Authentic Encounters

Posted on September 7, 2019 by barczablog
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Professor Jill Carter, Curator & Director of “Encounters”

Tonight I witnessed the first of the three performances of Encounters at the “Edge of the Woods” being presented at Hart House Theatre, a Storyweaving project in association with Hart House’s 100th Anniversary.  This is a worthy vehicle to commemorate a site that is arguably the cradle of Canadian theatre, a place pre-dating Stratford or Shaw, as noted by Professor Jill Carter in the talkback session afterwards.

It’s both a collective creation and a pedagogical experience for the participants.

I found myself bemused by the recognition that this was theatre when it was also clearly a kind of testimony, each person bringing their own life-stories to be honed & assembled by their Professor Jill Carter: their instructor, director, curator and perhaps also mentor.

Last week I was in Stratford for one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I’ve seen in a long time, yet that was unmistakeably theatre, as we watched actors moving, their wheels turning in their heads as they prepared to deliver a line. It was a piece of art.

This was not freighted with that virtuoso polish, and as a result what we got was much more genuine. Often the delivery was leavened with irony & humour, but sometimes we were in the realm of the confession.

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One of the funnier moments in the Encounters at the “edge of the woods” (Photography by Scott Gorman)

This was 100% authentic and real.

If you’ve been observing the ongoing conversation around reconciliation with our Indigenous populations, you’ll be aware of such things as the recent controversy about the use of the word ”genocide” in the report following the national inquiry into missing & murdered Indigenous women & girls; I wonder if you share my discomfort at this response? surely the word is used correctly. Quibbling over the word adds insult to injury. When we talk about the residential schools, I hope there’s no controversy in calling it cultural genocide, when we remember that children were forcibly taken from their families and force-fed another culture while stripping away their own languages. That “G” word reared its controversial head again tonight. The sadness & anger that we glimpsed were balanced by other feelings, including celebration, appreciation, and some gentle ceremonial moments. I can’t claim to be average, but I believe that for those of us who think of ourselves as allies, an experience like the one I had tonight is very inspiring, very cathartic. I was thinking of how even if one goes to church one doesn’t expect salvation from one trip, but rather from a lifetime of prayer & practice, of thoughtful reflection and careful action. Perhaps works like this can also serve that ritual function, to take us through darkness towards something like reconciliation.

Let me set the content question aside, to properly acknowledge what Jill accomplished with her team of students & collaborators. There were no performances that did not persuade me, indeed they didn’t seem like performances at all. This felt genuine rather than artificial, like a celebration. My admiration for what Jill achieved increased after I heard about the process in the talk-back session. It was a very passionate exchange, with Jill at times so moved as to be unable to speak as she expressed her gratitude. And indeed many of us were tearing up as we listened to her.

I won’t mention any performers except to remark upon the excellence of what we saw, the commitment & the vulnerability.  As a regular observer & participant in student theatre over decades, I was blown away tonight by what I saw.

There are two more performances on Saturday September 7th. For further information or for tickets click here.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Personal ruminations & essays, Politics, Spirituality & Religion, University life | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Birds of a Kind

Posted on September 1, 2019 by barczablog

I’ve just seen Birds of a Kind, a recent play by Wajdi Mouawad that received its English language premiere this month at the Stratford Festival’s studio theatre space. I was drawn to it by Ken Gass’s strong recommendation, and recalling my previous experiences of Mouawad

  • His direction of the Canadian Opera Company’s co-production (with Opéra de Lyon) of Abduction from the Seraglio in early 2018
  • Denis Villeneuve’s film Incendies adaptating Mouawad’s play
  • A production of Mouawad’s play Scorched (Incendies translated into English) that I saw at University of Toronto
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Playwright & director Wajdi Mouawad

Currently director of Le Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris, Mouawad was previously Artistic Director of French theatre at the National Arts Centre, and appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

I interrupt this lengthy preamble to mention that Birds of a Kind is the best production of a play I’ve seen in a long time, possibly the best I’ve ever seen at Stratford.  It’s three hours and twenty minutes long with a 20 minute intermission, yet the time flies by, speaking as someone who regularly watches 3 and 4 hour operas.  I’ll try to avoid giving away too much about this play, that delivers several breathtaking surprises.

As with the COC co-production mentioned above, there’s a trans-Atlantic connection involving different companies. Stratford Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino who  directed Birds of a Kind, described the gradual gestation of the project (in this excerpt from the program note that I quote immediately below; you can explore them by clicking here), beginning back in 2006 from the inspiration of Natalie Zemon Davis’s book Trickster Travels concerning Leo Africanus,

“…a historical figure who many believe served as inspiration for the character of Othello.
A Moroccan diplomat who was born in Granada, Leo Africanus – or al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, as he was named at birth – was captured by pirates in the Mediterranean in 1518 on his way back from Mecca. Realizing they had no ordinary man in hand, the pirates made a gift of him to Pope Leo X. The Pope, a Medici prince, took a great liking to Wazzan and offered him liberty in exchange for his conversion to Christianity. Wazzan then wrote a series of brilliant books, including an introduction to Africa, a continent as yet largely unknown to Europeans. He is thought to have died in Tunis in 1554.”

