A concert is not a litmus test but even so today’s free noon-hour concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre is an unmistakable sign of health in the community of women creating opera in this country, and apt in the home of the Canadian Opera Company. We saw prize winners of the Inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes: “a new $25,000 award in Canada supporting the creation of operas by emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists.”
And how wonderful that today we heard some of the great things that they’re creating, a preview of the Next Wave Workshop that’s to be presented Saturday night March 23rd by Musique 3 Femmes with the support of Tapestry Opera at Ernest Balmer Studio. The basic template is the same for today as for March 23rd: five teams of librettist, composer & director working on an operatic idea, sung by one or more of Suzanne Rigden, soprano, Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano, Lindsay Connolly, mezzo-soprano, and played by Jennifer Szeto at the piano. Where today’s examples were sung from music stands, Saturday night we’ll get staged excerpts. In addition to the music we also heard different perspectives of composer, librettist and director weighing in on an aspect of their project. Today’s sampler left me wanting to hear & see more.
Here’s how they describe the prize-winning projects, including their projected future productions.
L’HIVER ATTEND BEAUCOUP DE MOI
Composer: Laurence Jobidon (QC)
Librettist: Pascale St-Onge (QC)
Director: Aria Umezawa
Amidst the harsh and cold weather of northern Quebec, Léa tries to reach a safe-house in order to protect herself and her unborn child. She meets Madeleine, a tormented woman who promises to lead her to the end of a road where no one else goes. L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi is a chamber opera that pays tribute to feminine solidarity and resilience, as well as to the strength of the Quebecois territory. The work is led in Toronto by director and former San Francisco Opera Adler fellow Aria Umezawa and will see its full premiere in Montreal in March 2020.
BOOK OF FACES
Composer: Kendra Harder (SK)
Librettist: Michelle Telford (SK)
Director: Jessica Derventzis
“Nothing on Earth has prepared me for life like the Internet…” Book of Faces is a comic opera exploring the world of social media and two millennials for whom the struggle is just too real. The second collaboration between Saskatoon composer Kendra Harder and librettist Michelle Telford, Book of Faces sees a world premiere at Next Wave Workshop led by director and Artistic Director of Opera 5 Jessica Derventzis, and later performances as part of Highlands Opera Studio’s 2019 summer season.
Singing Only Softly is a song-cycle opera by Toronto composer Cecilia Livingston, featuring an original libretto by Monica Pearce inspired by redacted texts from Anne Frank’s famous diary. The work explores Anne’s complex adolescence, her growing maturity, and her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Edith. Singing Only Softly is led here by Loose Tea Music Theatre founder and Artistic Director, stage director Alaina Viau, and features guest artist soprano Gillian Grossman. Singing Only Softly sees a full production by Loose Tea Music Theatre in May 2019.
SUITES D’UNE VILLE MORTE
Composer: Margareta Jeric (QC)
Librettist: Naima Kristel Phillips (QC)
Director: Amanda Smith
A woman returns to a place where she fell in love. She finds a piano on a heap of rubble. An exploration of the anatomy of a piano, this work examines the interplay of loss and connection in a world where everything can change in an instant. Based on the play Ghost Town Suites by Naima Kristel Phillips, Suites d’une ville morte is the first collaboration by Phillips with Croatian-Canadian composer Margareta Jeric. The work is in development for Toronto’s FAWN Chamber Creative, and is led here by FAWN founder and stage director Amanda Smith.
THE CHAIR
Composer: Maria Atallah (ON)
Librettist: Alice Abracen (QC)
Director: Anna Theodosakis
“You didn’t even know her name. You don’t even know my name.” With an original libretto by Alice Abracen on a short story by composer Maria Atallah, The Chair explores grief, loss, and friendship through the eyes of a teenager. Melanie loses her best friend in a tragic accident and returns to school to face throng of well-wishers and a mysterious new classmate. For the Next Wave Workshop, the piece is led by COC Ensemble dramatic coach and founder of Toronto’s Muse 9 Productions, stage director Anna Theodosakis.
The sequence for today’s presentation was different.
We began with a little bit of (1) Singing Only Softly, from the team of Livingston, Pearce & Viau, based on redacted texts that didn’t appear in Anne Frank’s diary. It’s described as a “song cycle opera”, a concept I can’t pretend to unpack on the basis of what we heard so far. It’s an interesting challenge to adapt something that is so well-known (the character at least) yet brand new (the text). Livingston’s vocal writing & Pearce’s libretto also with Viau’s direction successfully conveyed the right impression of a girl. I’m not sure if I’d call it an illusion or simply that they did not transgress the bounds of what I expected from such a well-known character.
Jeric, Phillips & Smith took us 180 degrees in the other direction musically even if we were in some respects in similar territory, with another story involving war, (2) Suites d’une ville morte. But where Livingston’s music was gently tonal, Jeric gave us a wildly playful adventure. We’re to imagine that a woman returns to a war-torn city finding a piano on top of a heap of rubble (broken? Perhaps the last vestige and the last remnant of life & culture?). While this might be wonderful staged, what we saw in the concert performance was an invitation to our poetic imaginations. Szeto was playing on and in a prepared piano, at times strumming and making this instrument –that we could imagine as a virtual character in this opera– sing, while the singers tapped their chests and produced all manner of sounds, before they did finally begin to sing too. I found it wonderfully problematic that one could ask who is the instrument and who is the singer. The concept is pregnant with possibilities.
(3) The Chair from Attalah, Abracen & Theodosakis showed us something different again, and had me admiring the jaw-dropping contrasts, in the way they curated this concert. We went from…
1-something straight-forward in its innocent portrayal of childhood to…
2-something wilder & more dissonant, and now …
3-in this the third item the first glimpse of irony & layers between the surface and the interior, all in a brief presentation. So much of our lives is a performance, and here it was wonderful to see the distance between what was being said and what was being felt, shown with such clarity and edge by this team.
For the next one, from Jobidon, St-Onge & Umezawa, we went in a new direction that was in some respects very conventionally operatic –a woman’s suffering—but shown in a whole new way. (4) L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi shows us emotion and pain, in a very beautiful and tuneful package, the piano writing also very powerful. While I understand that the story concerns “solidarity & resilience” (as stated above), I don’t think we were hearing that in the passage heard today. This was for me the most conventionally operatic sounding of the first four excerpts, and given the politics of the occasion I hope that’s okay to say..(?).
The team from furthest away were present to talk a bit about their work. Harder & Telford are from Saskatchewan, and worked with Derventis on a comic opera about social media. Facebook begat (5) Book of Faces. As composer Kendra Harder explained she envisaged oratorio when she composed; the result is somewhat parodic, reminding me of the irony we get in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera or perhaps what we hear in Gilbert & Sullivan, in the collision between the stiffness of a style and the wackiness of Telford’s text. All that was missing was the voice-over “and now for something completely different”. Our finale –an aria titled “Take it to Tumblr”—was the most recognizably operatic display of the day, pushing soprano Suzanne Rigden to the top of her range & her most agile coloratura. It was deliciously silly.
If you want to hear more of any & all of these, you need to get a ticket to Saturday’s “Musique 3 Femmes: The Next Wave”.
I started writing this one and shoved it aside because I’m swamped with several things at the same time. That’s life in Toronto if you’re keeping up with the music or opera or theatre scene, let alone trying to see them all, as I sometimes attempt to do.
But writing in response to a performance is the easiest, passive rather than active. That’s the main reason I aim to write the night of the show, so that there’s no backlog of responses. Notice that I call it a “response”: as though it’s visceral & muscular, merely the twitching digits when electrodes are attached, fingers dancing on the keys, and not the conscious choice to write something. The brain doesn’t come into it. But –if you can excuse and even follow the plethora of parenthetical thoughts like side trips wandering away from the main track, the train of thought—when one is busy there must be more of a choice, what shows to see, what to miss.
