Codex Nocturno

Posted on June 27, 2011 by barczablog

Codex Nocturno posterI suspect this is going to be a long review, so for those of you who need the executive summary up front, yes I liked it.  Go see Codex Nocturno!!   I will make an effort to see it again before it closes next week.

Of course if you’re the sort of person who has a short attention span, someone who needs things spelled out, someone with a low tolerance for ambiguity, haha then it would be a sadistic punishment to send you—that superficial person with no patience that is—to this show: because it’s brilliant and complex and difficult.

Let me add that I suspect the reason Kadozuke Kollectif –the artists responsible for Codex Nocturno­—fly under the radar so far is because new work tends to be difficult.  PT Barnum, that prototype of the successful impresario, never proposed that artists should challenge their audiences, did he?  But some of us thrive on newness.  Too bad critics rarely have time for the difficult.  How else to explain why I haven’t heard of Kadozuke Kollectif before now?

I had a sip from the fountain of youth tonight, a reminder of Lindsay Kemp in Flowers.  Oh my God I know that makes me sound so old.  Kemp is an unexpected kind of eclectic, mixing butoh movement, drag, music-hall and theatre into something richer than the sum of its parts.  I remember being alternately terrified, aroused, disoriented and amused.  I was often on the edge of my seat simply because I did not understand what I was seeing and wanted to resolve some of the ambiguities.

I hope nobody in the show is offended that they’ve reminded me of a drag performer, when they probably don’t think there was any drag in the show.  They might also be wondering what drags I have been taking (or what drags I am high on).

Sigh, I hate talking in too much detail about a show that has a colossal power to surprise.  If I spill the beans I make the show more intelligible but likely far less powerful.  Its ability to stir you begins with the ambiguities, moments that aren’t quite this or that, putting you on the edge of your seat, as you strive to make sense of what’s happening.

Speaking of mysteries, let’s begin with the offbeat title, “Codex Nocturno.”  The night that we traverse in Codex Nocturno is a place of dreams & shadows, metaphors and suggestions, rather than explicit declarations and clear statements.  A Kadozuke Kollectif book of the night avoids being reductive or explicit, and celebrates the anti-rational, the bizarreness of dreams and the surreal.  If you’re a person who might say “ugh that’s weird” and shiver in fear, don’t see Codex Nocturno.

Let’s address drag.  No, there are no people doing cross-gendered drag.  I am speaking of something more esoteric, and indeed, something that probably surprises the cast.  I am thinking of “Disability drag,” an idea that has been with us for awhile, but only recently has a name.  Here’s a quick example:

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. (SOURCE)

People who have been disabled do not, as is so commonly assumed, simply ask for help.  Typically a person tries to blend in as well as possible, faking competence, while limping or otherwise failing at some crucial part of the large task of pretending to be human.  Humanity is a performance, comprised of several different bits and pieces.  The drag of gender is only one of many sorts of drag.  People attempt to be competent in their job, in their courtship, in their walk to the bathroom.  Sometimes the imitation of competence—for instance in a dragqueen—becomes a parody that invokes our laughter, because of the visible discrepancy between the performance and the ideal.

Lacey Creighton

Lacey Creighton, unforgettable as a disabled machine

In Codex Nocturno we’re confronted by several physical spectacles of human action, and often we find that the imitation of humanity falls short in some way:

  • A girl hauls a tiny plastic toy baby out of herself, and then proceeds to nurture and “mother” that little baby; it’s gross, silly and poignant all at once
  • A beautiful automaton breaks down, becoming progressively less and less human, yet ever more heart-breaking in its blunt pursuit of competence, even vomiting metal parts at one point; is she a she or an it?
  • Transactions in a hotel resemble hospitality superficially, but without any real understanding of what’s involved; the lack of compassion does, however, resemble some nightmarish transactions I’ve been through (ha I wish I were kidding)
  • Wetness & blood and other mysterious liquids from inside the body figure prominently; what is it to be human, and are we a “who” or are we more of an “it”? there’s a great deal of objectification in this show
  • on a number of occasions people are restrained or confined, a condition resembling disability even though artificially created

It’s often much funnier than this sounds, but then again, having written about this, I know how twisted some of those images must sound.  The humour is extreme, undoubtedly.  So is the poignancy.  I cried in a couple of places, and also guffawed like an animal.

The space is used brilliantly.  I won’t say how –can’t spoil the surprise, remember—but promise you something uncommon, verging on brilliant.

Tatiana Jennings

Tatiana Jennings, Artistic Director of Kadozuke Kollectif

Kadozuke Kollectif have apparently been doing Codex Nocturno for awhile.  The 2011 staging is a remount after a previous incarnation.   Tatiana Jennings is the artistic director.  There’s a great deal of dream-like imagery, as we’re confronted by several videos on the stage, displays that seem to take us inside different personages whomwe also encounter physically as well as virtually.  I suspect that what I’ve chosen to focus on –that disability drag thing—is not what the Kollectif would identify as the primary expressive element of this show.  I think the reason it grabbed me so hard is because I am seeking a handle on the original idiom I see in the Kollectif.  I see a combination of humour and poignancy, slivers of humanity, little bits and pieces of performed emotion that sometimes coheres into a person, sometimes seems like a fragment.  Their style is wonderfully physical, brimming with talent, and still too modest to swagger.  But they’re masterful, without a moment of falseness.