The resulting play Tous des oiseaux won the critics award as the most outstanding piece of theatre in the Paris season for 2017/18.

Africanus aka Wazzan is at the heart of this story, whether in its French version or in the one seen here in Stratford, with the subtitle “English Translation by Linda Gaboriau.” I call attention to the problematic matter of language because it’s not just a play that was in French that’s now heard in English. Oh no. Indeed I don’t know for sure how many other languages we hear.

Just from the technical requirements of the cast, it’s a phenomenal tour de force when we observe that in addition to English, we hear German, Hebrew, at least one Arabic language, some of the cast functioning in multiple languages.  I’m grateful for the titles projected onto surfaces around the stage, enabling us to follow some of what’s being said. I say “some” because I’m a bit of an agnostic in my experience with titles. I’m certain that the production takes this very seriously considering how much is projected, sometimes in Arabic characters, when the Arabic speaker begins to speak in English. It’s magical yet I know that nuances can be lost, especially when we’re hearing the kind of passionate ferocity we get in so many places of this show.  I  suspect that every outing with this remarkable script is an event in the lives of this cast, particularly the principals.

It’s a bit of déjà vu reading Cimolino’s essay about the theme of the season as “Breaking Boundaries”, not unlike Toronto Summer Music’s recent festival theme “Beyond Borders”.  But Cimolino doesn’t have to remind us of the 21st century politics invoked in Tom Allen’s opening monologue earlier this summer (when he spoke of a certain American pre-occupied with walls & those who would cross them), not when they’re front & centre in this multi-generational play.

We begin with the young students, German-born Eitan who would reduce everything to chromosomes, denying anything transcendental, meeting the American Palestinian Wahida, who is doing her thesis on Africanus /Wazzan. The unlikely pairing is an affront to Eitan’s parents, David & Norah. But just when you think you see where the story might be going, we meet David’s parents Leah & Etgar. Where I thought I was to see a story reminding me of Romeo & Juliet, a pair of feuding cultures, Mouawad surprised me completely in the trajectories of the stories.

I found myself laughing often, wondering if I could comfortably call this piece a romantic comedy (recalling that for the first part of Shakespeare’s play we might mistake it for a romantic comedy: at least until the moment when Mercutio is surprised to notice that he’s been run through.  Mouawad seems darker than Shakespeare offering us fewer places to hide). But maybe genre is as misleading as language or culture, another label to deceive or confound you. I found myself thinking of the ambivalence of someone like Gustav Mahler, whose music encompasses agony & comedy sometimes in the very same moment. As usual Stratford feels like a refuge from the world, a place to enact rarities and to ask the deep questions.

I wondered too about the title itself, which is a bit problematic. Did they mean “birds of a feather” but chose to avoid that over-used epithet? The metaphor for the title is unpacked by Cimolino in the program notes.

“The title comes from a story told by Wazzan/Leo Africanus about an amphibious bird. In order to avoid paying taxes to the Bird King, the bird dives into the water and lives among the fish. He does so until the Fish King asks that he pay taxes. The bird then returns to the air – for a time. It’s telling that Wazzan is intrigued by the bird’s ability to defy the conventional demands of identity. Birds are not bound by walls or borders. If you could ask a bird, “Where are you from?” it would likely answer, “From all over!” Birds’ migratory routes inform their sense of identity, but no single place defines them.”

Cimolino might want to remind us that, as if to illustrate the Festival’s theme, birds break boundaries. But I think we would hear a different explanation from Eitan –the reductive one obsessed with our chromosomes—who might argue that the birds are simply flying and that to them boundaries don’t exist. Political fictions are nonsense to them, and arguably to humans as well. Love or faith transcend the lines drawn on the map.

Birds of a Kind flies on the wings of some remarkable performances in several languages. There was so much going on, that I suspect my focus is a bit like telling you what I saw staring at an inkblot, saying more about my neuroses than an accurate report of this densely textured piece, one I need to see again. Wahida from Baraka Rahmani opposite Eitan by Jakob Ehman are our Palestinian-American Juliet & our European Romeo, quickly sucking us into a story that will morph several times. Alon Nashman’s David eventually becomes the central figure of the play, enormously energetic in multiple languages, poignant & heart-breaking, opposite Sarah Orenstein, as his overly rational & reductive wife Norah. And again just when I thought I knew where it might be going I was blind-sided by the older generation, Deb Filler as Leah bluntly setting us straight again & again, in contrast to the gentle wisdom of Harry Nelken’s Etgar.  Sitting in the very back row I was still right on top of the action for this powerful piece; in other words there are no bad seats in this little theatre.

I found myself crying & laughing a great deal, and wanting to see it again.