I am coming back to something I started writing last weekend. It seems apt to come back to this today given that there was a surprising dusting of snow last night, interrupting the steady advance of spring. Hector Berlioz died on March 8th 1869, or in other words 150 years ago. There are lots of composer anniversaries, often the occasion for festivals or scholarly study. While this one might also trigger some activity—concerts conferences & book—its chief importance for me is simply that Berlioz is my favourite composer on most days. From time to time I will doubt it, and then revisit some of his music. While there are certainly many other composers who move me, particularly Debussy & Wagner, Puccini & Verdi, Mozart, Bach & Handel, and yes at times Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker! The solo piano music, and much more) or Saint-Saëns (that 2nd piano concerto) or even Percy Grainger..(?), it’s Berlioz who ultimately holds sway over my heart.
To commemorate the moment I looked at my bookshelf and when I saw the piano-vocal score of Damnation of Faust alongside his Requiem and the Berg sonata for piano
(the books are in alphabetical order after all… Carmen is on the other side), I impulsively pulled it out and started playing from the beginning. It felt right before I even remembered what the words are saying.
There’s a solo line on the piano, corresponding to a violin line, a melody that will wind its way through the orchestra, getting picked up by the tenor. It’s Faust alone with the orchestra (isn’t that a crazy thought? but if you’re a composer imagining, that’s how you’d picture it). And Faust is observing & thinking. That’s what the romantic hero in the sublime landscape will do, even if he sounds unhappy. While the tune is in major for the violins, Berlioz does that thing he sometimes does and fools us by changing the context even while using the very same motif, and so when Faust starts singing in the 9th bar (plus pickup) he seems to be singing a lament in F-sharp minor although of course it’s a D major key signature (F-sharp minor being the relative to A, which is the dominant to D). It’s so deliciously apt that he’s singing “Le vieil hiver a fait place au printemps”, or in other words, winter has given way to spring.
Friday March 8th (Berlioz’s day of passing), I wrote this: “Have you been outside today? I was breaking up ice, melting under the sun.” The sadness of that minor phrase matches the shift of mood, the seasonal affect disorder of February giving way to the sunny disposition we might feel, as the melancholy of winter is overwhelmed with the sensuousness of a warm sun and the smells of the ground as it comes back to life. You get up out of your winter cocoon and start moving outside, returning to life. Berlioz has all of that in the first pages of the score, an old man in the winter of his life wanting to be alive again, as the world renews itself & he watches & comments. The little tired line grows and swells like the feelings in your chest, breathing in the warm air.
I listened. I let myself be moved, thinking not so much of my pleasure & my decades-long affection for this music, but instead for a moment thinking of Berlioz. He wrote this, and I wonder what he was thinking. It doesn’t quite fit the generic pigeon-holes does it..!? In other words there’s much here that’s new, that still beckons to intrepid designers & directors.
I shared this to Facebook back on the 8th. Listen from the beginning, as you’ll hear exactly that same passage to start that I described, the sadness of winter give way to the joy of spring: and an observer who can’t quite manage to join in. I identify very strongly with this alienated observer.
I had thought I wanted to talk about some of my favourite pieces or aspects of the composer, the way I did with previous anniversaries of note (thinking of Debussy & Wagner), when I posted several times within a few days. Somehow this is different, not an intellectual exercise but something personal. Today, I have some fires to put out –figuratively speaking I assure you—so let me just say that I’ll stop here. I just wanted to post the thing I started last Friday, even if it feels like the beginning of something.
Or is it the fact that Spring hasn’t quite conquered Winter?
But lately I’ve been writing big long pieces, seeking to prolong my stay in the blogosphere, perhaps a bit like old Faust, hiding inside his head, avoiding real life. If I ever figure out a way to permanently stay there in the bloggy world, would that mean I stop writing?
Which reminds me of a joke.
Pilot announces “we’ve lost power in engine #1. That will delay us for 90 minutes but we’re still safe with the other 2 engines.
Pilot announces “we’ve lost power in engine #2. That delays us 3 hours: but we’re still safe with that last engine.
Passenger pipes up “gee if we lose that other engine we’ll be up here all night”.
The new ATMA Classics CD ELLES seems apt for a month when there seems to be a great deal of music, opera & theatre created by women, celebrating female creativity, and perhaps extra noticeable with last week’s International Women’s Day on March 8th. There was Stacey Dunlop’s Lonely Child Project, Sook-Yin Lee’s Unsafe at the Berkeley Street Theatre, School Girls at Buddies, Revisor choreographed by Crystal Pite. And upcoming we get Next Wave Workshop from Musique 3 Femmes (and Tapestry), and the Toronto City Opera’s La traviata. And those are just the recent/current ones I’m aware of.
It’s what I do when I get a new CD. First time through it’s a voyage through terra incognita and the sense of wonder at the newness I’m encountering. Gradually it resolves into a series of expectations. It’s rare that I want to listen again after the 2nd time through, but this one is different on a number of fronts.
Sometimes recordings are organized in such a way that the journey from beginning to end makes you want to do it again. I think that’s at least part of it.
The title is a signal of course, although I’m not sure who is to be understood in this plural pronoun. It could be the performers, violist Marina Thibeault & pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone, two women with roots in Québec. It could be the repertoire on the CD: all from female composers.
Or perhaps all of the above?
If I asked you to name some female composers you’d probably include at least a couple of these names in your list, as they’re among the best known. An additional filter is the instruments of course, as it’s all either music for viola & piano or for solo viola.
Clara Schumann: Three romances Op 22
Nadia Boulanger: Three pieces for cello & piano, arranged for viola & piano
Fanny Hensel (aka Fanny Mendelssohn): Dämmrung senkte sich von oben
Anna Pidgorna: The Child Bringer of Light for viola solo
If this were programmed by a man I suspect it would be organized chronologically, whereas this is more purely musical, or dare I say it, poetic, pursuing an emotional logic.
Before I address that, I want to talk about my first experience of the CD, plunging in without really looking too closely at the liner notes. Sometimes when I go to a concert I’ve read up in advance to be fully prepared; sometimes I make no preparation and immerse myself in the pure sonic experience. With a recording I seek the luxury of both, getting to blindly listen and then after looking at the titles & notes, listening again. My first experience of Thibeault’s viola was very disorienting. It’s possible this is simply my ignorance, the disorientation of someone who knows nothing or very little.
But the first time through I was overwhelmed by the tone of this viola, at times thinking I was listening to a cello. Now indeed at least two of these pieces were originally cello pieces transcribed for viola. But that doesn’t explain a rich sound that I’ve never heard coming from a viola. Before you enter into any consideration of interpretation you’re already in rarefied air, a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before
So I must mention that there’s a Sinfonia Toronto concert coming up Friday April 5th that I will miss because I am already over-committed (I said yes to something each of Thursday, Friday & Saturday!). Thibeault will play the Canadian Premiere of a viola concerto by Peteris Vasks. The beautiful tone I heard on this CD should sound especially rich in the intimate confines of the Glenn Gould Studio. Oh well. If you should go please let me know what you thought.
[Back to the CD]
We begin in a curiously familiar place with the Schumann. Clara Schumann’s Op 22 romances sound a lot like Robert Schumann’s music.
Amazing! These are magnificent pieces working in many of the same ways you might recognize from Robert Schumann’s compositions. The influence they must have had upon one another is palpable, and perhaps the very quintessence of “the romantic”.
There are some interesting points of divergence that might be due to the female performers, or maybe come from the score itself. I think if it were Robert Schumann’s music played by men, that the piano part would be heavier & less subtle. But recalling the original way that Barbara Hannigan approached Berg in a TSO concert a few weeks ago, maybe this is the gender talking: and in a good way.
