The roots of sustainability

Posted on September 2, 2011 by barczablog
Géricault 's painting The Raft of the Medusa

Géricault 's painting The Raft of the Medusa has a documentary realism, showing hope and despair, man at the mercy of nature.

This is a continuation of my previous post, inspired by Hurricane Irene and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.  I’d lamented the loss of innocence that’s implied by the notion of global warming: that we can’t very well think of Nature as our “Mother” when we’re systematically killing her in so many ways.  Or to put it another way, we can’t be surprised when the planet gives back some of our bad karma.

I have this gut feeling that the sustainability movement begins with a romantic thrill upon viewing the sea, paddling a canoe, smelling the air.  Perhaps i am thinking of the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony which is titled “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country”.  I find that’s the most vivid part of that Symphony for me, a sense of feeling more alive (cheerful feelings?) in one’s connection to what’s around you.   Before we had David Suzuki and Walt Disney creating documentaries(if you’re old enough you’ll remember), we had books, and we had compositions like the ones I have been writing about (last time and today).  I think it had to be different fundamentally, because of course, those folks weren’t sequestered in offices with laptops or riding public transit glued to their electronic devices.  Nature was real to people who were not (yet) surrounded by concrete and steel structures.

And so,  I was trying to think of some romantic music that speaks to our relationship with nature, and probing for the sentiments behind eco-friendly ideologues.  Does that sound crazy?  I don’t mean what’s David Suzuki’s favourite song, or what’s in Jane Goodall’s ipod.   I am thinking of a kind of meta-text, a background consensus about the world in the time before Darwin changed our world-view. I had a vague feeling there had to be something, given that nature has inspired so much music over the centuries, and that nature is in one of the abiding concerns of European Romanticism.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote the poems Meeres Stille and Gluckliche Fahrt

And then a title popped into my head.  In English it’s “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage”, the title of a pair of poems by Goethe (originally Meeres Stille, and Glückliche Fahrt)  that inspired at least three adaptations:

  • two discreet songs by Schubert
  • a single choral work by Beethoven
  • a youthful overture by Mendelssohn

Let’s start with Goethe’s poems .  They bespeak a world far less cocky than our own, far from sure of their command of nature.  Ha… WHAT command? Those words suggest a healthy aand fearful respect for nature, based upon a reliance upon the wind & water, and not so different from the despair one sees in the faces of Gericault’s painting (shown above).  Travel by sailing ship is not an imposition upon nature, and surely unlikely to leave any sort of carbon footprint.

Today we fly between cities even when hurricanes threaten and rain drenches runways.  When a volcano spews ash, disrupting air travel, people have no wonder or awe, just annoyance.

But Goethe’s ecology is unpredictable and worthy of respect.  In the first poem, while the stillness of the waters is portrayed with a pastoral beauty, there’s also an implicit threat.  A ship becalmed without wind is in danger, needing wind to find its way to shore, escaping the virtual desert of a calm sea.  The second poem is like a catharsis, a release after the containment felt in the first poem, boisterous and exuberant.  Together the pair of poems celebrate and revere the powers of wind & water.

Let’s look at the three adaptations I mentioned above.  I don’t know the chronology of their composition in history, but that’s not important, except to observe that the overture was written a dozen years after the Beethoven setting.  So perhaps, knowing that, let’s begin with Schubert’s songs.  It makes perfect sense to create two discreet compositions as  Schubert did, honouring this pair of antithetical poems, as opposite in tone as in matter.

First, here’s a stunning performance of Meeres Stille from bass-baritone Bryn Terfel.  This tranquil setting is as calm as the water it would portray for us.   

Now let’s listen to Glückliche Fahrt, sung by Elisabeth Scholl. Notice that this song is not even a minute long, with a powerful rhythmic pulse in the accompaniment [note to self: i must get this and play it!] contrasting the tranquil song about the calm sea.  

Now let’s turn to Beethoven, who once again gives us a choral piece in D: like the Ode to Joy.  It’s opus 112, which  falls right after the last magnificent trio of piano sonatas, but still a few years before the final towering choral achievements in the 1820s (Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony).

Notice that Beethoven’s approach is hyper-sensitive to the text, making the chorus react to the words with genuine emotion, singing this phrase:

Todesstille fürchterlich!  / Deathly, terrible stillness!
In der ungeheuern Weite  / In the immense distances

And when they describe the physical phenomenon (Reget keine Welle sich./ not a single wave stirs. ), the lack of any pulse in the music is quietly scary.  Hitchcock would be impressed.

The ocean finally stirs five minutes into the 7:40 composition.  The celebratory second poem seems to have been what drew Beethoven to Goethe in the first place.  As with Schiller in the 1820s, Beethoven might well be saying, “oh friends, not in those sombre tones, but these exuberant ones.”  

Why isn’t this piece better known? Oh my God it’s so beautiful.

I might say the same for Mendelssohn’s adaptation.  The overture was written when the composer was still a teenager.  While I like the Hebrides Overture surely there’s room for this other youthful masterpiece.

Once again Mendelssohn ventures into genuinely romantic territory.  Just as he wrapped Oberon & Titania in musical fairy-dust for his A Midsummernight’s Dream overture, here we get a vivid seascape to conjure powerful images.  There is a kind of introduction as the sea is quiet, deep, massively brooding, and unmistakeably powerful.  Our calm sea episode is relatively brief, compared to the adaptations of Beethoven & Schubert where we’re made to suffer the suspense of the becalmed awaiting the rescuing breezes.

Mendelssohn then takes classical sonata structure and puts it to ideal use.  Normally one gets an exposition leading one away from the tonic, into a development, and then a recapitulation solidly in the tonic key.  Mendelssohn brilliantly affirms a kind of musical geography, as we feel ourselves sailing away (from the tonic) in the exposition, wandering –as one usually does—in the development, before heading for home and the tonic key at the end.