As with Incendies I suspect Birds of a Kind / Tous des oiseaux will be filmed at some point. In the meantime if you have a chance to get to Stratford to see this play, do go see it.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Personal ruminations & essays, Politics, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Toronto Symphony’s new Berlioz CD

Posted on August 23, 2019 by barczablog

Did they know when they programmed the Toronto Symphony Concert for September 2018 featuring Berlioz works conducted by Sir Andrew Davis that it was going to make a good recording?

Here I am now thrilled to be able to listen to a new Chandos recording of one of those splendid concerts, just released a few weeks ago.

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I attended one of the concerts, a fun program featuring the Fantaisie sur la Tempête de Shakespeare, a piece that works nicely as a curtain-raiser at a little over 14 minutes in length for the Symphonie fantastique that follows. Berlioz re-purposed the Fantaisie to close Lélio, Berlioz’s dramatic sequel to the Symphonie fantastique, and indeed when you’re playing the CD one may begin with this charming little work, or if one keeps listening after the SF, one gets to hear the music Berlioz understood as the finale to the piece subtitled “the return to life”. They complement one another so remarkably well, you’d think they were meant to go together.

Which of course they were…

You wouldn’t mistake Berlioz’s work for an accurate treatment of Shakespeare, but that’s par for the course with this composer. His Roméo et Juliette is largely the story told from the young Romeo’s point of view, a bold paraphrase rather than an accurate telling of the story with a poet’s passionate flourishes. Similarly with the Fantaisie, Berlioz is offering a commentary upon the Tempest rather than telling the story. We hear the airy sounds of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, a chorus singing rapturously to Miranda, and warning her of Caliban & Ariel. Two pianos magically tinkle away, the simple direct melodies of the choral writing reminding me of the Apotheosis of Marguerite in the composer’s Damnation de Faust.

In other words it’s very beautiful. Please understand that I don’t say this because I want Berlioz to faithfully set the Shakespeare. Indeed I’m not sure anyone has ever done that, and besides, this is way more fun.

And to follow we get a performance of the Symphonie Fantastique. It’s a full meal, this CD at almost 70 minutes when you add the 14:25 Fantaisie to the 55:33 SF.

The Toronto Symphony and the SF are a good match. It’s a wild boisterous piece that can furnish a great test for your car’s new sound system. The TSO have been steadily adding new young talents, so that the skill level has arguably never been higher. With Davis they have a steady hand to lead them into the realm of fantasy & hallucination, to the brink of madness and back. I enjoyed writing about the piece last fall a few weeks before Canada legalized pot.

If you’ve never thought a classical piece could be stoner music, I have news for you. Symphonie Fantastique is arguably the first such composition, long before the Beatles said “let me take you down”. The combination of clear sound on the recording with an accomplished performance makes this hard to resist. I’ve surrendered to it over and over.

In the opening movement Davis coaxes a gentle aching vulnerability from the soft introduction, genuine “rêveries”. In due course Davis brings it to vivid life, the pace to suggest you are elated as though something is pulsing in your veins, your heart rate surging out of control, then subdued, then wildly excited again. The ball of the second movement is led masterfully by Davis, so elegant and precise you can almost see dancers in period costume. In the scene in the country that is our transition to the druggy realm Davis lets it sing sweetly, building inexorably to the perplexing ending (the sounds of distant thunder, portending the bad trip that is about to erupt) and the real fireworks that follow.

Thank goodness Davis is a purist, a guy who takes the repeats as written. It’s especially powerful in those last two movements, one a nightmare march to the scaffold (the timbres so bizarre especially in the use of the bassoons, building to an execution at the end), the other a quirky send-up of everything that has come before, the lovely melody now parodied in the ghostly finale. These last two movements are big and loud like heavy metal: except the metal is the brass section & percussion, not guitars. While it’s done without use of amplifiers, that doesn’t mean it’s quiet. There are places to make you jump as though you were watching The Shining. Davis keeps the TSO in check, patiently building to fabulous climaxes in each of the last two movements.

And the bonus is that you can then go on to listen to the Fantasie after the SF. It follows rather nicely, because it was from the sequel after all. I’ve had it in the car, playing it endlessly, letting one follow the other, on and on. They’re literally made for each other.

And by the way Berlioz died a little over 150 years ago.

Posted in Music and musicology, Popular music & culture, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Macho mystery: Till Havs

Posted on August 21, 2019 by barczablog

I’ve been listening to a song since childhood even though I still don’t really know what it means.

Imagine if the most impressive song you had ever heard was in a foreign language. So please picture the most impressive song you’ve ever heard, in your head.

Got it?

That could be a popular song or a classical aria or song. Imagine? Okay Computer? It’s now or never?  Oh patria mia? They’re all relatively easy to find.  Everyone is usually able to find their touchstone, and usually able to understand it.  Indeed, understanding is a part of the magic normally (although come to think of it, some songs –even in English– are pretty hard to understand. Radiohead?)

Because in my case, the music was well-nigh impossible to find it continued to be largely an unknown. And I feel like a cheat now that Google has made it possible to solve some of that mystery.

Not long ago my brother (who like me also loved the song) got the music as a gift from a student.  Finally we’re going to try it out. I’ve been playing the piano part in anticipation of him coming over to sing it. Bit by bit the mystery is receding.