Boulanger is not someone I know, and after hearing her three pieces I’m planning to explore further. The last movement is especially thrilling with a bravura piano part that brings out the best in Scarfone.
Hensel gives us the itinerary for a tiny two minute trip back into the dreamiest depths of the romantic movement, a stunning melodic arc that I didn’t want to end. But it did. (another reason to let the CD play over…)
Rebecca Clarke? I didn’t know her work but I will have to explore further after hearing this glorious sonata. Impetuoso for the first movement brings us decisively into the 20th century. But we’re still tonal, modal & passionate. This is a true duet, Scarfone taking the stage at times, at other times more in support of Thibeault’s soaring line.
The second movement Vivace has all the playfulness of a scherzo. I’m more reminded of the middle movement of Saint-Saëns 2nd piano concerto, that goes back and forth between gossamer lightness and a slower melody (the closest analogy I could think of…not quite the same though). What’s really amazing about this is how I’m reminded of a question I posed a couple of weeks ago, namely how does a composer get people to play their works? The short answer is to write something fun, something you hear and say “wow I want to play that!” That’s what I felt when I heard the Saint-Saëns 2nd concerto middle movement, a stunning ear-worm if ever there was one. This movement too has staying power, amazing textures & sounds. And Clarke’s last page does sound a lot like Saint-Saëns’ conclusion.
And then her third movement is a soulful Adagio beginning with a piano statement, answered by something mysterious and poignant in the viola, questioning and questing for something, growing and accelerating. From a deceptively simple beginning this piece really shows the gender thing most eloquently in a testosterone free zone, ending without bombast or falseness.
And from there, we’re in alto solo territory for the next four cuts: the three movement Sonata Pastorale of Lillian Fuchs, and the fascinating closing piece from Ana Pidgorna.
There’s a great deal of variety in the three-movement Sonata Pastorale. At times it’s very thoughtful & sombre, but the last movement breaks free for an energetic Allegro. This kind of writing totally suits the viola, a melancholy probing under the surface that you wouldn’t expect from a violin. Thibeault is fully in control of this piece, taking us for a wild ride to finish.
And to close the CD, the Pidgorna, which is unlike anything that came before, barely recognizable as the same instrument. Everything that’s been established to this point –the solidity of tone & tonality—is now up for grabs in this electrifying finale. I’m glad I listened to it the first time without recourse to the notes, as its playfulness is unmistakable. The rhetorical segmentation reminds me of a one-woman show, an attempt to do a soliloquy without words. It helps that Thibeault is so decisive, sometimes attacking powerfully, sometimes more gently.
Here’s a live performance of The Child, Bringer of Light.
… making me want to go back to the beginning of the CD, to hear the Schumann again.
There are nights when the theatre reminds you how lucky you are. You may think that I say this too often, but I don’t believe we say it often enough, especially the entitled white upper class twits I think of as my peers.
Tonight I saw the opening of Unsafe. It’s a funny hybrid of a show, with a writing credit for Sook-Yin Lee, who is one of the two people onstage for almost two hours without intermission.
Sook-Yin Lee in Unsafe at Canadian Stage (photo: Dahlia Katz)
Zack Russell is credited as “Consultant” although to hear them tell it in the performance, he was writing a play.
Unsafe is several things. It’s like a debate between two people arguing about what they’re doing, while they’re doing it. S-YL may have credentials as an artist in film & music, but presents herself as a truth-telling documentarist, an interviewer seeking truth. She debates with ZR –who is portrayed by Christo Graham—who we’re told is a musician & playwright fulfilling a commission for Matthew Jocelyn, the former Artistic Director of Canadian Stage.
So did you get that? The man is trying to make this a play while the woman is seeking to make this more of a documentary – interview, and the whole time they’re debating how to do it? they are really doing it. So we’re often discussing & analyzing the process as much as we’re having a discussion: which I found mind-boggling, hair-raising and yes, really cool. How you frame a question is vital when you’re studying something like this, so that meta-position is brilliantly apt. And in passing Canadian Stage expose themselves to a scathing critique as a very white organization; and they faced the questions bravely.
Unsafe is a show that plays very differently depending on which stratum you occupy economically, culturally. How safe or unsafe should one feel, I wonder?
The subject is censorship. Jocelyn’s original focus in his commission was upon artist Eli Langer, whose 1993 show at Mercer Union became the centre of a huge controversy.
Excuse this big huge digression, but I want to give you some context. Here’s what Mercer Union’s website says :
And I wonder, as I put this link in: will I be allowed to do this or will someone contact me and tell me to take it down?
MEDIA RELEASE, DECEMBER 1993 On December 16, 1993, five paintings and thirty-five drawings were removed from an exhibition of works by Eli Langer at Mercer Union by the Morality Bureau of the Metropolitan Toronto Police. Mercer Union understands the origin of the work by Eli Langer to be imaginative, and to be in no way a measure of the acceptability of any implied activity in these works of art. We consider this work to be a serious exploration of the human psyche. Many contemporary artists have investigated sensitive issues, and we see Langer contributing to such discussions. In exhibiting these works Mercer Union neither intended to act unlawfully nor was aware that the exhibition was in breach of any law. Mercer Union’s Board of Directors would like to reiterate their support of the artistic merit of the work of Eli Langer. At this point, no charges have been laid. The three paintings and fifteen drawings that remain in Eli Langer’s exhibition will be on view until December 22. Mercer Union is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
[…and there’s lots more on that webpage]
Kate Taylor’s response in her Globe & Mail review appears to have been a catalyst for the firestorm that erupted. And Mercer Union have that review prominently on the same webpage I just sent you to. Tonight we heard from Kate Taylor in this show, one of several case studies explored over the course of the evening.
The original poster for the show (above) gets reproduced, Christo Graham becoming headless for Sook-Yin Lee to interview for us onstage (photo: Dahlia Katz)
Yuula Benivolski’s photo that has been used to publicize the show was reproduced for us parodically by Christo Graham wearing a mannequin on his upper body, a hilarious effect initially that grew creepier the longer we watched, a kind of enactment of the loss of control implicit in censorship.
I’m simultaneously frustrated and grateful. I wish it had been longer in places, unpacking more of what was hinted at; and yet it was quite long & exhausting, not just for the performers but for us too. It was like the third act of a Shaw play going on for more than an hour. In fairness there was tons of fun interspersed. We had some music, including Jeremy Dutcher & a smattering of Claude Vivier believe it or not. We had some moments when we flirted with the whole question of pornography in the most playful way.
I found myself thinking about the whole question of safety. There were moments when some in the audience seemed to feel unsafe, or so I heard in the talk-back afterwards. In the end it’s a play that seems to be entirely off-the-cuff, a live interview: or a very good simulation thereof. There is so much more to this than what I can capture here, writing my quick response before bedtime.
It’s an impressive piece of work. I suspect dramaturg Birgit Schreyer-Duarte played a big part in organizing this meta-conversation, although I should also credit director Sarah Garton Stanley. When something feels this spontaneous & real? that’s no accident. They made it look easy.
I feel very fortunate to have seen this, lucky to be here. Anyone who makes art or performs should see this, anyone who cares about freedom of expression should come listen to the debating, a piece asking questions about the new frontier, and the ways in which power interferes with expression.
Unsafe continues until March 31st at Berkeley St Theatre.
Films with live accompaniment are becoming a regular experience. I don’t mean that the novelty is wearing off, at least I hope not.
But what began as an experiment has become a new revenue-stream for the Toronto Symphony, somewhere between serious programming and pops programming. Next week the TSO will be showing Episode V of the Star Wars saga aka The Empire Strikes Back (1980): four nights worth of John Williams, March 20th – 23rd inclusive.
