness into the play, and then vanish into the woodwork.  Rafe is the dark underside of Dani’s imagination, and a madcap contrast to the other three figures onstage, who signify people in Dani’s life.

Amanda LeBlanc as the Mother brings a seriousness that balances the prevailing tone of playfulness in the production, and some of the nicest singing in the show.  Jonathan Logan joins Dani in her adventures as Marty, another sick child who quickly becomes an important part of Dani’s journey.

This is a small scale musical, employing a keyboardist (music director Wayne Gwillim) and percussionist (Jamie Drake) to populate the tiny space of the Passe Muraille Backspace with the many images of Dani’s fertile imagination.  While the energy is high, the predominant texture is clean & clear, never obscuring the words or the emotions, which, when I consider the complexities of the subjects that Dani Girl undertakes, is an astonishing achievement.

I think anyone venturing into the world of Dani Girl may surprise themselves at how they respond to this remarkable piece of music theatre.  I am expecting that once word gets around, the show will be held over due to high demand.  I hope so, because I want to see it again.

Dani Girl 416-504-7529  www.artsboxoffice.ca

Here’s a sample–one of the songs that’s already become well known–from youtube.  While the credit doesn’t mention it, I believe that’s none other than Kooman (pianist) & Dimond (page-turner) as part of the bargain!

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Enigmatic Liszt

Posted on February 18, 2012 by barczablog
Franz Liszt

A portrait of Franz Liszt

There’s more to Franz Liszt than most people realize.  If you ask a musicologist they’ll usually rattle off a series of truisms:

  • one of the first great virtuosi for the piano, possibly the greatest pianist in history
  • Wagner’s father-in-law
  • Long-lived
  • Invented the piano recital and the orchestral tone-poem

You wouldn’t normally think of someone famous as a puzzle.  But when there are so many chunks of information, both anecdotal and factual, the image can get quite fuzzy, something like being unable to see the forest for the trees.

I think the historical image of Liszt is understandable.  Scholars hear descriptive epithets that become ingrained, at least until someone comes along to challenge and possibly overturn the earlier myth.  Consider for example

  • Debussy the “impressionist” (completely wrong…although come to think of it, the word “impressionist” is itself often mis-used by those who don’t really know what it means)
  • Schumann as a bad orchestrator (rather hard to test if you’re listening to altered versions by other composers, played on modern instruments)

I only brought those up to suggest that those stereotypes are destructive and counter-productive.  No composer should be reduced to a list of bullets such as the ones I listed above.  Composers should not be compared and rated like the young talent on American Idol.  But unfortunately music education has often been influenced by a competitive model of skill and excellence, given that this was often the paradigm for training performers. 

I am particularly curious about new combinations and approaches to a composer, because they’re opportunities to hear a familiar composer with fresh ears.  I wrote about John Dowland recently, excited by a new CD of his music exploring his alleged Irish connection via a very Celtic approach.  I suggested –not entirely as a rhetorical position—that every performance or creative project is in some sense an experiment, a hypothesis put to the audience, even if the audience prefer the same old same old.

I am intrigued by an upcoming concert Sunday February 19th titled “A Romantic Music Tryst With Liszt,” hoping it will shed light on a different side of a composer who’s been stereotyped in the ways I outlined above.  Instead of the usual pianistic warhorses, we’ll get something a bit different, including songs and chamber works.

As I seek a new perspective, here are a few alternative notions about Liszt:

  • Speaking as a Hungarian, it always feels weird to me to call him “Franz Liszt” (using a German first name).  I prefer “Liszt”, if not “Liszt Ferenc” (using the Hungarian custom of reversing surname & given name).
  • Liszt was one of the first great philanthropist artists.  Long before “Band Aid” in the 80s, or George Harrison’s concerts for Bangla Desh (aka “Concert for Bangladesh”), Liszt offered his services to raise funds for flood victims in eastern Europe, or to help raise money for assorted good causes.
  • Liszt was a mentor to other artists.  While Liszt’s help to Wagner is well-documented, that’s just one case.  Liszt championed such works as Beethoven’s symphonies as well as Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique through his transcriptions that the pianist played all over Europe, helping in their rediscovery/popularization.
  • Liszt was a great piano teacher, wealthy from his concerts and therefore able to choose projects out of interest rather than concern for financial gain.
  • Liszt’s experiments in tonality have not been given a proper hearing, compositions anticipating the works of Debussy and even Schoenberg.

I am looking forward to discovering more about this intriguing man and his music.  A Romantic Music Tryst With Liszt is on Sunday at 3:00 pm, at the Toronto Centre for the Arts presented by Neapolitan Connection.