The headline mentioned the word “macho” which tells you a lot about how I see the song. The title “Till havs” is Swedish for “At sea”.

But this is not like John Masefield’s poem “I must go down to the sea again”. That poem is nostalgic and distant, more in the head than out on the water. Of course the fact that I know what Masefield’s verse means changes it substantially. Till havs appeals to my subconscious because it’s more symbolic, a mostly musical experience, a song suggesting bravery, and the elemental power of the oceans.

And yes part of the magic comes from not knowing precisely what it means. In my youth –before the Canadian Opera Company invented surtitles, before titles became ubiquitous—we watched operas while knowing the synopsis and –if we were really keen—looking up the meaning of the text.

If you couldn’t find the score (and remember we couldn’t find this one until recently), you were out of luck. There was no google in the 1960s, ..or 70s… or 80s.

Although I was able to use google just now to translate the first part of the text, I feel like a cheater. So let me share the first part of the song (text by Jonatan Reuter 1859 – 1947):

Till havs                                                      At sea
Nu blåser havets friska vind                Now the fresh wind of the sea is blowing
ifrån sydväst                                            from the southwest
Och smeker ljuvligt sjömans                And sweetly caresses the sailor’s cheek
kind av alla vindar bäst!                       of all winds, the best…

Then we get to the refrain…

But instead of deconstructing / translating the song I prefer to keep it in the mysterious form it has held for me, unknown in another language.

The song calls forth a very masculine sound from the singer.  Most arias and songs encourage a more reflective side to the singer, indeed that’s probably why opera relies so heavily upon divas: because gentle reflection can exploit the best qualities of a female voice.  Short of heavy metal, what can a loud male voice do? There are some moments I can think of such as Hagen’s call to the vassals in Gotterdammerung: which may be loud but isn’t at all pretty.

And then there’s “Till havs”.  The music is by Gustaf Nordqvist (1886−1949).nordqvist

I have been hearing this song since childhood. Today for the first time I saw a couple of videos that allowed me to see the song sung, which changes it slightly. There’s less mystery when you can watch the singer, even if I still don’t know what the text means.

To begin, there’s the singer with whom I associate the song, Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, who died when I was just 5 years old, the same year as my father.

I associate the two in my head. I have almost zero memories of my father, who took the family first to Sweden (long before I was born), before  eventually bringing the family to Canada (where I was born).

So the association isn’t completely random. Far from it.

This is the first time I’ve found a version of Björling singing with video, so that I get some idea of what he looks like as he sings the song, which is nice I suppose.   The recording is from 1953.

But it was more magical on the old vinyl record.

Here’s a more recent version sung by baritone Carry Persson in a lower key.  The sound is clearer in the recent version. But I think I like it better in the tenor’s key. And the poor audio somehow seems more apt for a life that is less about technological prowess and more about grappling with the natural world.

 

And here is another look at Björling singing, this time with piano in 1958, about two years before his death.

Forgive me if I keep listening to the song without knowing precisely what every word means. Before too long I suppose I’ll find out.

But for now I like being in the dark.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The miraculous simplicity of Hearing Beethoven

Posted on August 14, 2019 by barczablog

I’m very grateful for the serendipity that led to Robin Wallace’s book even if the fate governing its creation is cruel indeed.

A shy and short-sighted musicologist named Robin married a nurse named Barbara. She was losing her hearing.  I suppose it had to happen eventually: that a student of Beethoven’s music would have a close-up experience of the life of a person who was gradually losing their hearing. As Robin observed Barbara’s fight to retain her ability to hear, her eventual deafness and the various strategies & responses in her life, it gave him insight into the composer’s comparable struggles in the 19th century, not just as a composer or pianist but as a man trying to cope.

Robin’s new book Hearing Beethoven is many things.

  • a study of the life & music of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
  • a memoir and love-letter to his wife Barbara
  • an insightful multi-disciplinary study of the composer & his relationship to his music, both as a pianist & as a composer
  • a wonderfully readable book (I devoured it in less than 24 hours,unable to put it down)

While I don’t believe this is a book for absolutely everyone (but then again what book is?), yet it creates a conversational space encompassing music & disability studies.  I did not expect to be sobbing while reading a book of musicology.  But it’s not just musicology, not when we’re also dealing with neuroscience, psychology, music perception & disability studies, just to mention the disciplines to which Wallace nods in the last paragraph of the book.

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Professor Robin Wallace

I hate it when film critics are spoilers, giving away key plot points.  But I know I’m not giving anything away when I mention that Barbara passed away.  Robin told us about her passing early in the book.  Yet even so when we got to the climactic events of December 2011 ending her life Robin wrote an eloquent epilogue speaking of embracing wholeness, and I am now treading carefully, aware that I can’t possibly do it justice in just a few words.  Suffice it to say that the book is so much more than musicology.