There is a bit of a fly in the ointment, and I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing it out. The films are selected based on that most natural criterion, namely popularity. It means that many of the great classics of the screen that I fondly hoped to see simply don’t make the cut.
And so, while Apocalypse Now (1979) or Ben-Hur (1959) or The Mission (1986) or The Adventures of Robin Hood (thinking of the 1938 Korngold version, although I’d be thrilled with the 1991 Michael Kamen score) might be personal favourites for their remarkable scores, they’re not sufficiently popular to fill Roy Thomson Hall for multiple showings.
Aww…(!)
I haven’t totally given up on my wish-list that I’ve shared with the TSO. I saw that the Los Angeles Philharmonic presented The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) a few years ago including the live participation of Danny Elfman, Catherine O’Hara and Paul Reubens (alias Pee-wee Herman): all vocalists heard in the original film. They filled the Hollywood Bowl. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see such a thing here?
But let me get back to what I spoke of in the headline. So of course the TSO must choose popular films, but every now and then a cash-cow is also a brilliant work of art.
It happens! The Nutcracker (meaning the ballet) and La traviata (meaning the opera) are guaranteed money-makers, the perennial Christmastime programming by ballet companies all over the world and Verdi’s popular opera. But they’re also amazing works of art.
And ditto Episode V.
To misquote our pal Shakespeare, I come not to praise Lucas but to bury him. I mostly dislike the Star Wars saga
As a fan of science fiction novels
As a fan of science fiction films
The genre of science fiction film leapt ahead as though there were no gravity, flying upwards on the promise of films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) cited yesterdayA Clockwork Orange (1971), Logan’s Run (1976), and later, Blade Runner (1983). This was the genre that could address great & profound questions.
And then along came Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
Not my hope however.
If this was science fiction it certainly was not the challenging sci-fi cited in the examples mentioned above. It was melodrama. It was a conscious throw-back to old-style serials, which might be fun after a fashion but surely shouldn’t be mistaken for science fiction. Sure I saw & heard the excitement others experienced (and would hear it over and over for various TV series), excitement I did not share. But yes I went to see Episode IV.
The next film was the big anomaly, unique in the series.
Episode V had a new director, namely Irvin Kershner. Episode IV was written and directed by George Lucas. While Lucas wrote the story for Episode V, there are two experienced screenwriters in the picture, namely Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, the latter the writer & director of films such as The Big Chill. So if the relationships in Episode V suddenly seem more real & authentic, if the characters suddenly seem to have rich inner lives? It might be Kasdan’s doing, although Kershner too is a big difference in the film.
I don’t pretend to know how the magic happened, only that Kershner + the writing team of Brackett & Kasdan make Episode V totally unlike any other in the series.
When I saw it, I was struck by the parallels to Wagner’s opera Siegfried.
Siegfried:
• Act 1: in Mime’s cave, where the sword is forged
• Act II is in the forest where Siegfried meets the dragon;
• Act III sees the hero ascend a mountain, breaking Wotan’s spear, penetrating the magic fire and awakening Brunnhilde. The Empire Strikes Back:
• we begin with a battle on the frozen planet, while the imperial forces close in, the rebels running through caves before several ships escape (including Han in the Millennium Falcon & Luke in his own fighter accompanied by R2D2)
• as in Act II of Siegfried Luke is in a forest exploring his past, as he meets Yoda and wrestles with his demons. Han & Leia hide in an asteroid field, narrowly escaping a gigantic beast not unlike Fafner.
• For the last “act” they are united in the brilliant sunshine of Lando’s city, where Luke confronts his father –just as Siegfried confronted Wotan—in a battle. Luke does not, however break his father’s spear but instead is himself injured, rescued at the end, while Han is given to a bounty hunter.
As in Wagner’s Ring operas, there’s a web of themes, leit-motifs, that help tell the story. The orchestra is like a Greek chorus, adding layers to what we see onscreen and hear in the screenplay.
This example (with music and no visuals) shows just how powerful Williams’ score is.
The seriousness of this film is what really captures my attention. Williams rises to a higher level in this film possibly because the story demands more of him than any other in the series (although we have yet to see the finale). We’re not merely hearing musical enhancement for events and battles, but something more, the music elevating the action to something comparable to Wagner’s mythic music-dramas. As in so many of Wagner’s operas, the action concerns the drama of our interior life.
That’s why I am so eager to see Episode V on the big screen with live orchestral accompaniment. I’ve seen this film easily 20 or 30 times, if not more. I know every line, every note of the score. And I’m sure I am not alone. This film works at a higher level, not merely melodramatic but operatic.
If there are any tickets left you should try to go see one of the showings next week, played live by the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall.
I was thinking about jealousy today. It’s funny how sometimes a word can come up over and over again.
I confessed to some envy in my last review, admiring the way Stephen Walsh wrote about Debussy. I don’t know if I’d call it “jealousy”. But I think of envy and jealousy as variations on the same impulse. Feed and fertilize envy and you get jealousy, or so I believe.
Please note, I put a lid on such things. Perhaps I am in denial? But I believe we all have those impulses. What is a social contract if not a promise not to surrender to our animal instincts? The traffic light is red, and while I may want to get home NOW..? Yes I wait patiently: because it’s the law, and because I obey the traffic light without giving it a second thought.
I love this sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. We’re watching a hominid species taking an evolutionary step that presumably leads to man. Watch him take up the femur and notice that it can be wielded as a club. And within the sequence we see that happen.
Earlier in the “Dawn of Man” sequence, we watch as one family group of hominids chase another away from their watering hole. Would we call this jealousy or just the survival instinct? And with the new skills associated with the femur (perhaps under the influence of the black monolith ex machina: Kubrick & Arthur C Clarke offering a particular rationale for our evolutionary leap), the waterhole is taken back, the future secure.
The point is, at one time jealousy had an evolutionary function. Without it we might not be here.
And what about humankind in 2019? Do we still need jealousy? Is it perhaps a bit like our tailbones, a vestige whose purpose has been exhausted?
Or to put it another way, what if the femurs we’re wielding might bring about our extinction? Whether they’re nuclear or biological or other subtler kinds of warfare, these weapons might not be conducive to our ongoing survival on this planet. I’m not about to suggest that the world has become peaceful, just because most of the killing happens on other continents (the daily death-toll from gun violence in the USA notwithstanding).
But I wonder if we will learn to outgrow our violent nature before we kill one another.
Did you notice the headline? You may be wondering when I’ll connect this discussion to opera, indeed, whether there is any connection. But there is.
Today a friend asked “What do you find helpful when jealousy comes up about what other artists have achieved?” It’s funny because I was already conscious of it in yesterday’s review (a writer I envied). I thought of three things to tell my friend.
Years ago I had to invent a mantra that I didn’t even believe. “There’s enough for everybody.” Believe it and behave as though it’s true even if it’s a lie. Whether you’re auditioning or applying for a grant or simply going to see others perform, you must believe this. In fact recalling the conversation about opera singers in this country: there really isn’t enough work. But we must behave as if there’s really enough for everyone. It’s as though we’re all in this together, not fighting one another for the last drop of water or last spot in a show.Do I sound like a radical yet?
This one is easier. You should bask in their success. When you see someone succeed, don’t be jealous. You must cheer, applaud, and celebrate their success. Why? Because if they can do it so can you. At least that’s the implication. Again, it’s a kind of roleplay to suggest that we’re all in this together. Sure, my voice is old and shot, and yours is young and hot, but when I applaud I celebrate your success because it’s everyone’s success.
And FINALLY this one is the actual logical reason to purge jealousy. OMFG I wish I had recognized this one sooner, when I was younger. I hope I don’t sound like a cynic. But here’s the thing. Theatre, opera, film, they are all collaborative. You can’t do it without other people, ultimately without real friendship. And that means positive karma is essential.People don’t want to be around jealousy. If you’re jealous? you’re in the wrong business..!