The newness of this flavour is as intoxicating as the discovery of a new cuisine.  Remember the first time you tasted something really intense and exotic? …like (don’t laugh too hard… maybe you eat these every day, but to me they were once brand new) mango or gorgonzola.  I picked two of my favourite flavours that I know are sometimes liked sometimes loathed.  Kadozuke Kollectif are not likely to win any popularity contest, certainly not when they’re unknown.  They deserve your attention, and might win your love.

Codex Nocturno continues at the Image Foundry, 1581 Dupont St until July 3rd.

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Svadba-Wedding

Posted on June 25, 2011 by barczablog

queen of puddings logoI experienced one of the great joys tonight at a new opera.  For awhile I was lost.  In a world of GPS precision and universal surveillance, it’s very hard to be so engrossed as to not know where you are.

I was whisked away from my usual realm on the wings of song, or more particularly, the songs of Ana Sokolovic, in Svadba – Wedding, a new opera commissioned and premiered by Queen of Puddings Music Theatre.

Let’s not quibble about the usual things one might expect in opera, such as a storyline or characters.  If this were the usual sort of thing you’d know exactly where you are, and where’s the fun in that?  The usual procedure is also the usual ticket to something predictable, where this was anything but.

Composer Ana Sokolovic

Composer Ana Sokolovic

I previously encountered Sokolovic in another work premiered by Queen of Puddings, namely The Midnight Court.  At the time I remember feeling very optimistic about the future of opera, as Sokolovic opened several compositional pathways that I had never encountered, playing exquisite games with the human voice and with sound.  I felt freed of many of the unfortunate compositional pigeon-holes used to identify new music.  Then as now, I was sufficiently disoriented to be freed of categories, which is another way of saying, I was freed of the usual sorts of expectations.

And so, while Svadba too felt new, in the end it did feel quite familiar.  Perhaps I was projecting, following a line of association through the Serbian text, Sokolovic’s Eastern-European ethnicity, and repeated patterns of notes in the music; but I was reminded of other composers of the last century, particularly Stravinsky and Bartok, who would take an angular phrase, and by repeating it, normalize some of that angularity for us.

Milica

Milica the Bride, sung by Jacqueline Woodley in Queen of Pudding’s production of Ana Sokolovic’s Svadba-Wedding.  Photo by John Lauener

Svadba may only be an hour long, but it’s quite powerful, particularly in a tiny space.  Six women effortlessly fill the stage with voice, with stage presence, with all the quirks each brings to the stage.  Only one of them is really differentiated as a character, namely  Jacqueline Woodley as Milica, the young Bride.

That the others –a powerful ensemble of some of the best voices in this country—do not create personages as in a usual opera is but one of the wonderfully disorienting aspects of this work.  Yes, each one has a named character, but i found it very difficult to identify much that was unique in their work.  I took in their portrayals en masse, partly because the work is new to me, partly because i was experiencing the work sensuously –through pure sound and sensation– rather than in a logical fashion.  I think, too, that the surtitles malfunctioned for part of the evening, making the story a bit harder to follow.  Essentially an a capella tour de force, Sokolovic works her cast very hard in the hour they are onstage.  Although a few places seem to call for higher singing, the biggest challenge appears to be in the co-ordination of passages calling for fast ensemble singing.  Conductor & co-artistic director Dairine Ni Mheadhra led the ensemble in a precision reading to make the composer proud.  I don’t think it was an empty gesture when Sokolovic crossed the stage, passionately hugging every single cast member in turn, namely Shannon Mercer, Andrea Ludwig, Carla Huhtanen, Laura Albino, Jacqueline Woodley and Krisztina Szabo.

Upon their first entrance my mind drifted to the last act of Die Walküre re-broadcast last week by the Metropolitan Opera high definition series, when the Valkyries sing as one powerful ensemble.  I hope the comparison doesn’t seem lame –it was just last week after all—but it struck me just how rare it is for an opera to be handed over to an entirely female cast.  Puccini’s Suor Angelica (another short opera) and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites are the only two comparable works I can think of.  Whereas the other two both take us to the rarefied world of the convent, in this case we’re among young women who seem decidedly normal in their outlook and deportment.  While the circumstances are traditional, the very fact of so many women taking the stage in a work composed by a woman feels very political to me, and worthy of applause.  In a world where women composers & conductors are the exception rather than the norm the look and feel of this opera was a breath of fresh air before the first note was even sung.