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Unexpected Tosca

Posted on February 17, 2012 by barczablog

Just when you think you know how a story will turn out –because it’s such a well-known opera—they throw you a curve.  There’s no drama quite like experiencing a work you think you know, where they’ve changed the usual ending.

Before the Canadian Opera Company performance of Tosca tonight the dreaded announcement came: that Adrienne Pieczonka was unwell.  But this wasn’t the usual kind of announcement, of vocal indisposition and the need to replace the star.  No, Pieczonka would sing, but she had injured her knee, and so the announcement begged our indulgence because she would not be able to give us the usual staging.

Hm… okay.  I know I wasn’t the only one wondering what this might mean.

To be honest, I watched her come striding in after singing “Mario, Mario, Mario” (and his reply of “son qui”), and wondered if perhaps the announcement was unnecessary.  She seemed fine.

I forgot all about it except for two rather key moments in the opera.

Key moment number ONE was during the aria “vissi d’arte”, sung sitting in an upright position.  Perhaps this was the usual staging but the point is I found myself wondering about the sore knee, and whether this was being done differently.  As for the aria?  Begun very softly, Pieczonka raised her game at this point, giving us a diminuendo at the end of the aria, delicacy, and an unmistakeable sense of drama.  I know I wasn’t the only one paying special attention to her health, and feeling gratitude for her singing.

Key moment TWO? As I look back upon it, this was the obvious place where you’d expect a Tosca with a sore knee to have a problem, namely the end.  Tosca is supposed to jump off a high parapet to her death at the conclusion of the opera.  Normally this means she goes to the edge and jumps down a wee bit, into something padded.  But with a sore knee, could she even do that?  But I wasn’t thinking about this as the last moment of the opera unfolded.

The way they staged it was so clever I didn’t realize at first just what they were doing.  The pursuing police (Spoletta and members of the chorus) were confronted by a locked door, so that as we come to the key phrase where Tosca would jump, they are delayed.  They finally get that door open at the very end, pursue partway, while Tosca goes to the brink of the parapet from which a healthy Tosca would seem to jump.  Pieczonka moved a bit and then froze: a solution of elegant simplicity.  The applause in the house was marked by an audible sound of recognition as we understood, yes, she couldn’t jump, and had still managed to do something wonderful with those final moments.  While I am sorry for Pieczonka’s injury, the little drama of the ending was quite marvellous to witness and a very different experience from what i had expected.

This is my second look at this production, employing a cast that’s a complete contrast to the one I saw before.  If one were to put labels on the casts, I believe these singers –Pieczonka and tenor Carlo Ventre—who were given opening night and more performances than the other cast, would be understood as the “A” cast (Ventre with ten of fourteen performances, Pieczonka with eight of the fourteen), while the other two –Julie Makerov and Brandon Jovanovich—whom I’d seen earlier were the “B” cast.

Let’s keep this positive shall we?

The “A” cast has the two singers who probably command the higher fees and are better known.  Pieczonka can be an amazing actor, and did manage wonderfully in Act II, when she was opposite Scarpia Mark Delavan (who sang all performances).

Ventre sang with power, but unfortunately I saw little chemistry between him and Pieczonka.  I don’t think that can be explained by the knee injury, given how wonderful Pieczonka played her scenes opposite Delavan.

I prefer the experience I had watching the other cast.  The moment that sums it up for me is that passage in Act II, just after Cavaradossi has cursed Tosca for having betrayed him.

When it was Jovanovich hearing the news that in fact Bonaparte had won the battle of Marengo, he struggles to his feet, shaking with something resembling hysterical energy or shock, in the aftermath of torture.  Yes he managed the high note, singing “vittoria” fairly well, although nowhere near as loud nor strong nor nearly as long as Ventre’s high note.

Jovanovich did not climb to his feet merely to prepare his body for the best position to hit a high note.  Oh no.  I was totally lost in Jovanovich’s passion, an explosion of energy.  Scarpia’s thugs struggled to subdue him, as he was for the moment superhuman in his singing and physical strength.  Roberti finally has to inject him from behind as if he were a wild dog.  Makerov’s expressions of despair as his limp body is dragged off were the perfect match for this horrific display, the first time I have ever felt the action and singing express the music perfectly.

Ventre in contrast stands up to sing a high note, then clings to the back of the couch while the unfortunate thugs pretend to be unable to dislodge him from his prime singing location.  He is finally injected and dragged off.    If this was 1950 I believe that would mean Ventre’s approach would be preferable.  But in 2012 we expect a little more.