I’ve long wondered about the impact of Beethoven’s deafness on his compositions.  Ever notice how playful some of them are?  The opening minutes to the last movement of the Eroica for instance –going back and forth between huge loud orchestral sounds and soft little sounds surrounded by big rests—is surely a wonderfully creation.  Now listen to it recalling that it comes from someone dealing with hearing loss. Notice how quiet it gets around sixteen seconds into the movement in this clip. And then it gets louder.  Softer. Louder.  Of course there’s more to it than just Beethoven’s hearing issues, but when seen through that lens, we see/hear it in a different light.

Is he playing with us? Maybe.

Hearing Beethoven is true to its title.  While I’m delighted to have a different perspective, a whole new way of understanding the composer, yet I think I will be different in my dealings with the people I know who are having challenges with their hearing. There are at least three in my immediate family.  This is a book to give you not just insight but genuine empathy.  I will never hear, never play, never experience music the same way again.

Wallace offers more than just the insights into the composer’s hearing issues.  For example, he makes a wonderful comparison to Mozart –another composer who was exploited by his father—before offering an insightful quotation from Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child.

Quite often we are faced here with gifted patients who have been praised and admired for their talent and their achievements… these people—the pride of their parents—should have had a strong and stable sense of self-assurance. But exactly the opposite is the case. In everything they undertake they do well and often excellently; they are admired and envied; they are successful whenever they care to be—but all to no avail.  Behind all this lurks depression, the feeling of emptiness and self-alienation, and the sense that their life has no meaning.   [Miller cited in Wallace p28]

Wallace connects this masterfully to Beethoven’s life.

In the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven was clearly struggling to construct a sense of self-worth based on his continued ability to compose, despite the humiliation caused by his failing hearing which he described in the 1801 letter to Wegeler.  If by 1812 he was once again doubting his ability, this would be more than sufficient to explain the depths of depression that he suffered during the ensuing years.  As Miller points out, such people often reach to their own children for validation, thus perpetuating the cycle.  Beethoven had no child of his own, so it is hardly surprising that he now devoted a great deal of his energy to seeking one, rather than to the increasingly challenging task of composing music.    [Wallace 29]

And then Wallace reminds us that Beethoven sought custody of his nephew Karl…

I think Wallace is correct to say that Beethoven did not fully lose his hearing, a matter that’s rather hard to prove one way or another, following up on an assertion in a 1994 article from George Thomas Ealy.  Wallace offers the de facto evidence via Beethoven’s many efforts to obtain devices to compensate, such as hearing trumpets & attachments to pianos to magnify the sound.  Although he is never as reductive as I am being in what I am about to say: one wouldn’t do that if one were completely deaf, right? Surely that means he had some hearing left, and indeed Wallace produces an enormous amount of indirect evidence suggesting that Beethoven’s hearing loss was partial & gradual rather than complete.

The book goes back and forth between chapters about Beethoven in the early 19th century, and chapters about the Wallace family drama of hearing loss.  It’s so unlike what one usually finds in musicology and I must say it’s thereby so much better than what you usually get.  I am a believer in multi-disciplinary approaches, and indeed an agnostic about much of the musicology I read, because I find it too narrow.  I’m finally reading studies of opera that get that it’s not just music but a hybrid of text & music, a medium for spectacle & movement as well as music & words, all conditioned by complex factors of cultural contexts & market forces.  The humility of Wallace’s book is not just touching but apt.  Would that more musicologists would lose their egos and instead submit to the complexity of their study.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough.  I want my mom to read it, I want my wife to read it.

And you should read it too.

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Posted in Books & Literature, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays, Psychology and perception, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Funeral for Father Owen Lee Saturday, August 10th

Posted on August 7, 2019 by barczablog

The funeral for Father Owen Lee will take place on this Saturday, 10th August 2019 at 10 a.m. at St Basil’s Church, Bay Street at St Joseph. All lovers of music are encouraged to attend.

Although not a member of the Faculty of Music (he was a Basilian priest, and a member of the Classics Faculty at St Michael’s College) he was perhaps the most well-known and widely read musicologist at the University of Toronto.

In the citation for one of his three honorary degrees it was said that he was “perhaps the most famous faculty member at this University” beloved by an estimated eight million listeners to the Metropolitan radio broadcasts over 23 seasons. He received the University’s “outstanding teacher award”.

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Fr. Owen Lee, CSB received a Doctorate of Sacred Letters from the St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology at a convocation ceremony in 1999. Photo courtesy of the University of St. Michael’s College archive.

A scholarship was endowed in his name at the Faculty of Music, by Paul and Nancy Nickle and is awarded annually to a promising student in the Opera Division.

His four short books on Wagner have become essential reading for all Wagnerians. His “Wagner, the terrible man and his truthful art” is perhaps the most read introduction to the paradoxes of Wagner’s genius. His book on Wagner’s Ring Cycle “Turning the sky around” continues to be the best-selling introduction to that monumental work, according to Amazon.com and his other two Wagner books, on “Wagner and the Greeks – Athena sings” and on “Die Meistersinger – the wonder of art” are full of similarly succinct and masterly insights.