For all the newness Svadba managed simultaneously to be as old and traditional as the pre-nuptual rituals portrayed onstage.   I am perhaps cheating in my inference, but The Midnight Court seemed newer and more disorienting in its construction.  Svadba is both new and old, easily invoking a realm of Slavic folklore for me.

Svadba continues until July 2nd Downstairs at the Berkeley Street Theatre.  http://www.queenofpuddingsmusictheatre.com/

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Cosy and Hungarian

Posted on June 22, 2011 by barczablog

Hungarian coat of armsFollowing the uprising in 1956, we were blessed for a time with a neighbourhood of Hungarian restaurants. Magyar refugees poured into the downtown Toronto area, leaving their mark in Kensington Market, as well as the stretch of Bloor St West between Spadina and Bathurst. It felt like an offshoot of the university’s neighbourhood, full of inexpensive places to eat.

And now, so many years later? The inevitable gentrification has transformed the area, so that only one remains, the venerable “Country Style.” I was there a couple of weeks ago, impressed that their ambience was essentially unchanged, and that they had somehow survived; they had never been my favourite.

Tonight, however, I didn’t feel like going downtown, even though Erika –who’s having a birthday—and I both wanted to eat Hungarian food. What to do?

We had noticed a place right in our Scarborough neighbourhood for years. Feeling lazy, but still wanting to eat Hungarian, we made our first belated foray into the Cosy Hungarian Dining Room, just 2 blocks from home. I am embarrassed to report that a project that began in a spirit of laziness should have led to a splendid discovery. Did we deserve to find such a great place so close to home?

Don’t answer that.

I looked at the menu, aware that the prices were very reasonable, and decided to try to

Cosy Hungarian

Cosy Hungarian Dining Room

make the evening feel like an event. The priciest item on the menu is the Flaming Wooden Platter for Two at $42.00. Aside to my Vegan friends: cover your eyes!

Does that sound expensive? Not when you consider that each person gets a cabbage roll (brought as an appetizer), a wiener schnitzel, a sausage, a pork chop, vegetables, potatoes & salad. The wooden platter makes a theatrical presentation, complete with big knives skewered through all that meat. Carnivores smile indulgently at such things.

The schnitzels were really big, and really clean tasting, without the residual grease I was accustomed to from –for example – the Hungarian joints of my youth down on Bloor St. The potatoes were exquisitely roasted. The main reason I wanted the wooden platter is that it’s a bit of a smorgasbord, giving you a sampling of the restaurant and its capabilities. We encountered breaded meat (schnitzels), roasted meat (pork chops), seared meat (the sausages), an irresistible tower of delight.

Dessert on this occasion was palacsinta. That reminds me of another bothersome Bloor St memory. The Blue Cellar Room offered something called “palacinka” which always seemed odd until google told me (a moment ago) that palacinka is a Czech crêpe. Aha! now i get it.

The palacsinta (Hungarian crêpe) I encountered tonight vanished like magic.  I surprised myself, considering:
•   we’d come here on a quick impulse
•   I ate a big lunch shortly before
•   I was already inexplicably stuffed from the wooden platter (i had expected to take some home in a doggie bag, NOT to be consuming all of it…)
Hm, I guess I was hungrier than I realized…?

Gabor

Chef Gabor (i should find out his surname)

Yet I devoured that dessert. I hope my mom doesn’t read this, but the palacsinta’s better than hers. Same with the cabbage rolls come to think of it.

I discussed it with Gabor, the chef, who explained that his mom –haha like mine—had made cabbage rolls at home using beef mixed with pork, making something firm as a meatball, whereas his were from beef & rice. They were soft inside yet held together brilliantly.

So now, my Hungarian restaurant experiences will be in my Scarborough neighbourhood. Cosy Hungarian Dining Room is very close to the corner of Midland & Kingston Rd. While it’s a bit off the beaten track, it’s very good and very cheap, just like the best places I remember downtown. I know I’ll be back.

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A genuine Bali high

Posted on June 14, 2011 by barczablog
Rick Sacks

Playwright, puppeteer & percussionist Rick Sacks, showing us the magic behind his Smoid. David Powell, the puppet master, is immediately beside him.

There are nine musicians in Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan(aka “ECCG”), and judging by the works presented tonight, this is an ambitious group eagerly embracing new disciplines & styles, while welcoming a diverse assortment of collaborators.

I was drawn to this week’s program by the concluding item on the bill, namely The Adventures of the Smoid, a new dramatic work by Rick Sacks. I’d heard that David Powell of Puppetmongers had assisted Sacks, not only in designing shadow puppets to tell his story, but in training some of the ECCG musicians in shadow puppetry.

It reminded me of what I’d seen from the Canadian Opera Company in 2009. Just as Robert Lepage’s production of Stravinsky works had led the COC to employ opera singers as puppet manipulators, so too with Sacks’ work for ECCG.

Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan

A glimpse of some of the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan instruments.