In fairness it’s a very difficult moment to bring off, musically difficult & a busy moment onstage as well.  Have a look at one version on video, to see just how hard it is to make it work even when sung well.

Mark Delavan was wonderful in both performances I saw, but I believe there was more subtlety opposite Makerov & Jovanovich.  Ventre & Pieczonka, standing and singing splendidly without much real interaction left him with the usual melodramatic options of a typical Scarpia.

Tosca is an incredible opera, marvellous to watch whether given the subtle ensemble treatment (which I prefer) or the star turns we saw tonight.  The COC production continues until February 25th at the Four Seasons Centre.

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Dowland in Dublin

Posted on February 16, 2012 by barczablog

A professor I once had claimed that art could be understood as a kind of research.  Something newly created is a proposition to be tested against the taste of every new audience, seeking a fair hearing and possibly a genuine connection; but it’s not science. No, the hypothesis in a novel or poem is not being proven or refuted according to the scientific method.  But there is still a kind of speculation in all art, a seeking for connections and truths.

ATMA CD Dowland in Dublin

Dowland in Dublin

This is especially the case with a new CD I’ve been listening to (my companion in the car for about two weeks, played over and over) called Dowland in Dublin, teaming young American tenor Michael Slattery with the Canadian baroque instrumental ensemble La Nef.  I wondered about the premise, whereby the songs of English composer John Dowland should be presented in a more Irish fashion.

Sylvain Bergeron of Le Nef says the following in the liner notes to Dowland in Dublin:

  The idea for this project was sparked when, at the end of a La Nef Christmas party, Seán Dagher charmed all who were listening when he took out his cittern and began to sing “Come Again” as a folk song.
Working closely with Michael Slattery, we began to strip some of Dowland’s Ayres of their complex contrapuntal accompaniments, seeking to give them a simple Celtic flavour.  We hope that the music on this CD, midway between folks songs and art songs, charm you as much as it does us.  Cheers!

I wonder if Dagher’s fun experiment came before or after they learned that Dowland may have been Irish?  I never realized this possibility until reading the notes to this recording.  For example, the dedication to the song “From Silent Night” published in a 1612 collection says “to my loving countryman, Mr John Forster the younger, merchant of Dublin, in Ireland.”

The CD is less an attempt to settle the matter of Dowland’s nationality than a delightful project, exploring another way of doing some wonderful songs.

Slattery’s sweet voice is recorded with delicious clarity, always intimate rather than over-powering, but with a remarkable range of sounds, expressions, and inflections.  At times the subtleties in his delivery remind us of the Shakespearean, but we’re hearing the comic voice of Twelfth Night or The Tempest, not the elevated language of histories or tragedies. These are love songs, sometimes melancholy and plaintive, sometimes exultant and erotic.  Slattery’s boyish voice celebrates love and beauty with every phrase.

In my recent interview with Slattery, he mentioned Sting’s versions of Dowland as an influence, but not at all as I had expected:

 I have to admit, I was surprised to hear Sting’s CD of Dowland songs.  We had already begun working on this concept, so I was disappointed to think that there would be many out there who might think his CD was the reason we decided to do this.  As much as I resisted it, his CD ended up influencing me, because it confirmed for me what I didn’t want to do.  I found some of his settings very successful, and interestingly enough, they were the tracks where you could hear Sting’s influence most strongly.  Less successful for me were the times that he approached the songs in a more traditional way.  Hearing his CD gave me the courage to let go of the tradition completely and bring more of myself to our project.

I think Slattery’s words are a very good indication of what you’ll find on this CD.  On my first listen-through of the CD I was genuinely confused, at the unpretentiousness of the songs, that have the accessibility of popular music.  I need to unpack that phrase, because of course I don’t mean hip-hop or something amplified, and certainly nothing as commercial as Sting’s work.  No, I meant music that has you humming the tune afterwards, and that can be true of anything from McCartney or from Mozart.  I now have at least three songs in my head, and whenever I think of them I smile automatically.

La Nef is not to be under-rated in this project, not merely accompanying Slattery, but in fact setting the tone throughout.  Some of the songs are instrumentals, making for a marvellous serenade that rises and falls in energy and mood.  The more I listen, the more impressed I am at this creation, a wonderful piece of archaeology that seems to unearth another version of Dowland, if not the genuine original.  I don’t know whether this will strike listeners as real or alternative, but I believe it’s a valid contribution, both as a kind of speculative musicology –via performance research—and of course as a really cool CD.

I find myself taking the CD and playing it over and over, never tiring of it.  I suppose that it won’t surprise you that I believe Dowland in Dublin deserves to be heard and heard again.

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