I wonder, is the artistic community actually a more evolved version of society, or at least striving to get there?
Now of course if this conversation includes persons from the opposite side of the political spectrum from myself, they would say that’s an arrogant & self-congratulatory thing to say. Maybe. I don’t mind criticism, am not afraid of ridicule.
I only know what I feel. As an older artist looking at the community of young artists –actors, singers, musicians, writers–I know what I see. They look out for one another, they model caring and empathy as part of their creative practice, and it’s not an act. And perhaps in the process we stop smacking one another with a femur and move on to the next evolutionary level, a real community.
Stephen Walsh’s recent book Debussy: A Painter in Sound from Faber & Faber, is a welcome addition to the literature concerning a man whose star continues to rise, a composer respected & loved more in the 21st century than ever before.
And yet has anyone yet really captured this artist in a single book? I say that as a former grad student who read everything about Debussy in English plus a whole lot more in French. While his compositional output is comparatively small, especially for someone held up as such an important influence, there’s a great deal about him to know.
There are his compositions (for piano, for voice, for orchestra, an opera, plus a few remarkable fragments), his critical writings (perhaps not the equal of Berlioz but still a substantial body of work), his correspondence, and a fascinating life story.
Musicologists rarely manage to get all of that into one book, indeed they usually must place their emphasis on one aspect. Arthur Wenk’s Debussy & the Poets is a wonderful multi-disciplinary study of the songs and their texts. Roy Howat’s Debussy in Proportion is a study of the scores testing a hypothesis concerning the composer’s use of mathematical principles in his music, literally exploring the aspects of music that his title would suggest. James Briscoe’s Debussy in Performance brings scores to life in order to explore them in the most practical sense. Robin Holloway studied one of his key influences in Debussy and Wagner. Robert Orledge wrote of Debussy and the Theatre.
And –more pertinent to what Walsh did—there are also several biographies.
Walsh sets off in a very original direction, proposing to write a biography framed within the language of visual art. I am now looking for the second time at his introduction, which reads very differently after one has finished reading the book.
In the introduction to his book on French music, Martin Cooper had provided a lucid explanation of the differences between the French and, for example the German views of art. After quoting a remark of the critic W. J. Turner that ‘it is the sublimity of the soul that makes the music of Beethoven and Bach so immeasurably greater than that of Wagner and Debussy’, he pointed out that ‘to seek in French music primarily for a revelation of the composer’s soul or for marks of the sublime was to look for something which the French consider a by-product… The French composer is consciously concerned with the two data which no one can question—his intelligence and his senses.’ And Cooper added, ‘The regarding of a piece of music as an artefact—a thing of planned shape, dimensions, colour and consistency—rather than as an expression of an emotion whose end is in itself, brings the French composer nearer than any other to the plastic artist.’ This strikes me as a perfect description of the attitude of Debussy to his work, and indeed of the work itself. (Walsh)
That’s really a preamble to the key relationship that’s to be articulated.
In rejecting Wagner, Debussy was thinking a kind of music that prioritised what he saw as the virtues of French art, ‘its clarity of expression, its precision and compactness of form, the particular and specific qualities of French genius’…he not only discarded the heavy northern gloom of The Ring and Tristan, he threw out most of the grammatical infrastructure that had supported Wagner’s immense narrative frameworks. Suddenly there is a concentration, a focus on particular ideas and images that is, as Cooper implies, somewhat painterly. This is not a question off taking sides in the whole tormented issue of whether Debussy can or cannot be called an Impressionist. It has more to do with the way in which any painter handles the motif within the limits of the picture frame. In much of his music, Debussy seems to work like this with motifs and frames, rather than with the evolving, novelistic discourse, not only of Wagnerian opera, but of the whole symphonic tradition of nineteenth—century music.
He manages to stay true to this way of thinking and more. When, near the end of the introduction, Walsh describes his goal for the book, it reads like a critique of the other books that have gone before. And why not, he’s a music critic, and he likely had to read those books that he’s critiquing, when he says this:
What follows is a biography of sorts but it is a biography with the difference that is sets out to treat Debussy’s music as the crucial expression of his intellectual life, rather than, as one finds in many Lives of Composers, a slightly annoying series of incidents that hold up the story without adding much of narrative interest.
That is exactly how the book reads, an example of how a biography should be done.
And I celebrate what Walsh achieved. As far as telling the story of a life, it’s a wonderfully readable version that manages to locate the major compositions within believable contexts, so that they become the inevitable outcome of the incidents of the composer’s life.
While it’s not perfect I often found myself wishing as I was reading that I had written it. I admire the book. The prose is skillful, fluid, accessible. It’s a good first book to read about Debussy, indeed if you’re only ever going to read one book about the composer this would be the one.
There are a few places where I pushed back against Walsh, unsatisfied with what he was saying. I’m one of those petty people who thinks the whole impressionist – symbolist question matters. I’m not happy with the evidence I see for Walsh knowing what a symbolist is. It’s not enough to drop some names, you need to have an understanding of the process, how a symbolist writes or paints or composes and what they seek to signify. But perhaps that’s an indication of how insignificant that topic has been in the past that a book can be satisfactory without adequately addressing Debussy the symbolist, which to me should be one of the central concerns of the study. It’s still a revelation to dare to be multi-disciplinary in this way about a composer, although the invocation of multiple disciplines usually signals a crossover by someone from their area of competence into an area of lesser competence, sometimes with mixed results. Maybe in a generation or two we’ll get the multi-disciplinary study that gets it completely right.
I was very impressed with the way Walsh spoke of different songs, analyses that brought in poetry & Wagner deftly and with total agility, and without bogging down. Most of the book hangs together really nicely between the story of a life and the compositions that fill that life. I have to reconcile the book’s goal and my love of certain compositions that I wanted explored and unpacked in greater detail. But that’s not a flaw, especially when it’s precisely what the author set out to do. I’m like a passenger on the tour-bus, upset that we’re sticking to the schedule and not stopping longer at my favourite locale.
I wonder too if Walsh read Howat’s theories proposing that Debussy used specific proportions such as the Golden Mean in the construction of his scores; Debussy in Proportion is conspicuously absent from the bibliography, especially considering that Walsh would consider Debussy through visual art. Did the “painter in sound” (as Walsh calls him) use the golden mean to assemble notes on the page? I doubt I’m the only one asking the question, but perhaps there’s just not enough evidence for Walsh to explore the subject; or maybe it didn’t interest him. Oh well.
This time as a library book I read it cover to cover. I’lI buy it because I need to explore it further. I recommend it to anyone curious about Claude Debussy.
I’ve just seen Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls, presented by Obsidian Theatre in association with Nightwood Theatre at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. The co-production is a natural considering how perfectly the play fulfills the mandates of both companies, a piece by a black playwright (Obsidian), on a stage populated by women (Nightwood).
Inspired by the true story of Erica Nego, a Minneapolis-born biracial woman of Ghanaian heritage, the universality of the story is in the character relationships, particularly the echoes of that 2004 Lindsay Lohan—Rachel McAdams film that led the playwright to subtitle the work as “The African Mean Girls Play”.
Some aspects of school and adolescence are the same wherever you might go.
We watch five Ghanaian girls excited by an upcoming beauty contest. As in the film, there’s a reigning princess who has no hesitation in bullying her classmates, even getting them to lie & cheat on her behalf, at least until bi-racial Ericka arrives from America.