Without giving too much away, let’s just say that The Adventures of the Smoidis an unpretentious tale suitable for children but sophisticated enough for adults. This shadow puppetry will wow any audience, particularly with the gamelan accompaniment. While it’s a simple story, there are picturesque moments throughout that keep you riveted. I was as excited as a small child.

After the performance Sacks and company invited us behind the projection screen for a question –answer session whereby we could see how it was all done. In some respects the illusions seemed more rather than less impressive when we saw the simplicity of the design & execution.

The remainder of the evening was completely different. Titled “Tribute to Nano S.” the first half of the programme consisted of a series of songs honouring the master Nano Suratno. The five songs married the acoustic subtleties of ECCG, including some microphones, with the electronic wizardry of turntable duo INSiDEaMiND.

INSiDEaMiND aT WoRK

Four of the five songs began with something electronic –a drone, or an ostinato—supplying a rhythmic hook for the song that followed. The nine members of ECCG joined in with the electronic rhythms of INSiDEaMiND, a pulsing hybrid that wouldn’t be out of place in a dance-club yet one still sufficiently artsy for a Music Gallery crowd. After having experienced La Bohemelast week in the Tranzac Club, I couldn’t help but wonder how a site-specific performance might galvanize ECCG with INSiDEaMiND. The last item in the first half—a traditional Palestinian song with an infectious rhythmic hook—had me wondering how people could keep their seats, given my own impulse to get up and dance.

The vocals by Jennifer Moore and Maryem Tollar were almost subliminal. When I consciously attempted to decipher the lyrics I was somewhat frustrated, but when I relaxed and surrendered to the dense texture I found myself presented with gifts of a clear phrase here and there, in several languages. As with so much on this occasion, I let it all wash over me, not too worried about making sense out of the proceedings, so much as to revel in the sensations. Our ears were in safe hands, as there wasn’t a moment that wasn’t beautiful.

The ECCG program –the five song Tribute to Nano S, and The Adventures of the Smoid—is to be repeated 8:00 pm Tuesday June 14th at the Music Gallery.

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Placido and Sondra

Posted on June 5, 2011 by barczablog
Placido Domingo

Tenor, baritone, conductor, and impressario, Placido Domingo

Tonight’s Toronto concert by Placido Domingo with Sondra Radvanosvky was the proverbial “happening”. Held in a converted tennis stadium enjoying its christening as a musical venue, we were watching their faces on a jumbotron, hearing a wall of amplified sound, in a mix of opera & popular songs. I was reminded a few times of the first Three Tenors concert, on the eve of the World Cup in 1994, whether via the repertoire of songs, or the genial tone.

While the concert was not without its glitches the crowd (I’d estimate it at somewhere around ten thousand) was in a forgiving mood. Jet planes coming to and from the nearby airport regularly piped up, as if auditioning for parts, occasionally in the right key. A cold breeze that might have helped carry homerun balls to the outfield did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Placido Domingo is a seventy year old man with at least four operatic incarnations:
• Tenor
• Conductor
• Impresario (artistic director first in Washington, then Los Angeles)
• Baritone…(!?)

On this occasion we mostly saw and heard the baritone, as the tenor isn’t available very often. The opening aria (from Le Cid) was the one genuine tenor aria. In addition Domingo sang the duet at the conclusion of Act I of Otello, although partway through they modulated down a semitone, so that the high note was now less of a challenge.

But that’s all quibbling. The man is 70, and is already defying the calendar & the odds, and he has been living in this borderland for awhile now. Heldentenor roles like Siegmund require more of a baritone’s colour with the occasional high note thrown in.

While the audience was thrilled, to me the baritone rep sounds a bit odd. In the duet from Simon Boccanegra, where father sings to his daughter, although the visual impression was right, the sound is different than what we’re accustomed to hearing from a baritone. In ”Nemico della patria” the notes come out almost too easily, but they’re not aligned in the usual ways. Those at the bottom are hard to hear, while those at the top of a baritone’s natural range sound relatively easy. While I dislike stereotyping, I’d have to say that Domingo is still a tenor, but unable to hit the high notes any longer.

Even so the audience ate it up, and I have to admit i thoroughly enjoyed myself.

a picture of Sondra Radvanovsky

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky

I had already had a day of Radvanovsky, hearing her Aida on CBC this afternoon (recorded months ago); she gave us the vocal highlight of the evening during the encores. After saying how good it felt to sing in front of the hometown audience, to a warm ovation, she sang a very impressive ”vissi d’arte,” from Tosca.

Radvanovsky & Domingo were so generous with their encores that I lost count (somewhere around six i believe!), watching them happily return to the stage over and over again. The other big moment was clearly understood to be the finale of the evening, when Domingo unexpectedly took up the baton to conduct the Black Creek Festival Orchestra and Chorus in a brisk “Hallelujah” from Messiah, climaxing with fireworks.

Wow.