His thoughts on “Parsifal” were further elaborated in his book on the meaning of Quests (“The olive-tree bed”) which also provided an inspiring Jungian interpretation of the quests of Homer’s Odysseus, Goethe’s Faust, and Virgil’s Aeneas.

His insights into the wider operatic repertoire are contained in five other music books, two of which are particularly recommendable. Father Lee’s compendium of some of his radio scripts “First intermissions – twenty one great operas explained, explored and brought to life from the Met” and his follow-up compendium containing his program notes (for a further 23 operas for a variety of performing companies) “A season of opera – from Orpheus to Ariadne” have greatly expanded our knowledge of the art form.

*****

Announcement courtesy Iain Scott.

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera, Press Releases and Announcements, Spirituality & Religion, University life | Leave a comment

SOLT, The Importance of

Posted on August 5, 2019 by barczablog

This afternoon I saw the closing matinee of EARNEST, The Importance of Being, presented by Summer Opera Lyric Theatre and Research Centre (aka SOLT), at the Robert Gill Theatre. It’s an operetta based on Oscar Wilde’s play with music by Victor Davies and libretto from Eugene Benson, directed by SOLT General Director Guillermo Silva-Marin.

It’s my second look at the adaptation I previously reviewed in a presentation by Toronto Operetta Theatre back in 2015 (and premiered in 2008), when I think I misread the work in my first look at it. Today I had the chance to chat with the composer during intermission.

Davies & Benson faced an interesting set of options in taking up one of the greatest comedies in English. How are we to understand genre, or more to the point, what were their aims in their adaptation? I mistakenly called the piece a musical (the implications of that headline from back in 2015) , wishing I could see it in the hands of a cast such as the outstanding students at a school such as Ryerson. But in places the women’s parts, especially the vocal challenges of Cecily, are simply beyond what you’d usually expect from a player in the realm of musical.  Oh sure, graduates are now what we’d call “triple threats”, with capabilities as actors, singers & dancers. But when you drill down on that you discover that the vocal capabilities are for a pretty voice but not necessarily the extreme skillset required of Cecily, whose part ascends to the stratosphere many times. So in other words I was wrong.

This is an operetta: because Benson & Davies were mindful of the context for Wilde’s play. One can’t help thinking of Gilbert & Sullivan while listening to this score, and not just because  G & S are roughly contemporary with Wilde. It’s a tuneful adaptation but perhaps more important, it’s deliberate. There are several places where a small pretense in the text turns into an aria or an ensemble expanding upon that little gem. A 21st century musical would never be so deliberate, as the commercial imperative would push the piece to move quicker, and in so doing, to feel less authentic. Cecily & Gwendolyn are positively Victorian in their manners, adorably detailed creations. If Davies & Benson were not quite as successful in capturing that magical essence in the men, it’s only because they get blown off the stage by these remarkable women: not just the young ones but also Miss Prism & Lady Bracknell as well.

So in other words the four female cast members today were exemplary. You couldn’t take your eyes off of Karen Bojti’s Lady Bracknell whose every movement generated hilarity with a voice & a presence that was truly larger than life. Katelyn Bird (Cecily) seems aptly named for her brilliant coloratura & precise intonation, while Anika-France Forget (Gwendolyn) was an effective contrast, every bit as playful & vocally impressive.  Stephanie O’Leary has her moments too as Miss Prism, especially in her big scene near the end of the piece

Perhaps most important, the operetta is quite a funny piece of work that had me laughing out loud throughout. The adaptation doesn’t lose the wit of the original, and director Silva-Marin gave his cast lots of great business to illuminate the text.  Whatever the abilities of this cast — and they range from beginner to expert –Silva-Marin ensures that they all look good even when we can see that the performer is just learning how to act: so that the illusion is compelling & absorbing.  We get a great piece of theatre.

SOLT are a force training young singing talent for the world of opera. I put that headline on there, playing with the operetta’s title as I contemplate the future for Guillermo Silva-Marin. My mind is thinking of succession planning for at least a couple of reasons:

  • Because it’s something we’re looking at within my own organization
  • Because Alexander Neef is now known to be leaving the Canadian Opera Company, and speculation has begun as to his successor with the COC
  • Because in the lobby there was a mysterious lobby display with balloons mentioning retirement. I was asked about it, and I don’t think it’s for Guillermo (as far as I know) but rather from the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies, –the home department at University of Toronto in the Robert Gill Theatre– and who hosted a retirement reception for a professor back in May.
    That’s my best guess.

I was looking at his many accomplishments on Guillermo’s website, including

  • founder of Toronto Operetta Theatre in 1985 (34 years ago)
  • founder of Summer Opera Lyric Theatre in 1986 (33 year ago)
  • And General Director of Opera in Concert since 1994 (25 years ago)

If he were to decide he’s had enough and walked away from his tripartite career who would take over at the helm of his many important activities? SOLT? Opera in Concert? Toronto Operetta Theatre? I don’t have any answer, and indeed I hope I don’t seem impertinent for mentioning this. But SOLT (like TOT & Opera in Concert) is an important organization. We need for all three to continue.

gsm2

Guillermo Silva-Marin, General Director of SOLT

I am tempted to sing the blessing from Turandot that’s addressed to the Emperor.  God bless Guillermo.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews, University life | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Song of the Earth

Posted on August 2, 2019 by barczablog

I can’t help noticing symmetry in 2019’s Toronto Summer Music and its Beyond Borders theme.