Here’s Gabriel Chmura conducting “Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt” composed when Mendelssohn was only  nineteen years old.  

In case it’s not crystal clear I desperately love these last two compositions (Beethoven’s choral setting and Mendelssohn’s overture), and psst any of you conductors reading this should consider programming them.  The public hasn’t yet become tired of them because they’re programmed so rarely.

Perhaps you too sense the connection to sustainability.  I wonder, is the reason these pieces are comparatively obscure because we are so far removed from that place, standing in terror and awe of nature?  A calm sea has no terror for us, because we don’t need the wind to move.  And there’s lots more music, often with a far more domesticated version of Nature that knows its place, like a housebroken pet.  Think for instance of the nature music in Wagner’s Ring operas, where the orchestra paints marvellous images of colour that are among my most favourite moments; but neither the story nor the dramaturgy ever imply that the backdrop is anything but a safe place for story-telling.  For me, the compositions based on Goethe’s poems are like a time capsule, a glimpse of an entirely different world and assumptions no longer held.  They’d be precious if they were only nice tunes, but they’re so much more than that.

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A dark and stormy night

Posted on August 28, 2011 by barczablog

Every now and then I notice that a beloved piece of music has fallen out of my personal  top ten.  It may be because I’ve listened too often, or because some other piece has grabbed my affections.  But something very different is at work with Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, and it’s especially clear to me tonight, as I ponder the much-advertised arrival of Hurricane Irene in New York.

Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Known as the “Pastoral Symphony“ Beethoven constructed this work as if to tell a story over the course of its five movements, one of the first examples of what’s now known as “program music”.   Here’s Beethoven’s synopsis.

  1. Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country
  2. Scene at the brook
  3. Happy gathering of country folk
  4. Thunderstorm
  5. Shepherds’ song; cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm (from Wikipedia)

Movements three, four and five form a continuous unit.  A happy gathering is disrupted by a storm which clears up, followed by a kind of song of thanksgiving.

Here’s an example of a performance of these three movements in two segments from youtube, beginning with three and four

….and concluding with number five.

I find myself unable to enter into this piece as fully as I once did.  It’s as if I were a former believer in the flat Earth, confronting a celebration of some flat Earth ritual after having seen pictures of the round Earth from outer space.

Beethoven’s symphony used to move me greatly as a celebration of our world renewing itself through the cathartic conflict and tumult of the storm.  I used to rejoice in the calm tranquility of the last movement as if it were a religious piece, a paean to Mother Nature: which it is come to think of it.

But there’s a big problem now, as Irene reminds me today.  Where I once felt part of a natural cycle that renews itself, I now fear that humankind and Nature are no longer in harmony.  Speaking of beliefs, I am a believer in the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change.  I believe that phenomena such as the melting polar icecaps, the rising levels of oceans, the bizarre weather seen all over the world, and especially, the increasing power and virulence of storms such as Irene, have their origins not in the bad moods of some cranky deity, but rather in such factors as the collective human carbon footprint.

If we are doing this to ourselves, where does that leave the old idea of Nature’s power to renew itself?  I am no longer sure that humankind and the surrounding natural world can be reconciled, when so many human activities—from burning forests to slaughtering apes to dragging nets along the bottom of the ocean—seem hostile to our Mother.

At this hour, late on the Saturday before Irene comes to NYC, I am reminded of Lewis Thomas’s Late Night Thoughts On Listening To Mahlers Ninth Symphony contemplating the end of our species.  Perhaps I was naïve to believe that Nature takes care of us like a Mother.  But now? Humankind never had a real cradle, but in the process of becoming responsible for our own emissions, we can no longer presuppose a benign caregiver or a warm fuzzy world.

It’s dark and scary out there, and I no longer feel quite so safe, particularly as I wonder how wild the storms might get in the years to come.

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Mostly Frenchmen

Posted on August 24, 2011 by barczablog
Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, forever young

I am so lucky that I made it to Lincoln Center in New York City this week for the big summer music festival, when Mostly Mozart Festival is admittedly mostly over.

This is a festival probing interesting connections and juxtapositions of repertoire.  For example, this weekend, the Schubert Unfinished Symphony will be coupled with Mozart’s ultimate unfinished piece, his Requiem.  On this occasion mid-week, I was fortunate to witness the first New York appearances of a pair of Frenchmen, namely conductor Jeremie Rhorer and pianist Bertrand Chamayou.

I sat almost as far back as it’s possible to sit in the Avery Fisher Hall, a charming little hall whose acoustics still allowed me to hear lots of detail.  But I couldn’t see the instruments.  Why would that matter?  Okay I admit I am a bit compulsive about these things.  I couldn’t see whether the horns had valves or not.

Bertrand Chamayou

Young French pianist Bertrand Chamayou

The strings sounded like modern strings.  Is the Mostly Mozart orchestra– who proclaim themselves to be the only NY orchestra specializing in the classical period–an ensemble playing on period instruments?  Wonderful as the concert was –and accurate–I believe I was hearing modern instruments.  I found the text on their websites ambiguous, with sentences such as the following:
“Mostly Mozart includes concerts by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, period-instrument ensembles, chamber orchestras and ensembles, and acclaimed soloists, as well as staged music presentations, opera, dance, film and visual art.”
That suggests that Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra might be a period instrument ensemble.   But although the Mostly Mozart crew play accurately, they’re too good,  reflecting the usual advantage of modern instruments over the instruments of Mozart’s time.  The strings lack the luscious sound of the strings in Tafelmusik Baroque orchestra or Aradia Ensemble, two Toronto ensembles who have spoiled me with their sound.   In fact I have at least a couple of friends who reject anything played on authentic instruments because of their occasional tendency to fluff notes.  Modern instruments are more reliably fluff-proof; but in that trade-off you have something as anachronistic as the big gleaming Steinway used to play the Mozart concerto.