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Bohème against the grain

Posted on June 3, 2011 by barczablog
composer Giacomo Puccini

composer Giacomo Puccini

It’s been attempted before: taking that well-known and perhaps overly-familiar opera, Puccini’s La bohème, and reinventing it. Baz Luhrmann tried it with some success. So did Jonathan Larson, with Rent (another success).

You can’t blame people for wanting to attempt to tease something new out of Bohème, when it’s already one of the most popular operas.

Arguably an opera this familiar needs a makeover. As far as I can tell, that’s the raison d’être for Against the Grain Theatre, a new company that has sprung to life in the past few months.

If you know the Tranzac Club on Brunswick Ave you might wonder how opera could be presented there.

The Tranzac Club

How? A purist might be aghast at the idea of sitting with your beer, listening to Bluegrass (a charming ensemble called Houndstooth) just before the opera. The Tranzac club is a very unpretentious establishment, not to be confused with an opera house. Does the word “opera” conjure people dressed up for the evening? And please excuse me, that’s not what opera is to me, particularly considering the many attempts by directors & producers to break free from that image; but the stereotype is still a useful and relevant departure point. If you understand opera as a precious flower too delicate to be uprooted from its native soil in the opera house among the usual audience, perhaps the Tranzac club won’t work for you. It’s ironic considering that La bohème is above all, an opera about poverty, about people unable to afford heat in their home with barely enough to eat. Trucking out Rodolfo and Mimi in fake rags in a splendid theatre before rich patrons is a rather troubling notion when you think about it.

Happily we have another option. Against the Grain gave us something completely different.

We brought our drinks into the performance space –more of a beerhall than a theatre—seating perhaps 100, with a full house of sympathetic patrons. The Spartan set & costumes suggested poverty before we heard the first words from Rodolfo & Marcello, cold & hungry before our very eyes. Sung with piano accompaniment, we heard a very edgy new English translation adapted by director Joel Ivany. Marcello’s declaration, I’m freezing cold here” becomes “it’s fucking cold in here.” Benoit gets called a man-whore. These aren’t gratuitous, but rather attempts to make the opera live. And so our bohemians have an instantaneous authenticity in the grungy old bar.

Photograph of the bohemians and their landlord

Hearing the romantic exploits of Benoit: (L-R) Justin Welsh (Marcello), Adam Luther (Rodolfo), Gregory Finney (Benoit), Keith Lam (Schaunard) and Stephen Hegedus (Colline)

It doesn’t hurt, also, that the singers are young and attractive. Adam Luther is a handsome young Rodolfo capable of a lovely sound and reaching all the high notes with ease, surrounded by an equally youthful group of bohemians, . Laura Albino plays a darkly serious Mimi, unpretentious and still. When her passion comes to the surface, as it does in her arias, she gives us something extraordinary. She’s a Mimi who finds the delicate balance between the humble seamstress only wishing her artificial flowers could live, and the bubbly exuberance of a woman newly in love.

Justin Welsh’s Marcello was a likeable fellow, with a mellow sound and no malice, reminding me a bit of Anthony Quinn as Gaugin (in Lust for Life). Lindsay Sutherland Boal brought a genuine glamour to Musetta. I came to this show, knowing it was to be set in this bar-space, hoping that the scene in the Café Momus would be especially lively when played to an audience also sitting at tables with drinks. When the café scene really clicks, we should be unable to take our eyes off Musetta in her big scene in Act II, and that’s precisely how it was. While Musetta seductively toyed with Marcello, Ivany was playing with us, making the entire audience crane their necks to follow Boal around the room.

Against the Grain’s production of La bohème continues for three more performances this week, namely Friday-Sunday, June 3, 4, and 5 at 8 pm, at The Tranzac Club.

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Che faro senza COC?

Posted on May 27, 2011 by barczablog

COC logoTonight, my last opera of the Canadian Opera Company 2010-2011 season, was my second trip into the special world of Robert Carsen’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

I didn’t talk about the visuals in my review (awhile ago) because I strive to be spoiler-free, so that I don’t ruin any special surprises in the staging.  Now that the run is ending I can safely talk about Carsen’s collaboration with designer Tobias Hoheisel.

At the opening Euridice’s body is borne by the chorus upon a bleak, flat landscape of ashes and sky.  It doesn’t get much more minimal than this:

  • The chorus in their plain black and white clothes
  • Fire burning in a pot
  • A hole in the ground

Lawrence Zazzo as Orfeo; Photo Credit: © 2011 Michael Cooper.

Orfeo, portrayed by Lawrence Zazzo, waits at her graveside, issuing the most heart-rending “Euridice” I’ve ever heard.  Clearly this is not to be the refined, rational Orfeo we usually encounter, mastering his grief in orderly verses & song, but a man so grief-stricken as to attempt suicide: prevented first by chorus members, and later by Amor him/herself.