The Festival opened July 12th with a concert featuring a Mozart sonata including the famous rondo “alla Turca” and a 20th century song cycle in a reduction to a smaller –sized ensemble. Tonight in the last TSM concert at Koerner Hall a Mozart concerto bearing the epithet “Turkish” and another 20th century song cycle presented in a reduced form would seem to bookend the Festival for us.

And both concerts were extraordinary.

Tonight we heard a reduced version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (aka The Song of the Earth) a work for two singers normally with a large orchestra. In this reduction begun by Arnold Schoenberg in the decade following Mahler’s death, and only finished by Rainer Riehn in 1983, we encounter a new set of parameters for the six songs of the cycle, not unlike what we heard in the reduced “Four Last Songs” premiered last month. I think it becomes a new composition with different requirements, a different kind of balance & dynamics, amenable to lighter voices.

Aug-1-Rihab-Chaieb

Mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb

We heard soloists Rihab Chaieb and Mario Bahg, the ensemble led by conductor Gemma New. The Schoenberg-Riehn score is for about 14 players (2 violins, viola, cello, double bass, harmonium, piano, percussion(2), horn, flute/piccolo, oboe/English horn, clarinet(s), bassoon), most if not all called upon to function as virtuoso soloists. There are no easy parts, indeed some are extremely challenging. Add to that the brisk tempi New took—especially in the wildest parts of “Von der Schönheit (Of Beauty)”—and you’re seeing something rare. With the usual orchestration that fast middle part of the song can be a loud murky mess (sorry Gustav), with its overtones of sexual violence: but New and Chaieb were crisp & precise, giving it a hair-raising ride. Is it heresy to suggest that this version fixes a part of the cycle that needs to be fixed? Perhaps.  At this moment Mahler captures the battle between yin & yang, perfect order confronted with a big noise, reflection vs action: just like life itself.   If we are to understand that the reduced version aimed for clarity, it’s fair to say that that goal was achieved, as inner voices came through as never before.

(morning after thought… deconstruction/analysis take us inside a work leading us to understand it better. Students used to be asked to paraphrase & reduce works as part of their study. Playing a piano reduction for instance gives you a sense of the interplay of voices that’s invaluable…DITTO hearing a new version like this one)

It was a great pleasure watching New’s direction, her body language so articulate as to seem to paint the music in the air before her.  This was a fast & dynamic interpretation, one that deserves to be heard again.

Gemma_new

Gemma New (Fred Stucker Photography)

Bahg too has a remarkable voice with a gorgeous colour and fabulous legato, that he mostly kept in check in matching the dynamics of the ensemble. From time to time he unfurled a big gorgeous note especially up top.  Both soloists easily filled the space with their sound, articulating words & expressing the text clearly. These songs were the best thing I heard in the 2019 Festival.  I’m dying to hear it again.

Jonathan Crow has been everywhere in TSM, both as the Artistic Director and often as the star, and tonight he had me wondering if this was a bridge too far given that he was in effect playing exposed solos all night. Yet except for a few moments in the opening movement of the Mozart, when he was perhaps just getting warmed up, Crow continued to impress with his agile sound & full tone. In the first half of the concert we heard 3 movements that got better and better. I think it’s fair to say that the third movement was the one that really excited Crow, both for its quirky inter-cultural overtones (in keeping with the Festival’s theme after all) and for the challenges it posed.

The Festival concludes this weekend.

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Crow Comes Out

Posted on July 30, 2019 by barczablog

Tonight’s concert at Walter Hall –“Europe and the New World”—in the Toronto Summer Music Festival put artistic director Jonathan Crow into the spotlight.  He seems very comfortable there.

That’s what I’m getting at with the headline. Our concert was sold out, the audience buzzing with excitement.  We watched violinist Crow and pianist Philip Chiu play a series of pieces from either side of the Atlantic.

The young concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony with the matinee idol looks also has wit & charm to burn, as we saw between pieces tonight.  And with this year’s festival he’s arriving as a genuine star in this city.

jonathan-crow

Toronto Summer Music Artistic Director Jonathan Crow

There were four items on the program plus an encore.

  • Brahms’s Scherzo in C minor
  • César Franck’s Sonata for violin & piano
    intermission
  • Heifetz’s arrangements of five selections from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess for violin & piano
  • Corigliano’s Sonata for violin & piano

Crow introduced the encore with a dedication to Toronto Symphony’s longtime manager Walter Homburger, who passed away a few days ago at the age of 95.

homberger_TSO

Walter Homburger, onetime manager of the Toronto Symphony, who passed away this week.