School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play: Tatyana Mitchell, Natasha Mumba, Rachel Mutombo, Emerjade Simms, & Bria McLaughlin (Photo: Cesar Ghisilieri)
The unity of this ensemble directed by Nina Lee Aquino was a joy to behold, the players as tight & attentive to one another as a string quartet. This was a team effort to achieve the right look and feel and sound to every aspect including hair, costumes, body language, dialects, music and even fights. At times they’re a dance-troupe at other times a real classroom.
Natasha Mumba had genuine star quality as Paulina, the alpha princess of this group. The arc of the story has a few surprises, as we discover reasons we might have sympathy for powerful Paulina, that maybe this whole business of beauty contests is much more than meets the eye.
Nana (Tatyana Mitchell) and Ama (Rachel Mutombo) each have their fights with the queen Bee, although those are essentially sub-plots, to the main conflict with Ericka (Melissa Eve Langdon), whose arrival threatens Paulina’s dominance of the class.
Mercy (Bria McLaughlin) and Gifty (Emerjade Simms) are paired off for some of the funniest moments of the play, a bit like a Greek chorus. They energized the show and lightened the tone.
Akosua Amo-Adem (school headmistress) and Allison Edwards-Crewe (Eloise, Miss Ghana 1966) represent the adults of that world, to whom the students usually speak very politely, normally seeking to impress rather than upset them.
The cast behaved as though this were a great privilege, lavishing us with great commitment throughout, the ensemble tight & energetic . While it’s a small group of actors in this tiny microcosm that is a million miles away from my own world, the 90 minutes of this play flew by in no time at all. I was totally consumed with the cares & conflicts of these six young women wanting to be in a beauty contest.
School Girls continues at Buddies until March 24th.
The hybrid creation Revisor from Jonathon Young and Crystal Pite is so much more than I can put into words, a piece of theatre that explores the process of signification while showing us the ways that it breaks down. It’s a Kidd Pivot production presented by Canadian Stage at the Bluma Appel Theatre based on Gogol’s The Government Inspector. Tonight was the Toronto premiere. Gogol’s play doesn’t fall easily into a genre, bearing witness to human events that can be played as comedy even as they show us the darkest aspects of human nature.
But don’t get me wrong. For all the seriousness, all the intense people in the audience, there was a great deal of laughter in the theatre.
Doug Letheren (Photo: Michael Slobodian)
Gogol’s story is about an imposter confused with someone of far greater importance, and the upheaval caused by this case of mistaken identity. At its root this is a story about metaphors & symbols, how we let images & shapes & sounds stand in for something else, often without any real authenticity or connection between the thing and its image.
Someone on this creative team had a stroke of inspiration as to how to tell such a story.
Why not lip-synch, someone thought. Why not create a disconnect at the root of the show..? Let the falsehood in the story be right in the structure of the show.
Do you remember Milli Vanilli? I ask because that might be before your time if you’re a younger reader. It was 30 years ago. Imagine a musical act winning a Grammy, and the scandal when the truth came out, that the two people we thought we knew to be the stars were not actually the ones singing, but just the faces on the albums, who had been lip-synching along on TV to performances by an entirely different band in a studio.
Or there’s the big secret in Singin’ in the Rain (that of course the audience is in on throughout): that Lina Lamont isn’t the one heard speaking or singing in The Dancing Cavalier, but rather Cathy Seldon (the real singer, who’s played by Debbie Reynolds).
But Revisor is very different from Milli Vanilli or Singin’ in the Rain. Yes we hear voices speaking who seem to be the characters onstage. While the voices (other than the narrator) are associated for us with a person dressed as one of the characters from the play, that body does much more than simply mouth words. Instead they are moving.. oh my are they ever. They’re dancing, gyrating, enacting, as though the words were electricity going into them, or a musical score animating their movements (you can get a tiny inkling from the photo above: but now animate that image of Doug Letheren in your mind, turning it into something super-fast & super-skilled). They do much more than just mouth words. It’s a good thing there’s someone else doing the voice onto a separate track, when the bodies are working so hard in response.
Pite & Young must have noticed how this separation of the dancer & the voice is an opportunity, not so different really from what Milli Vanilli or Lina Lamont noticed. If you have someone else sing or speak for you, it frees you to do a better job. And so instead of merely speaking, some of these moments become tremendous explosions of physicality. Dance! Athleticism! Gyrations! If you think about a triple threat – the person who can act & sing & dance—this is a wonderful solution, if you get a superb dancer, while using voice-over instead of making the dancer sing & act.
Sometimes we are seeing the same scene we already saw done earlier, but with a narration instead, and a different look to the characters, literally divested and broken down, analyzed in the bare bones narration of people identified merely as “1” or “2”.
As with previous Kidd Pivot presentations that we’ve seen here in Toronto (such as Tempest Replica or Betroffenheit or Dark Matters ) there are at least two discourses in combination:
An opportunity to tell a story
The dance that arises from or as a reflection upon that story
The fact we’re in a story about an imposter, told by a series of imposters –people moving while someone else voices them—problematizes the entire tale. Just what is real, after all, when we’re seeing symbols, figures standing in for others..? It’s a very slippery slope, before things cease to mean very much at all, a blurry realm of bodies and voices, reaching out to one another as a cover story for their existential insecurity.
There’s so much there, so much to see & unpack. If it isn’t obvious to you, this is something I wish I could see again, because there’s just so much there. No, I don’t think this is as earth-shaking as Betroffenheit¸ a work informed by the profound pain & despair that Young experienced due to personal loss. But there might be more virtuosity, more technical brilliance in the movement & interpretive responses to the text: Doug Letheren, Jermaine Spivey (especially strong for a couple of minutes near the end of the piece), Matthew Peacock, Rena Marumi, Ella Rothschild, David Raymond, Cindy Salgado (almost always a source of light & fun whenever she appeared), David Raymond and particularly the enigmatic Tiffany Tregarthen as the Revisor. While they did not speak everyone was profoundly eloquent in their moves in response to the words coming through the P.A. At times words are repeated over and over, becoming like verbal minimalist compositions, ceasing to mean anything but calmly underscoring the movements. There are many moments where some of us were laughing, yet others were still, spellbound.
I’m reminded of the Hamletadaptation I saw so recently that employed American Sign Language, verging away from Shakespeare into physical analogues to words, while reminding us of how difficult it is to be understood, how easy to be confused or mystified.
At a time when there’s a lot of good theatre on in this city, it’s easy to miss something good. Don’t miss Revisor. It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.
A little over five years ago, I interviewed composer Cecilia Livingston in anticipation of her new opera commission The Masque of the Red Death, an occasion for some marvelous comments about composing & opera (see what I mean? ).
I’m not surprised to hear that she’s to be honoured by the Glyndebourne Festival, the sole non-British candidate. […but Cecilia set me straight, as she holds dual citizenship… okay!]
“Balancing the Score: Supporting Female Composers” is a new development program exclusively for female composers, as their press release tells us:
“The program’s four inaugural composers, who take up their positions in January 2019, are Anna Appleby (England), Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade (Scotland), Cecilia Livingston (Canada), and Ailie Robertson (Scotland). Participants will spend two years immersed in life at Glyndebourne, attending rehearsals and meeting professional opera makers and performers. Glyndebourne is also collaborating with its resident orchestras, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Southbank Centre, to provide opportunities for Balancing the Score participants.“
It’s a happy coincidence that Friday March 8th is International Women’s Day, and Saturday March 23rd is “The Next Wave Workshop” from Musique 3 Femmes, showcasing the work of women in the opera world –directors, librettists and composers—including Cecilia Livingston.
You can read more about the March 23rd event here, but first? the opportunity to ask Cecilia about her experience so far.
BB: Cecilia, congratulations! How did you find out? What were you doing when you got the news?