Oh my, I am such a hypocrite.  After all, we cherry pick which aspect of the performance will be historically informed –such as the instruments–while ignoring so many other facets, such as the lighting, theatre architecture, dramaturgy, or singing.  In the end chauvinism is indefensible, given these inconsistencies.  So when we set aside the nit-picking about instrumentation (and when we come to terms with our own quirky preferences), let’s consider the performances.

Opening the concert we heard one of the most unlikely pieces, namely Haydn’s Symphony #22.  Here’s a composition to confound your expectations, particularly in its moody opening movement.  This stirring movement reminds me of two of the more dramatic compositions of the Romantic period, namely the pilgrims march from Berlioz’s Harold en Italie , as well as the powerful chorale 4th movement of Schumann’s 3rd Symphony.  In each case the religious subtexts charge the music with a sense of spiritual drama.  I can’t help but wonder whether Berlioz & Schumann had been influenced by Haydn, writing more than half a century earlier. 

Revelatory as the Haydn had been, for me the most exciting part of the program came next, in the concerto played by Chamayou.  Who is he?

On Youtube Chamayou plays Mendelssohn (a familiar name but hardly well worn repertoire when we go to the songs without words), and genuine terra incognita in music of Thomas Adès and John Cage.  How wonderful is that?  Let me explain.  Pianists are often known for cutting their teeth on warhorses, pieces whose chief value resides in their function as yardsticks of virtuosity.  Play a Rachmaninoff Third Concerto or a Liszt B-minor sonata, well trodden as those pathways are, and one is thereby able to claim credentials as a virtuoso.  Playing these other guys–Cage, Adès or Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Wort–on the other hand is a far riskier proposition for an artist.  Unless you make a stunning impression, such repertoire is a huge risk.  Aha, so this young fellow Chamayou was clearly not afraid of getting lost in the crowd.  Or perhaps he recognized that the only way NOT to get lost in the crowd of virtuosi was to do something extraordinary and brave.

Now of course I would be a liar if I were to say I knew any of that when this young chap stepped out onto the stage to play Mozart’s  Concerto # 12 in A major.  Conductor Jeremie Rhorer looked young enough, but where Rhorer was stylish, Chamayou came out with a distinctively edgy appearance.  During the opening orchestral exposition, Chamayou twitched like an adrenaline addict, desperate to find release.  And when it was his turn to play, he poured the energy into astonishing note-perfect playing, as fluid as if he were pouring liquid Mozart out of his fingers.

“Aha, a virtuoso“, one might be tempted to say: and I think we’d be right in that assessment.  I read something note-worthy (excuse the pun) on that score (uh oh, another pun).  In a recent article Anthony Tommasini of the NY Times suggested that virtuosi are a dime a dozen.  How unfortunate that what was once so rare as to seem magical awhile ago, has become commonplace, and therefore no longer valued.   In each generation there are benchmarks of the unplayable, gradually rehabilitated into concert repertoire by the talent of a piano player such as Chamayou.

Mozart might seem like the most unlikely repertoire for such an adventurer.  But Chamayou brought something very original to the concerto, especially in the cadenzas.  In each case he might have been playing Mozartean jazz, given the coquetry with which he teased his way around the beat during these impromptu solos.  In every case (there’s a candenza in each movement) he sounded fresh and a bit unpredictable, which is quite an achievement in Mozart.

To close the concert Rhorer gave us a brisk clean reading of Mozart’s Symphony #29.  While this was no paradigm shifter, we were still hearing clean idiomatic playing.  This orchestra obviously know their Mozart.

The Festival closes on the weekend.

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10 Questions for Simone Osborne

Posted on August 20, 2011 by barczablog

Simone Osborne  will be taking the lead role of Gilda in the Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto in September 2011.  I ask her ten questions: five about her and five about her upcoming role.

Simone Osborne

Soprano Simone Osborne

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

I think I look like my father but with my mother’s colouring.  My mother is Persian and my father has an Icelandic background.  I have dark hair and eyes like my mother but a big Viking head (helpful for singing!) which comes from my dads.

2) what is the BEST thing / worst thing about being an opera singer?

There are a lot of incredible things about being a professional musician.  Travelling to exotic places, attending lavish parties, meeting interesting people, the list goes on.  But the best thing by far is that I get to do what I love everyday.  The music I sing means so much to me and I thank my lucky stars that I get to immerse myself in it day and night.

It is hard to speak negatively about a career that I feel so fortunate to have, but there are some challenges.  I don’t mind all of the traveling yet (check back with me in 30 years) but sometimes I miss family and friends when I am on the road.  I have also missed an awful lot of weddings, Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthdays, and special events because I’ve been off somewhere singing and unable to celebrate with the people I love.

3) who do you like to listen to? (a favourite singer or performer…can be anyone or anything)

Marilyn Horne

Mentor and Mezzo-soprano, Marilyn Horne

I’ll keep this mostly classical as it is left up to my 21 year old brother to update my ipod with non classical music whenever we see eachother (usually about twice annually).  Left to my own devices, I just download more opera and classical song…I love Freni, Caballe, Scotto and Callas, to name a few, but I have to say that my favourite singer is Marilyn Horne.  Her recordings exhibit some of the most incredible singing I’ve ever heard.  From Handel and Rossini arias filled with rapid fire pyrotechnics to Copland songs delivered from the heart with so much immediacy and attention to the words that they’ll make you cry.  I may be biased since she has been such an incredible mentor to me, but Marilyn is also one of the most down to earth, honest and genuine people you will ever have the pleasure to meet.  I can only dream of being equally accomplished and level headed myself one day.