In a world of such restraint (when we remember both the terse vocabulary of this reform opera and the minimal mise-en-scène) a tiny gesture can be powerful.  In the underworld, the dead shake off their grave-clothes like butterflies being reborn as Blessed Spirits, a moment for once matching the eloquence of Gluck’s music.  The clean images of the first scene start to resemble theology, when we see these spirits lifting pots of fire and ash.

Isabel Bayrakdarian and Michael Schade

Isabel Bayrakdarian and Michael Schade; photo credit: Michael Cooper.

Aside from Zazzo, the most impressive performance by a character was that chameleon providing the backbone for so many operas this season, namely the COC chorus.  Carsen foregrounded individual members of the chorus without fear, because they’re so strong dramatically.

The excellence that’s now becoming the COC norm has me wondering: can they live up to this high standard? Am I now permanently spoiled, expecting near-perfection every time out? and what will I do until next season?

Thankfully the CBC Radio2 are ready to satisfy my withdrawal symptoms.  Saturday May 28th we get a flashback to the COC’s winter production of The Magic Flute, starring Michael Schade, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Aline Kutan.

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Always the Bridesmaid

Posted on May 23, 2011 by barczablog
in Time Magazine

Kristen Wiig photographed by Peter Hapak for TIME

I saw Bridesmaids tonight.

If you watch Saturday Night Live you know Kristen Wiig.

In passing, I’ll acknowledge that you might be one of those people who used to watch SNL.   Fine, you don’t want to admit that you watch the show anymore.  Saturday at midnight alone, without any sort of surveillance, who knew if you were surreptitiously watching the monologue or the fake news…?

I make no bones about it. When I am awake on a Saturday Night I watch SNL, and don’t waste time comparing it to previous casts.  When I simply want a laugh, SNL has been a good friend over the years.

And so, whether you’re a closet SNL watcher or honest about it, chances are you know Kisten Wiig and her recurring characters:

  • Target Lady
  • Penelope, the champion of one-upmanship
  • Gilly, the troubled schoolgirl
  • Doonese, the backup singer with deformed hands
  • The actress (Google tells me her name is “Mindy Grayson”) on Secret Word (a show parodying the old show Password) who is too dense to play the game

While SNL has been a springboard for many careers, it’s also true that some of the biggest TV stars failed to make the transition to film.  For all the success of those such as Mike Myers and Adam Sandler, there are also those like Dana Carvey who failed on the big screen.  Tina Fey is among the first of the female SNL regulars to hit it big, whether with her own show 30 Rock or in such films as Date Night and Baby Mama.

The secret to their success may be that Myers, Sandler & Fey produce and/or write their material.   And so, too with Wiig in Bridesmaids, a film currently enjoying a triumphant success all over North America. How successful?

  1. Pirates of the Caribbean  took in $91 million in its first weekend, having cost an estimated $250 million to produce
  2. Bridesmaids has taken $21 million in this its second weekend, for a total of $59 million, but having cost only $32.5 million to produce
  3. Thor dropped from top spot with a take of only $15.5 million, for a two week total of $145 million, having cost $150 million to produce.

While the expensive juggernauts should manage to cover their expenses (Thor likely will do so within a few days), Bridesmaids has already returned double on the investment, and shows no signs of running out of steam.

In some ways it’s a disturbing film.  Wiig’s character  –Annie— like so many others she has portrayed before, is once again an oddball.  This time we’re not watching sketch comedy, but a fairly realistic film.  Yet we’re laughing.  I can’t pretend to understand this – perhaps something about Wiig herself? – that somehow makes us feel okay about laughing at someone going through a series of unpleasant experiences.

Watching the film –in a theatre full of patrons laughing uproariously—I hoped this meant success for Wiig.

IMDB tells me she has another film in the works for 2012, namely Friends with Kids.  Among the stars named for the film are fellow SNL alum Maya Rudolph, whose chemistry with Wiig is one of the special pleasures of Bridesmaids and Mad Men star John Hamm, also in Bridesmaids playing an uncredited role (and one of the funniest people in the film).  While Hollywood seems to be a place of big-budget contracts & deals, it’s nice to see actors appearing in projects with one another, suggesting that they’re simply friends.  First Hamm appears in Wiig’s film.   Hamm & Wiig will then co-star in Friends with Kids, written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, identified a few places online as Hamm’s girlfriend.

I can’t wait.

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Lepage’s Walküre, or “Welcome to The Machine, part two”

Posted on May 15, 2011 by barczablog

It doesn’t matter how big they are.  Whether we’re speaking of fame or stature, every singer in the current Metropolitan Opera productions (both Das Rheingold and Die Walküre) directed by Robert Lepage & his Ex Machina group shares the stage with a bigger star.

Bryn Terfel

Bryn Terfel as he appeared in the publicity for last year’s Das Rheingold at the Met.

Bryn Terfel may be six foot four, but he is dwarfed by The Machine: the burly forty-five ton behemoth of a thousand shapes and configurations.  The Machine can impersonate mountains, trees, or any shape in a landscape.  The Machine can be a troop of flying horses, ridden by Valkyries.  The Machine can be a projection surface for slides, flickering fire, avalanches, or shadow puppetry.