It was such a Hollywood moment: I was in London, standing in the great courtyard of Somerset House – which is just south of the Strand, overlooking the Thames – on a deliciously warm, sunny day, waiting for a friend and fighting a bad Wi-Fi signal to check in for a flight on my phone. I was so amazed at the news that I let out this strange loud yelp, loud enough to draw the attention of the security guards! Security down there is pretty tight (this is London) so I had to explain to them that, actually, I just had some wonderful news.
Composer Cecilia Livingston
BB: And so how did the program begin?
It started with an official ‘induction day’, bringing us together at Glyndebourne: an in-depth tour, planning sessions for some of the projects we’ll be working on, and lots and lots of meetings. And important orientation things, like getting swipe cards and finding the company canteen (the food is excellent – amazing meatballs!). We got to sit in on that evening’s rehearsals in the auditorium to get a sense of the space and its acoustics.
(These were rehearsals for Howard Moody’s ‘Agreed’, Glyndebourne’s most recent commission and one of their legendary mainstage community operas.)
BB: Have you met the other three participants yet?
Yes! I had met two of the three other composers at our interview days in the fall, so under, er, slightly awkward circumstances. Happily, this is a lovely group: we’ve been messaging and Skyping since we found out we were selected, so meeting in person again on the start day of the scheme was like meeting old friends. There’s a really nice feeling of mutual support and collaboration already, rather than competitiveness. I think that’s special, and means we can do great work together through the program.
BB: Opera isn’t your only compositional activity. If you can wrap your head around this question, roughly what percent are you an opera composer, and what percent, other sorts of music? (for instance Wagner & Verdi were almost totally opera composers, even though RW did write other things before, and a few later such as the Siegfried Idyll that’s based on operatic themes; and Verdi, similarly was mostly an opera composer; Beethoven & Debussy wrote one opera each, but mostly other music; Stravinsky, Ravel, Poulenc, wrote a few, but lots of other music too. AND feel free to observe that an opera composer in 2019 is not like one from 1919 or 1819…. Let alone 1619)
That is a really good question, one I think about a lot actually. I’ve felt for a while that pretty much everything I do is headed in the direction of opera, even when it’s not opera per se. I was chatting about this with Elizabeth McDonald a couple of weeks ago: she’s been singing my ‘Penelope’ on tour for the last year or so, with her trio Women on the Verge, and they were here in London in February. And she said something like “well, ‘Penelope’s’ not really art song at all, is it? It’s really a scene.” And I think she’s right about that. Even when I’m writing pieces without voice, I’m still thinking primarily about how structure and pacing, and motivic play and harmonic tension and rhythmic drive all create affect, atmosphere, drama, narrative – just as I would for an interlude or a transition section in opera. And I’ve felt that way for a long time, which has made moving into the opera world feel very natural. Plus I’ve done a lot of writing for voice, and I think that shows. Opera seems to be in my DNA, at some fundamental level.
BB: Is there anything you’d observe that’s different about opera composers, to distinguish them from composers who write other sorts of music? Or is there perhaps a difference in the sort of operas written by someone who doesn’t compose much of anything else?
Well I think there are some differences in skill set, or different skills that are required: understanding how to write for an operatically trained voice, and how to orchestrate to support it and enhance it. How to set text. How to serve story. I’ve been lucky to hear quite a lot of contemporary opera in the last few years (particularly the last couple of months here in the UK) and experience and thoughtfulness in those areas really show. I’ve heard a lot of opera where the composer was, I think, hired because they write great chamber or orchestral music, and the resulting operas often have incredible instrumental music and very inventive timbral languages, but then there’s a voice sort of stuck on top (or in the middle), and it quickly deflates the operatic qualities of the work: character, story, the magic of the singing voice. Opera demands so much, a whole package of skills. It’s a bit daunting.
But maybe the fundamental difference is attitude, or maybe I mean purpose – the reason the composer wants to be composing in the first place, which I think in opera has to be to tell stories. And then everything serves that.
BB: is composition understood to be part of the Balancing the Score experience?
Yes! That’s one of the most exciting parts of the program. And what is great is that, like the whole residency, this is really flexible so that I can choose projects that will help me grow and let me work with the amazing people at Glyndebourne that I can learn the most from.
BB: At this point in time, do you have any projects underway that you can talk about, operatic or otherwise?
I’ve got two on the go right now.
The first is ‘Singing Only Softly’, which is a chamber song-opera I’m creating with Loose Tea Music Theatre and Musique 3 Femmes. The libretto is by Monica Pearce and is inspired by the redacted sections of Anne Frank’s diary. Loose Tea’s Alaina Viau came to me with the idea for a dramatic song cycle around this subject, something that questioned the lines between art song and opera, and encouraged audiences to imagine the more complex Anne that her myth, or legend, tends to flatten. The project won the Prix 3 Femmes, and then a commissioning grant from the Ontario Arts Council, and next we’ll workshop the complete score in Toronto in March. There will be performances of excerpts at the Canadian Opera Company’s Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on March 19 and at Tapestry on March 23, and then the piece will premiere in early May in Toronto. We did a brief performance of scenes-in-progress at the ‘Opera’s Changing Worlds’ conference in Montreal in September and the piece has grown and deepened so much since then: I can’t wait to hear the whole thing.
‘Terror & Erebus’ is my longer-term opera project, for Opera 5 and TorQ Percussion Quartet, which takes as a starting point the last days of the Franklin Expedition to the Arctic. This is a big one for me: first, the full-evening length, but also the challenge of creating opera with percussion as orchestra. I have been a TorQ fan since we were in school together: they have a very special understanding of the theatre of performance, and that’s something I want to highlight – they are a part of the opera, not off in the corner or stuck in a pit. And it’s the first opera project in which I’ve really been able to play with narrative: the libretto is by Duncan McFarlane, and he’s got three story timelines overlapping, which blur the chronology and help the opera move past what audiences might expect (some sort of ‘Pirates of the Northwest Passage? ‘Billy Budd On Ice’? Yikes!) into something that’s more like a dream or a ritual, that’s much more about the experience of Franklin and his crew and their suffering. It’s interesting to me that in the middle of this hugely absorbing, hugely challenging project, I’ve had so many amazing opportunities. Sometimes life gives with both hands. And we’ve been so lucky in the support around ‘Terror’: particularly the Canadian Music Centre’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award, which was such a vote of confidence in me at a moment when, to be frank, I needed that support and encouragement very much.
But clearly a comic opera is what I need to do next to balance this all out!
BB: You pointedly thanked Christos Hatzis in your interview saying
“ I’ve a huge respect for my teacher, Christos Hatzis. His enthusiasm and energy are astonishing – he lives a true musical life.” Can you describe what you would be doing if you were living a true musical life?
Composer & composition professor Christos Hatzis
As I’ve graduated and moved into my professional life, I see ever more clearly now how important my teachers at U of T were to who I’ve become. That’s particularly true of Christos: his enthusiasm, his curiosity, his sincerity, his complete commitment to his work – those inspire me every day. And the way he thinks about musical structure… I hear him in my head a lot! Once when I was in my Master’s someone came up to me after hearing a piece of mine in a concert and said “are you Christos’s student?” And when I said yes I was, this person replied “Aha! I thought so. Every note in its right place.” Which is also almost a Radiohead quote, so I was doubly delighted.
I think being a composer requires this absolute commitment, because it is such a brutal artistic path. For me, that commitment and the focus it demands is helped by finding a state where everything one is doing feeds into the work. It’s really, really difficult to find ways to nurture that kind of focus, but also, you know, eat and pay rent. In many ways it’s actually easier when you are in school, which can offer a sort of artificial bubble of time and concentration – or it should. It’s terrifically hard to protect that in professional life, and I think we’re only just starting, as a society, to recognize how exponentially more difficult this is for female composers, for example, and for composers who face significant financial or other personal challenges. Too often those things are hidden, and for solid reasons, but it creates terrible loneliness and terrible struggle. The romance of the starving artist in the garret is such nonsense – it’s only ‘part of being an artist’ because of the way certain artists are treated. What a handy narrative to justify not supporting artists while continuing to benefit from the ways they make our society livable. It’s like the myth of genius: a great way to ignore the dedication of craft and labour that goes into the ‘great works’, trivializing the very creations in question. Sorry, I’m being sarcastic because these things make me genuinely cross.