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

The ability to refuse a bar of chocolate.  I’d also love to be able to dance without making myself laugh.

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

This may seem too simple but here goes: Sitting in the sun, surrounded by a group of good friends, catching up on lost time.  If a beach is involved all the better. If chilled sauvignon blanc is present, hallelujah!

Five more concerning Gilda, in Rigoletto

1) how does the role challenge you?

I think the more appropriate question in this case would be: “How does the role NOT challenge you?”  The music for Gilda is extremely challenging in itself but trying to create a believable, multi dimentional, significant character is an equally difficult task.  I refuse to believe that Gilda is simply a love stricken ingénue.  Luckily for me (and the COC audiences), the incredible stage director, Christopher Alden, will be leading the way for us and I am very much looking forward to creating my first Gilda with him.  In terms of the vocal writing, the role sits relatively high and in certain sections the orchestration is very thick.  As a young singer, there is a tendency to want to prove yourself and put your best foot forward.  This role will be an exercise is singing smart and not allowing the energy and excitement from the pit overwhelm my good judgement!  Again, lucky for me, the COC’s own, fabulous Johannes Debus will be at the helm.  One couldn’t ask for a more inspired and supportive maestro. I’m sure he’ll have a dozen solutions for every challenge that comes my way.

2) what do you love about the part?

What’s not to love?  I get four costumes!  Just joking (for the most part!).  I love the fact that this character goes on a journey.  The girl you meet in Act One is not the girl you encounter at the end of the evening.  That is one of the things that is so wonderful about taking on this part as a young person.  I completely identify with having one event change the course of one’s life.  I understand how a person can discover so much in such a short time and change substantially as a result.  And, of course, the music is SUBLIME.  I hardly feel worthy of some of the incredible melodies bestowed upon me.  Everything about this piece of music works.  The sum is even better than it’s unbelievably great parts.  The same goes for the piece as a dramatic work.  There is really nothing NOT to love…

3) is there a favourite passage: something you’re looking forward to staging/singing?

The section of duets with Rigoletto and then the Duke is one of the achingly beautiful parts I was talking about.  It is 50 pages of gorgeous music, each page more stunning than the last. I am very much looking forward to singing the aria “Caro nome”.  I can hardly believe I get to stand up on that beautiful Four Seasons Centre stage and sing a piece of music that seemed so out of reach in the practice room during my student days.  In terms of staging, I am excited to stage the storm trio and the (spoiler alert!) death scene.  The trio is just so darn exciting dramatically and who doesn’t love a good death scene?  If the audience isn’t crying by the end of that, we’ve failed in some way.

4) how do you relate to the character as a modern woman?

I think Gilda is exceedingly strong. I would like to think of myself as a strong person.  She disobeys her father and follows her heart.  If I had listened to my father, I would be a lawyer today, not an opera singer (not that he doesn’t love that this singing thing has worked out!).  She certainly has a mind of her own, knows what she wants and seeks it out.  She knows right from wrong and may not always do the right thing, but always does what she thinks is right.  Gilda also has common flaws that make her very relatable.  She’s jealous and trusts too easily when she falls in love.  But can you blame the girl?  She’s hardly had a reservoir of past experiences to draw on!  I have found a lot of things to relate to with this character, although I’m not sure you will find me throwing myself into harms way for a cheating boyfriend anytime soon…

5) is there a recorded Gilda you particularly admire?

There’s a special place in my heart for the Scotto, Bastianini, Kraus recording for a few reasons.  First of all, it was given to me by the beautiful Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia, (you probably remember her incredible performances of “Maria Stuarda” at the COC in 09/10) when I spent time with her and her family in Tuscany last summer.  I must have listened to that recording 100 times as I travelled all over Italy by train learning Italian and taking in the culture, all in preparation for this Rigoletto.  I just love the way Renata Scotto sings the role of Gilda here and enjoyed reading about her preparation for it in her autobiography.  She was almost exactly my age when she recorded this particular version and set the bar pretty darn high!  I also enjoy recordings of Anna Moffo with Solti conducting, Maria Callas with Serafin, and the live recording of Bidu Sayao (thanks to the ever insightful Alexander Neef for that one). The few clips of Anna Netrebko I have seen are pretty thrilling ….

and I had the recording of Act Three with Milanov and Toscanini on repeat in my apartment for a week straight.  However, it is now time to put all of the recordings away and make this Gilda my own.  That may involve locking the CD cabinet….

Simone Osborne appears in Rigoletto September 30th, October 13, 17 and 20, at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto.

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Hurry September

Posted on August 10, 2011 by barczablog

In the middle of a driving rainstorm, my doorbell rang this morning.  The mailman, bless his heart, was dropping off a bundle just as the heavens opened to drench the guy,  and my mail.

COC logoAmong the wet items was –oh no—my new COC tickets, apparently soaked.  But no, it appears the minds behind choosing and casting operas have also figured out how to keep our precious tickets safe from buckets of rain.  Hallelujah! Inside the wet envelope, the contents were surprisingly dry.

And so I discovered that this year the Thursday nighters  – possibly the loudest gang of operaphiles if I do say so myself—are being rewarded with the season’s opening night on September 22nd.  I also attend other nights, noticing how sleepy those other audiences sound compared to the boisterousness Thursday throng.

Thanks Alex, Johannes, Sandra, Gunta…! (…and the rest of you.)  We will surely be just as vocal on September 22nd.  And how could we fail to applaud, when the COC begins our season with their version of the Fantastic Four…?  No, they’re not superheroes, per se.  Even so, I’m very confident we will Marvel (excuse the pun) at their work…  Who are these four? Count down with me.