And The Machine can be temperamental as a Prima Donna, it seems.  Saturday’s High Definition broadcast was delayed for about 40 minutes.  From what we were told on air technicians were being careful and so had to be certain that the device would perform as required.  Given the recent high-profile scandal centering on stunts and safety surrounding the production of Spiderman: Take Back the Dark such cautions are perhaps a good idea.  A falling singer quickly inspires gossip and scandal, although i do believe there’s a genuine concern at the Met for the safety of the performers.

One of the magical moments in Das Rheingold

That Magical Ex Machina Machine

Please don’t mistake me for some sort of purist, defending the good old days of opera against the onslaught of modern technology & design.  In fact I am thrilled with Lepage’s work, and not via the partisan loyalty of a Canadian supporting a Canadian artist.  I was merely calling attention to a detail that’s inescapable to those of us who sat through that 40 minute delay.

Before I write my review, I want to also call attention to the inescapable fact that I wasn’t there.  The operas being presented for High Definition broadcast are now receiving a larger audience in worldwide theatre presentations than in person.  I do not know how the comparison works in terms of revenue given that I only paid a tiny sum at my Cineplex, whereas tickets at the Met are considerably more, meaning that one body in person is likely equivalent to several cinema bodies.  But even so, we’d have to assume that the process of opera is being changed by these theatrical showings.

The ideal style of presentation in a big huge venue such as the Met Opera  House is different than what we’d want to see and hear in a camera close-up.  Whereas big gestures and big loud voices are a requirement in the big theatre, those would become a liability on the small screen.  I can’t help but think someone has been thinking of this, considering the subtlety of some of the portrayals seen in the Ring so far.  Both Richard Croft and Bryn Terfel, who sang with great subtlety in Das Rheingold, received boos from their opening night audience, portrayals that were pure magic in the cinematic version.  I felt I had to make that substantial digression because this review concerns the theatre broadcast, and not the version seen in the opera house.

At this point roughly half-way through I am happy to express my admiration without reservation.  Of the Ring cycles presented since the premiere in 1876, the trend in the first half-century was predominantly conservative representational design; a great many since have gone off on conceptual tangents, turning the Ring into a treatise or an abstract template of some sort.  Lepage’s Ring is neither, and I am not sure that there’s an easy label ready for us to apply to what they—Lepage and his collaborative team Ex Machina—have been doing.  I’d like to simply notice the things that work, and give myself permission to enjoy it.  I had a good time at the theatre today, even with the delay.

In the first scene I am sure I wasn’t the only one delighted by the action unfolding as Siegmund escaped his pursuit.  The Machine impersonated a forest admirably.  Once Siegmund came through the wall into Hunding’s dwelling—a flexible presentational space—The Machine seemed to disappear.  So many details seemed right.  For example, if you were in a house with a tree growing through your ceiling, and someone had then stuck a sword into that tree—possibly a normal state of affairs for hobbits or Volsungs, but certainly nothing with which I have any real experience—it seems totally reasonable that after awhile you would get over the oddness of having that sword sticking out of the tree.  Eventually you’d start hanging clothes on it, as Hunding and his wife had been doing.  And because the normal courtship procedure for Hunding and his clan was forcible abduction, it stands to reason that if his wife were to contradict him in front of a stranger that he’d have a tantrum and throw dishes around the table, terrorizing his wife (like the wife-beating scum he probably was).

Lepage’s treatment of Hunding reminds me a bit of his treatment of Fasolt (from the previous opera).  In both cases, I believe we see something a bit different than usual.  Fasolt is the one in love with Freia, the goddess for whom the giants build Valhalla as part of the bargain at the centre of the plot of Rheingold.  Lepage offered us something a bit unexpected, namely a bit of eye contact between Freia and Fasolt suggesting that in fact the relationship might have been at least a little bit mutual.   Similarly, Hunding seems genuinely interested in Siegmund’s story-telling, at least until he gets to the part close to home, involving the recent deaths of relatives.  Both of these are problematic precisely because they’re subtler than the usual two-dimensional portrayals we tend to get.

And there are other examples of human relationships that Lepage explores in unexpected ways.  The brief appearance by the goddess Fricka in Act II of Die Walküre is a key moment in the plot of the opera.  Wotan and Brünnhilde had been happy about the plot developments we’d seen in the first act, namely the flight of Siegmund and Sieglinde away from her husband Hunding; Fricka, goddess of the hearth & home, is outraged and comes to Wotan demanding that Hunding’s rights be upheld.  Even worse in her eyes is the fact that Siegmund & Sieglinde are twins.  Most times Fricka is a rhetorical powerhouse, which is to say, that it’s assumed that any love that might have existed between Wotan and Fricka is long dead.