For the second time in the past few days, a TSM concert encore featured a piece by Healey Willan, namely his Romance.

Chiu was very much Crow’s equal throughout even if we may be a bit more familiar with Crow.  In the Brahms I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of weight he used, especially in a series of triplet eruptions, resembling a galloping rhythm.  It was a great omen for a concert requiring a pianist to take the stage and not merely “accompany” the soloist.

Philip_Chiu

Pianist Philip Chiu

The Franck sonata is perhaps best known for its finale featuring a melody that gets passed back and forth between the two instruments.  I was amused watching Chiu turn his head to watch Crow before some of their entries, a remarkable feat even if he weren’t also playing as well.

After the interval it was Gershwin’s turn via Heifetz’s stunning arrangements.  Chiu gave a recommendation to the audience that tempted me to stand up –big mouth that I am—because he was telling people they need to go see Porgy & Bess.

I’m surprised he didn’t mention that it’s featured on February 1st 2020 in this season’s Metropolitan Opera high-definition broadcasts, starring two singers seen in Toronto, namely Angel Blue (seen in last season’s La boheme) and Eric Owens (seen in Hercules a few seasons back).

What we heard tonight were those wonderful tunes, via Crow’s violin.  Heifetz’s brilliance was able to turn a duet (“Bess you is my woman now”) into a virtuoso violin solo, Chiu’s piano grounding the violin with the necessary jazziness.

To close we were dazzled by Corigliano’s sonata, a work Crow rightly described as having “many notes”. Oh yes, and they were played with fire & passion.

Toronto Summer Music is in its last week.

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New beginnings in snakeskin

Posted on July 27, 2019 by barczablog

It has been a week of new beginnings.

Today was Benjamin Kidd’s ordination. As of Saturday July 27th he is no longer a student. I wonder if we’re now supposed to call him “Reverend Ben”? Perhaps that comes out as #RevBen in the world of hashtags.

I wore a shirt that for me symbolizes new beginnings. I recall being a bit scared to wear it to church when I first saw it, recalling the Biblical characterization of snakes.

snakeskin

But maybe snakes deserve second chances? I know I have taken to this shirt now that I see it as an avatar of rebirth, of new beginnings.

I’ve said little about the flood in our house, although yes it’s been a factor in my comparatively quiet spring this year. It’s almost as though I’ve been AWOL for the spring of 2019, compared to past years.

  2017 2018 2019
April 18 15 15
May 16 10 8
June 9 12 8
July 11 8 4
Totals 54 45 35

It has been a challenging spring, this 2019 version.

You may recall my tale of the tick, reporting a bite inflicted several months ago. I didn’t speak of the new dog Samantha (aka “Sam”), new in the sense of “new to us” although she’s 11 or 12 years old. Being a rescue it’s hard to know her precise age. But she’s amazing, often lying underneath the piano while I’m playing. She’s smart enough to know: flattery will get you everywhere, especially if you’re a dog.

SAM_in_piano

If Sam seems a bit blurry it’s because she’s actually reflected in the surface of the piano.

And we had a flood. While we’ve been blessed, fortunate in our insurance coverage, that doesn’t change the disruption we’ve endured the past few months.

Last week we took the first delivery of boxes returning to us from storage including CDs, DVDs, music books, all sort of things we had to live without since the end of March. They arrived on our anniversary, a lovely coincidence that reinforces my sense of new beginnings: new beginnings for Ben, a new life for Sam, and for us as well.

I will gradually return to a more active life, although yes, I still have lots to unpack & organize. The scores aren’t yet in alphabetical order, nor the DVDs.

Of course I did alphabetize the CDs.

CDs

The mysterious dark one is an interview with Jon Vickers.

I am just basking in the afterglow of Ben’s ordination service, that included a very wacky postlude. I cobbled together a medley of tunes based on Ben’s requests (via Facebook), because of his past associations with the Canadian Forces.

This includes

  • Logistics – (March of the logistics branch)
  • Medical – (Farmers boy)
  • Chaplain – (Ode to joy)

And so here’s how it went.

1) We start with “Joyful joyful we adore thee” (aka the ode to joy from Beethoven’s 9th) in G, and forgive me for presupposing that you know that tune.

2) The Farmer’s Boy in B-flat (G being the relative minor to B flat, in other words easy to segue)

3) March of the Logistics branch in E-flat (a natural, especially when the first notes of this march start on that B-flat)


4) …and knowing that Ben loves Star Wars, we did a little segue into the rebellion’s theme in C Minor (the relative minor to E flat)

5) And to finish we go to the Ode to Joy (Joyful joyful we adore thee) in C (major this time) with a big AMEN to finish.

Bridging each segment I let the fanfares from the Star Wars Throne Room scene (near the end of Episode 4) to serve as the natural glue to attach each segment to the next.

I think there’s a party tonight, but I had to get home to look in on Sam, who had been alone all afternoon.  12 years old, when translated into dog years? (7 years for each human year). Do the math.

She’s older than me, that’s for sure.

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