#4 is Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who led the COC orchestra in their sterling readings of Adams’ Nixon in China last winter.  I wish I had watched his mini-analysis last year before seeing the opera, as his observations would have helped me… Oh well, better late than never.

Director Robert Carsen

#3 is perhaps the one to whom Toronto opera-goers are most attuned, namely Canadian Robert Carsen.  Toronto is a funny opera town, because this is a crazy theatre city, highly competitive in a way that might make sense on Broadway, but with one tenth the population seeing a ton of shows.  Opera does probably capture music fans, but it seems to me that we go to opera more for the theatre than the music.  Why? First because we suffered a theatre with abominable acoustics —the O’Keefe Centre— for decades, and now have our reward in the Four Seasons Centre, an intimate space that elevates any performance.  Carsen’s production of Orfeo ed Euridice took the city by storm last year.  For my money, the Ariadne was more extraordinary because of the voices & the musicianship, but it was Carsen’s minimalist show that won the awards.  This is a city that’s regularly fascinated by challenging interpretations, a home-away-from-home for Robert Lepage, an opera company regularly pushing the dramatic envelope.  And so in this bookish town, Carsen is a major drawing card.


#2 is a newcomer, ostensibly the star of the opera playing the title role, namely Susan Graham as “Iphigenia.”  No that’s not a misspelling.  Remember what I said about Toronto as a theatre town, even for opera? As a result Toronto promotes this opera as Iphigenia in Tauris, not Iphigenie en Tauride.  Graham is synonymous with French opera the past few years.  She was Lepage’s Marguérite in his Damnation de Faust, her features literally catching fire in the CGI as she sang D’amour l’ardente flame.  And then there’s “nuit d’ivresse” from Les Troyens

Yes I know Berlioz is a century removed from Gluck…(i’ve been listening to Berlioz a lot lately, and am in love with this DVD). Perhaps a better and more relevant example is this one promoting the opera we’re seeing in September.  Notice that the Met used Graham’s voice to go with visuals of Domingo as their drawing cards.

#1 for me is the man playing what I believe to be the most interesting character in this opera.  The character is Oreste (or Orestes, as he’s usually known), and the singer is Russell Braun, the same Russell Braun who starred in the Met’s Nixon in China last season, after being the rock-solid anchor in such COC productions as Billy Budd about a decade ago, Andrei in War & Peace, Count Almaviva in Marriage of Figaro, and a probing interpretation of Pelléas.  You get some idea of the combination of voice & acting in this little clip from Roméo et Juliette (subtitles in German, but if you know your Shakespeare it’s not a problem, right?).

September means TIFF, it means cooler weather, and right after TIFF, it means Iphigenie en Tauride at the COC.  August can’t end soon enough.

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Out At Sea

Posted on August 6, 2011 by barczablog

Out at Sea, Slawomir Mrożek’s absurd fable was just what the doctor ordered.

For the past few months I’ve overdosed on politics:

  • I learned a new verb: “kettling”
  • Conservatives won election after election, with a tory trifecta lurking in the autumn when McGuinty faces Hudak.
  • TV is no relief, with debt ceilings and popular uprisings (after a promising beginning in Egypt) gone sour in Libya, Syria, Bahrain.

If you’re as shell-shocked as I am, satire is the best medicine.  I feel much better after an hour of laughter brought on by this Actor’s Repertory Company production.

Come to think of it, I don’t believe I have seen the word “satire” associated with Mrożek, whereas he is often associated with the theatre of the absurd.  And it’s true, the bizarre story I witnessed today could technically come from Ionesco, except for its political flavour.

As I don’t want to give the play away (which would spoil the humour), I can only attempt to give some idea of its flavour by analogy.  For example, Mary Trapani Hynes made a deposition to the Executive Committee at Toronto City Hall on July 28, 2011, a deadpan assault on logic reminiscent of Mrożek.  When your world stops making sense, it’s time for another kind of sense:

Notice Hynes’ nod to Jonathan Swift, in calling  these “modest proposals”.

Andre Sills

Andre Sills

Director Aleksandar Lukac sharply delineated the conflicts between the principals.  Andre Sills played the alpha to perfection, dominating the stage with his voice and physical presence.  Once you get that this strange world will be his, it all devolves into the struggle of the others for their own small place.

John Fitzgerald Jay, Gordon Bolan, and Sam Malkin are all delightfully different from one another in pacing, voice, and physical style.  Their ensemble work is very musical, in the sense of supportively balancing one another for the overall effect.

Although the ARC production of Out at Sea is under the auspices of Summerworks—a festival limiting each show to about an hour in length—that length is just long enough for the show to build to its logical climax, enabling it to pack a wallop.  Yes, it’s a silly wallop, but a wallop nonetheless.

Out at Sea continues at the Factory Theatre mainspace until August 14th.  If I make the mistake of turning on the TV –and getting bummed out by the news—I might just need another dose of Mrożek to set me right.

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The comedy of competence: several species of drag

Posted on July 29, 2011 by barczablog

Amy Winehouse reminds me of Judy Garland.  They both had big powerful voices, larger than life really.  They were both known for excessive use of make-up and drugs.  Given that Garland and her daughter Liza Minelli have a huge following in the gay community,  I have to wonder whether Winehouse does as well.

You may well be wondering what any of this has to do with the title. What’s so funny about competence, and where’s the connection to drag?  Let’s see.

There are several definitions of “drag,” a word people toss around carelessly.  Here’s one for starters, in To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

Noxeema Jackson [Wesley Snipes]: When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man’s body and has a little operation he is a Transsexual.
Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez[John Leguizamo]: I know that.
Noxeema Jackson: When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender he is a drag queen.