But that’s not what Lepage gave us.  Bryn Terfel’s Wotan and Stephanie Blythe’s Fricka are more than mere rhetorical antagonists.  At times Blythe is tearful, and hurt; and this current gambit is an error because she pushes him away thereby.  She seems genuinely surprised by how her demands have upset him, and not at all triumphant.  Yes she’s won; but she is now slamming the door on the relationship, and realizes it belatedly.

Ex Machina design

The eyes have it. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.

In the scene that follows, we encounter a new scenic device.  Wotan is a one-eyed god because he sacrificed an eye as part of the bargain whereby he obtains his power.  During Wotan’s introspective monologue, a gigantic eye appears.  At times it’s used as a surface for the projection of shadow images, at other times  simply a focal point (excuse the pun) for this powerful scene.

Speaking of which, the Valkyries were perhaps the biggest eye-opener for me.  I have never liked the set piece that opens Act III (the celebrated Ride of the you know who) partly because it always felt like a hunk of filler in the opera, bringing the plot to a dead stop in an act where precious little happens otherwise.  Lepage again shows us something very different.  The Machine portrays flying horses, albeit in a somewhat abstracted form closer to a teeter-totter than anything genuinely equine.  Even so, I would say this is easily the closest I’ve come to seeing the Valkyries do their job of riding & collecting the dead (we also saw that in a somewhat grisly decomposed form).  I never expected to like it so much.

But the Valkyries really come into their own after the arrival of Brünnhilde and Sieglinde, again riding an abstract flying beast.  One subtle thing that impressed me was that although Voigt is nowhere near as young as the women playing her sister Valkyries, we still believed the relationship, partly because of the horseplay we’d seen in Act II between father & daughter, partly because of the way Voigt moved.  Given the close-up camerawork, that’s no mean feat.  I have seen so many other productions where a combination of diva body-language, size and age, or simply bad staging conspire to make Brünnhilde seem different from her sisters.

What follows is a scene working in a way I have never seen before, a display of genuine passion and tears that serve as a perfect counter-balance to Wotan’s anger.  Instead of a sudden abrupt tonal change with Sieglinde’s mournful lines, there was a logical through-line I’d never seen before.

And I found the last scene between Brünnhilde and Wotan especially effective.  I say that even though I was not fond of Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde; all the more reason to be fascinated at the magic in the final scene.  The third star onstage with Terfel & Voigt –The Machine—was not a scene-stealer, just a subtle contributor to the magic that left me wiping my eyes afterwards.

Terfel played the scene as if he is torn throughout, and at one moment seems to be on the verge of hugging –and possibly forgiving—Brünnhilde: but stops himself.  Playing it this way –not a stern bogeyman who goes all mushy at the end, but rather, someone who is conflicted, has all along loved her, just as he loved Siegmund—makes his final compromise seem inevitable.

Jonas Kaufmann is Siegmund, Eva-Maria Westbroek is Sieglinde: they even look a bit like they could be twins

I haven’t spoken of the excellent performers, which I think are covered in all the many reviews you can find online.  I was amazed at their subtlety in close-up, where many performances are confounded.  I found Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund & Bryn Terfel were especially believable.

When they offer the encore presentation of the high-def broadcast I wonder whether it will include the 40 minute delay intact?  In Toronto the encore is scheduled for June 18th.  Live? The Met season is over, but after the 2011-2012 season, the Met will be presenting three complete Ring Cycles.  If you’re interested you might consider buying tickets now; but so far at least, tickets are only available to Met subscribers or contributors.  Hmmmm….

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Rheingold by Request

Posted on May 14, 2011 by barczablog
Rhine-maiden Rage

Rhine-maiden rage: they want their Rheingold back.

A concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold can be many things, but above all, it’s a colossal job.  For almost three hours, a group of singers breathes life into Gods, giants, dwarves, and Rhine-maidens, while a pianist impersonates a huge orchestra playing possibly the most colourful score of any opera ever written.  And just to make it really interesting, Wagner doesn’t put any intermissions into that near three-hour test.

Tonight the audience for Opera by Request’s Das Rheingold watched and heard Bill Shookhoff  impersonate a  giant, providing the backbone for the performance.  The undulations of the river, the pounding of the Nibelungen hammers, the thunderstorm and rainbow that followed, were all conjured from the piano by the magician Shookhoff.  He was the true star of the show.

William Shookhoff

William Shookhoff

In the cast, there were several impressive performances.  As Wotan, Andrew Tees’s voice definitely has the appropriate heft and power for Wagner, powerful top to bottom, and especially bright at the top.  Alla Ossipova made a wonderful impression in the dual role of Fricka, and an especially powerful Erda.  Lenard Whiting showed a broad range of vocal colour as Loge.

John Holland was a very theatrical Alberich, while Nick Gough was persuasive as his brother Mime.  Dolores Tjart anchored the Rhine-maidens as Woglinde, and also made a sympathetic Freia.

Opera by Request return June 10th for Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera.

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