Fayye Dunrunaway says

“First, lets begin with what a drag queen is NOT.

  •            A drag queen is not a woman.
  •            A drag queen is not attempting to be a woman.
  •            A drag queen does not want to be a woman (transsexual).
  •            A drag queen is not trying to pass as a woman.
  •            A drag queen does not dress in drag for sexual pleasure (transvestite).”

So far so good.  And then Fayye tells us that drag is “an expression of the artist’s view, emotions, creativity, etc., all things that art encompasses.“

But gender travesty is not the only drag realm, even if it might be the most familiar one.

I was inspired to think outside the box by Romy Shiller’s book You Never Know: A Memoir (2009) .   Here’s a quick snapshot from Rebecca Donnelly’s book review:

“Disability drag” is Shiller’s phrase for the way courageous people with disabilities can make society rethink its ideas about body image, identity, and personal growth. “Cyborg drag” is her term for living with a permanent shunt to drain excess fluid from her brain. She is part human, part machine, she says, and this gives her another rare insight into conventional ideas about what it means to be human.”

There’s much more to it than this little summary can really capture, but that’s at least a start.  The popular TV show Glee is an instance of ”disability drag” in its use of an able-bodied actor playing a boy confined to a wheelchair.  At one time

  • long ago white actors played aboriginals in the movies
  • long ago white actors put bootblack on their faces to simulate African features
  • attractive actors /actresses would sometimes lip-synch to a beautiful singing voice; one could also flip that around if we say that the singer employed a human-sized puppet (Ubermarionette) as a stand-in for their voice, as we saw with Milli Vanilli

There are other instances of performed travesty.

  • Women playing children (thanks for the reminder Professor Hanson): as for example, when they can’t find a child to play Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande
  • Age issues can play both ways.  In student theatre you’ll see young adults portraying old men and women; and especially in opera, you see stars trying to persuade us that they’re still believable as young romantic leads long after that ship has sailed.
  • the voices in animated cartoons and puppetry take the lip-synch situation to a kind of absurd extreme

And why be restricted by the life-forms on the planet Earth?  In the film District 9 a human is infected with genetic material that begins to transform him into one of the alien invaders, a change that is most definitely a mixed blessing. On the one hand (and those who have seen the film will be excused for making a nervous laugh at this accidentally literal choice of words) he is now able to use the alien technology and fire their weaponry; but his status as a hybrid, or half-breed carries some stigma, as we discover.

Shiller (the author I mentioned above) can probably sympathize with the man transformed in District 9; she writes about her own extraordinary experiences, having lost consciousness for months in a medical procedure gone wrong that left her near death, and even now has seen her radically changed.  Now, with her reliance upon technology –not so very different from those of us joined to our various devices—she speaks of “cyborg drag”.  But we are all becoming hybrids of human and machine to varying degrees.

We have seen cyborg drag enacted before, however.  In Terminator 2 and earlier in Robocop, we watched the struggles of various hybrids between human and machine.  In other films, the imitation of humanity by machines –robots or some equivalent—create parodies with varying degrees of authenticity. AI gives us robots strongly resembling humans, while figures from the Star Wars sagas such as R2D2 or C3PO are cartoons never coming very close to human.  In the last hour of the third episode –when we watch the emergence of Darth Vader from the wreckage of his defeat at the hands of Obiwan –we see another sort of cyborg drag, a pathetic remnant.  The science fiction world also gave us the painful hybrids we get in such films as Blade Runner, where the agonizing death scene for Pris (played by Daryl Hannah) sits on the boundary between cyborg and disability, heart-breaking in any event.

And so I’ve touched on so many different kinds of drag, is there anything one can say that they have in common?

  • In each case there is a kind of imitation going on, at times verging on parody
  • One can identify a series of individual signifiers that add up to a convincing portrayal of, respectively, humanity, feminity, disability, etc
  • Competence is the key: as we observe how well the person enacting the portrayal speaks, walks in high heels, wears makeup, hair , shoots their weapon, or some other skill.
  • In each case, we’re speaking of a kind of cultural competence: that is, a set of criteria that are context specific
  • if there is “comedy” it’s perhaps in the sense of Dante’s Divine Comedy: the human condition, with its ups and downs.  For every situation that might evince laughter, there may be two others to bring us to tears.

Drunks perform something like a drag show.  Foster Brooks made a career out of playing a drunk.  The film Arthur concerns a good-natured drunk whose charm largely can be seen in his incompetence, the various ways in which he falls short.

Does this bring us back to Judy Garland and Amy Winehouse?  I always used to wonder why gay men love Judy, speaking as a straight guy who never really understood why she’s such a big deal.  Is it that  Judy, like Liza, like Maria Callas, was in some respects almost like a drag queen, because the performance of their larger-than-life persona wasn’t really feminine, but more of a parody of femininity?  Or because she’s known to have suffered, but that she gamely went on with the show no matter how badly she was feeling?  On top of the strange imitation of femininity that resembled a dragqueen, Judy also was at times so druggy as to resemble that other sort of drag, as in Arthur.

Addictions get a great deal of attention, fingers wagging but rarely with any compassion. When the person is in trouble the media are heartless.  When the celebrity has passed away, suddenly everyone seems to discover that they always loved the person that they used to ridicule or abuse.

Gabor Maté is a Hungarian Canadian doctor who has made the study of stress and pain his specialty. 

He’s written the following, concerning addiction (found on a site that was rather smitten with him“):

“Opiates: we use them as painkillers. They not only kill physical pain, they also kill emotional pain. It turns out that if you look at the brain-scans of human beings when they’re feeling emotional pain, the same part of the brain lights up as when they’re feeling physical pain. So whether I call you a really terrible name that hurts you or whether I cut you with a knife, the same part of the brain registers it. … So the first question when dealing with addiction is always not “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?” “

Addiction is problematic because of our bizarre social responses, the two-faced apparatus that sometimes shows compassion, sometimes blame.  When faced with the lack of compassion, it’s understandable that the sufferer would choose to conceal their pain.  This is one of the points of contact between the drag of the substance user and those with some sort of disability, which make sense considering that Maté would have us understand drug addiction as disability.

Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse

Disability drag is a slippery phenomenon.  Not only is it the attempt by the able-bodied actor to give an authentic portrayal of  someone less able than themselves.  It also encompasses the disabled person attempting to simulate various sorts of competence, trying to avoid the secondary afflictiong of being called “disabled”.  Sometimes a person wants to fit in, to be accepted as competent and able; and sometimes  one wants to signify disability, to be understood as disabled even when the performance of the disability is a kind of travesty.  Tobin Siebers explains the convolutions very economically in the abstract of his  paper “Disability as Masquerade“:

I have been keeping secrets and telling lies. In December 1999, I had an altercation at the San Francisco airport with a gatekeeper for Northwest Airlines, who demanded that I use a wheelchair if I wanted to claim the early-boarding option. He did not want to accept that I was disabled unless my status was validated by a highly visible prop like a wheelchair. In the years since I have begun to feel the effects of postpolio, my practice has been to board airplanes immediately after the first-class passengers so that I do not have to navigate crowded aisles on wobbly legs. I answered the gatekeeper that I would be in a wheelchair soon enough, but that it was my decision, not his, when I began to use one. He eventually let me board and then chased after me on an afterthought to apologize. The incident was trivial in many ways, but I have now adopted the habit of exaggerating my limp whenever I board planes. My exaggeration is not always sufficient to render my disability visible—gatekeepers still question me on occasion—but I continue to use the strategy, despite the fact that it fills me with a sense of anxiety and bad faith…”

I don’t pretend to understand what motivated Amy Winehouse, nor what she felt or thought.  I am certain she was a great performer.  The performances were not only musical, but the performances of someone trying to live up to our image of her as an able and competent person.

At least she is no longer in pain.

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Marat/Sade

Posted on July 20, 2011 by barczablog
death of Marat

David’s famous painting The Death of Marat

Last night I watched the opening of Soup Can Theatre’s new production of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade, or to use its full title 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.

It’s been almost a half a century since Peter Weiss created Marat/Sade.   I’ve been watching deconstruction on the stage for such a long time – in texts, in mise-en-scène, in everything one can deconstruct—that I feel some sadness seeing the play now.  Its Brechtian edginess has no real targets, at least not like the early 1960s, when its messages hit ready ears.  The play reads differently now, preaching to a largely converted audience who would agree with its premises about war, revolution, religion or sexual repression.   Even so the idea is compelling, as we watch asylum inmates perform famous persons, while we may wonder whether the supposedly sane ones running the place are really any different.

Soup Can Theatre used the Peaslee score that is vaguely familiar (including at least one famous song), employing a small onstage band dressed as asylum inmates.  This is not Sondheim, even if the edgy politics and in-your-face delivery may at times remind one of Assassins.  The wonderful thing about this score, especially as the Soup Can cast observed, is the way it allows for songs that break into the action, without inflicting voices on you that are obviously the trained voices of a stage musical.  No I don’t mean that they’re bad; quite the opposite.  The singing is very under-stated, and so unobtrusive even in the loud numbers that one’s connection with the onstage reality – of a presentation from asylum inmates—is not lost.  It’s very sad when a musical makes the mistake of making the music sound so good as to disconnect you from the story.  Soup Can tread the line wonderfully well of never letting the music subvert the mad asylum world.

The program explained that we were witnessing an adaptation of the play in a quasi-modern setting, namely the Montreal of the 1950s, when electro-shock therapy was employed.  I am not one to object to modernization, and indeed, felt that this production worked well in its new guise.  But it should be noted that while we see an asylum from the 1950s, we are still listening to a text pre-supposing the original setting of 1808 (eg in the big song near the end “Fifteen Glorious Years”); but perhaps that’s a leap that director Sarah Thorpe did not want to make.

Liam Morris, foreground, Allan Michael Brunet and Heather Marie Annis, in the Soup Can Theatre production of, ‘Marat/Sade’. Photo/SCARLET O’NEILL

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even if I was watching a cast that were in my opinion a little on the young side for this work.  Maybe my age is showing?  I felt that the play’s ongoing debate between De Sade and Marat was somewhat one-sided.  While Liam Morris has a charming delivery(and yes he’s a dead ringer for the Marat we see in David’s famous painting), was overmatched alongside the powerful Allan Michael Brunet in his portrayal of the Marquis, admittedly a role where one wants to see some star power.  Brunet’s performance was especially ironic, in his ability to position himself –the most subversive character on view–as the moral centre of the work, due to the gravitas he displayed, particularly in the last part of the play.

I found Heather Marie Annis was a successful Charlotte, both in her wonderful singing and in a very believable madness,  the most under-stated performance on the stage.  The other rock-solid performance came from Scott Moore as Coulmier, the headman in white coat.  Moore’s demeanour as the officious shrink offering this performance for us, the ostensible visitors to the asylum, was creepy in a Ned Flanders kind of way, a bureaucrat whose niceness points to the banality at the end of the world.

Soup Can Theatre’s Marat/Sade continues at the Alumnae Theatre Mainspace evenings until July 23rd, with a matinee on the 24th.

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Il Trovatore

Posted on July 10, 2011 by barczablog
Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Verisimilitude may be a tad over-rated.  Tonight I witnessed a concert performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore by Toronto’s Opera By Request.  It’s habitual to apologize for what’s missing in these virtual renditions, that have music stands instead of sets, and evening attire instead of period costume.

But some operas founder upon encountering realism, like ships aground on a beach.  When modern stagecraft shines a spotlight upon a story, we may not like what we see; Trovatore is one of the most blatant examples of this.

At one time Trovatore was Verdi’s most successful opera, if not the most popular opera of all.  That the opera has fallen from that exalted status is likely as much an indication of growing sophistication as of changes in audience preferences.  It’s an opera assembled out of a series of picturesque moments, packed with melodies and stirring feeling.

Soprano Carrie Gray

Carrie Gray, a genuine Verdi soprano

I found it very welcome to be sitting in close contact with William Shookhoff’s pianism & the powerful singing of the soloists assembled for the occasion, filling the College St United Church space with passionate music.

Carrie Gray as Leonora sang what was for me the most impressive performance of any soloist performing this season for Opera by Request.  Hers is a genuine Verdi soprano, a generous instrument easily filling the space with sound, holding nothing back in the ensembles, powering up to the many high notes in this role, and always rock solid in her intonation.

Karen Bojti met the many challenges of Azucena.  She has a gorgeous colour, with smokey low notes, while brazenly taking the stage in the moments of high drama required by the role.

Steven Sherwood gave us a sensitive Manrico, Italianate and lyrical throughout.  Yevgeny Yablonovsky’s Count Di Luna was consistent with the usual casting that prevails today, namely for a big dark voice.

Finally, I was again grateful for Shookhoff’s efforts at the piano, impersonating an orchestra, always helping the singers, while using a big sound that matched the big voices we heard today.  Well done!

Opera By Request will be back after a brief summer holiday with Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore  September 17th at College St United Church.

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If you build it will they come…?

Posted on July 8, 2011 by barczablog

The Greek TheatreTonight I saw the opening of Guild Festival Theatre, an ambitious company taking the stage in The Greek Theatre in Guildwood Park.

This is the former site of the Guild Inn,  in Guildwood Village.  There really was a “guild” at one time, a colony of artists working at the edge of the Scarborough Bluffs.  Alongside this earnest group, there used to be a hotel and a terrific restaurant.  The site boasts wonderful scenery, with an aura of history.

For me it was surreal to watch a play on this stage.  I was married there in 1989.  We had planned to actually use the theatre stage for our ceremony but we were rained out (instead we used a covered space on the steps of the hotel), so this performance was like a long-postponed consummation.  My wife and I used to come back regularly for dinner, then brunch, and finally, just to walk the grounds when they closed the hotel & restaurant.  I felt a bit like Pu Yi the Last Emperor, walking in the Forbidden City among the tourists, in a place of great personal significance; and like Pu Yi, I’ve become just like everyone else, this time in my admiration for what the Guild Festival Theatre have accomplished.  What’s more, I believe there are lots of people just like me, who were either married there or had their pictures taken on the grounds, who feel that space is part of their personal mythology.  It’s truly magical to come back and see the theatre finally come to life!

I wasn’t joking when I put that headline, a misquote from Field of Dreams.  A disembodied voice says “if you build it they will come,” speaking of a baseball field in Iowa.  This magical field of dreams–a replica of a Greek amphitheatre –was built in the 1960s, utilizing some wonderful neo-classical remnants from old downtown banks in Toronto that had been demolished except for their delicious facades.  I remember reading somewhere that Herb Whitaker had been consulted on the design, that the acoustics were remarkable; or maybe that was just what we surmised from playing around on the stage.

Back when the theatre was built, perhaps Toronto wasn’t ready for outdoor theatre, but in the meantime we’ve had over a quarter century of the Dream in High Park.  Originally Shakespeare’s A Midsummernight’s Dream, we’ve been getting lots of other plays since.  They were a summer incarnation of an existing company. In the downtown there are other companies performing outdoors, such as the Canopy Theatre who have been at it for a decade plus.

And now Scarborough is ready for its own company.  And why not?  The venue is spectacular.  But unlike The Dream, they are not an offshoot from an existing company, but a new undertaking, which makes this an even bigger mountain to climb.

We were not just outside, but situated very close to the lake.  While there was still light in the sky, the play was accompanied by a chorus of birdsong, especially welcome in the second act when we have the most lyrical moments of the play, including reference to birds. Behind the stage is a tall stand of trees.  We’re not far from the edge of the bluffs, with a steep edge going down to the lake perhaps a hundred feet below.   When you dress for this venue, remember the lake, which creates a microclimate a few degrees chillier than what you get downtown; bring a sweater.

And how about Chekhov?  I’d say The Cherry Orchard comes off very well.  Director Sten Eirik chose to treat the work as a comedy, with a terrific pace, lots of energy, yet a keen ear for the ebb and flow of the dialogue.  This is not one of those attempts to mine the profundities people sometimes see in Chekhov: thank God.  And yet all the key moments got their due.  Dawna Wightman was a sweet mess as Lyubov Andreyevna, grieving over what she was losing while seeming to throw it away before our eyes.  Alongside her, John Jarvis was lovably inept as her brother Gaev, verbose and unsure.

Eirik’s casting struck me as cinematic, reminding me less of the histrionic warhorse I have sometimes seen (where “Chekhov” is said in hushed tones of awe), and more of a good comedy of manners.  I enjoyed Paul Amato’s take on Lopakhin, a more likeable version of the self-made man who’s at the centre of the story than one sometimes gets in other interpretations, where the political subtexts hijack the gentle comedy.  And perhaps the most memorable portrayal came from Bryan Stanish as Firs, the ancient servant who extracted every wonderful laugh in his part and then some.

The Cherry Orchard presented by Guild Festival Theatre continues at The Greek Theater in Guildwood Park until July 30th.

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