By some amazing coincidences of good luck, and feeling emboldened by the support of people around me, I’ve found myself in a place where I’m able to really focus on music – both the music itself and the professional life that makes creating it possible. So I’m lucky to say I think I might have found my way to my own musical life.
BB: When you wrote about Masque of the Red Death you wrote the following, which sounds astonishingly prescient as a description of a certain politician:
The Prospero of the story is a sort of hubristic peacock, strutting around his quarantine. The immediate question for us was why someone would behave this way. If a ruler has the presence of mind to institute a quarantine – and this was a brand-new civil technology in the 14th century – and in particular, a very modern inverse quarantine that attempts to preserve the leadership while leaving the population to fend for themselves, would he really be this callow? The only plausible answer, I think, is that Prospero is attempting to distract his courtiers from the realities of the plague. His bizarre performance in Poe’s story is exactly that: a performance, designed to keep everyone’s mind on the party and off what is happening outside the walls.
….[so to now ask the question:] Do you have any thoughts about the operatic potential of any politicians or public figures, any stories that perhaps need to be told?
Ah, the question of the CNN opera! Politicians and public figures are human beings, and opera is – essentially – one of the ways we tell stories about the human experience. The concern for me, as a composer, is what weight the audience’s pre-knowledge hangs on the work, and how that is or is not useful to the experience I would hope my opera might facilitate. Let me put it another way: ‘Nixon in China’ is, quite possibly, my favourite opera ever. It encapsulates what a wonderful form opera is for satire and the satirical, and for good old comedy too: but more broadly, that opera excels at undermining the two-dimensional. ‘Nixon’ does all these things – plays with recent history using the satirical and the elegiac, the elusive and allusive – in very broad, and very subtle, very sophisticated ways that go far beyond Nixon as a historical figure. The character becomes a means to the opera’s ends. But that opera is a freak to me: how often do creators of such skill come together?
BB: If you could have written any pop song, which one would it have been?
Radiohead’s ‘Decks Dark’. Let’s not look at the play count in iTunes…
BB: I just watched Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs again last night, one of my favorite films of the year, alongside Ralph Wrecks the Internet. The boundaries between art for adults & children is getting blurry these days. I want to ask first, are you more of a cat person or a dog person? And more seriously, given the phenomenal number of animals we see these days in media (social especially), do you see any animals or stories for children in your operatic future?
I just love animals, period. Dogs are good for composers because they make us get up and, you know, move. I think cats like composers because we sit very still for long periods of time.
I know one cat who, I’m convinced, thinks I AM a cat for this reason.
I think both children and animals are rich sources of stories for opera, despite the old saying that neither should be on stage or you risk mayhem. Opera for children is actually a subject on which I have very strong feelings. My condescension-radar kicks into high gear. I have very little patience with opera that is purely didactic (be it for whatever audience), and I loathe opera that patronizes kids.
‘Peter Grimes’ is, at one level, an opera ‘about’ bullying. And yet it is so, so much richer than that. Why should opera for children be any less complex or nuanced in its storytelling?
So I’ve got pretty exacting standards there: opera for children and with children should have the same artistic integrity as any other opera.
And I think this might indeed be in my future: one of the wonderful components of my residency at Glyndebourne is getting to work with their education department. They have a remarkable record of commissioning very strong work for young people: Howard Moody’s ‘Agreed’, which I just heard earlier in March, is exactly the best kind. Well crafted, inventive, lots of children involved in the production, and while there is a message or point within the story, the opera is so much more than that.
It’s funny you mention film: I’m really interested in composing for film. I just keep getting asked to do concert music and opera. But it seems like a very similar set of attitudes to the ways music tells story, illuminates character, creates atmosphere. Plus, the same need for collaboration and team work.
BB: What’s your favourite opera (meaning fun / enjoyment) and what’s your operatic ideal (meaning, the one you most admire)? When you’re composing might either of these in some respect embody your objective(s)?
For fun and enjoyment? The first scenes of ‘Nixon’, every time. Mozart. I have a huge soft spot for ‘Madama Butterfly’, though I’d hesitate to call it ‘fun’! Operas I admire… ‘Nixon’, all of Britten but particularly ‘Death in Venice’, ‘Written on Skin’ for sure, ‘Invisible Cities’. Those would be my top four. ‘Nixon’ for its incredible shadings of emotion, its moral imagination. ‘Death in Venice’ for the sheer beauty of the music, the impeccable text-setting. ‘Written on Skin’ for the best vocal writing, the best orchestration around the voice, and such clear-eyed understanding of dramatic economy. ‘Invisible Cities’ for its inventiveness, its intimacy, its imagination.
BB: Operas have often centred on a female’s suffering and dying. Please speak for a minute about opera in context with the feminist project of Balancing the Score. How you feel about opera’s past and its future?
Opera has a very challenging canon, for sure. I’ve eye-rolled my way through many a death aria (love those high notes with one’s dying breath!) just as I’ve eye-rolled my way through yet another rom-com heroine waking up in full hair and makeup. Because opera gets under my skin so much, I’ve had some truly uncomfortable experiences. (The ‘whip her to death’ scene in ‘Nixon’ – I can hardly bear to listen to it, though I know why it’s there.) There are more sophisticated, historicised answers to why these tropes have arisen and are perpetuated but as a creator, I must move forward. Not despite these issues, but in recognition of them. In defiance of them.
What I love about Balancing the Score is that it identified a problem, and proposed a practical, flexible opportunity as a solution, and distributes that solution beyond one individual: it’s a shrewd approach to talent investment. There are so many schemes where one early-career composer gets one shot: that’s a set up for failure and disappointment all-round. Glyndebourne’s is a much longer-term support system, one that is keenly aware of the importance of access to opera’s networks and what a huge challenge that can be for female creators.
BB: Opera is many things, but it’s an industry, artists & artisans & pedagogues, musicians & writers and composers, and many others besides. Talk for a moment about the women in the business and why it’s important to get more women involved.
Kaija Saariaho put it pretty succinctly: half of humanity has something to say.
BB: Is opera dead, or dying? Can it be saved?
Oh, opera’s been dying since it got started. Mark Adamo addressed this nicely:
“I was lecturing at a music school in February, and during a Q&A with the opera students, one asked me, ‘Is opera thriving? Collapsing? Mutating?’ To which I answered, ‘Yes’.”
He’s right. Though I do see a fundamental problem when it comes to renewing the genre, to creating new work. The ways that the industry supports creator-development is totally incoherent, and examples of thoughtful talent investment like Glyndebourne’s residency are so rare.
If we support people and help them learn how to create compelling opera that audiences want to hear, then they’ll ask for it, and houses can stop insisting that to sell seats they can only program ‘La bohème’. But these are very long projects. And I think it’s important to recognize that there are people who want their art to be entertainment, who do not want to be moved, or shaken, or challenged in any way, ever. They are the most truculent audience members. But that can’t be all that there is, because that is only one audience group, and it means that one group never gets a chance to change. I love ‘Bohème’ – I just get nervous when we start restricting the range of experiences art can offer us, and blame the new work for why we are restrictive.
A lot of contemporary opera is terrible – sure. I just get cross when people complain about both ends at once, saying that opera is a bunch of old chestnuts with too many dead women, but also that new opera sucks. As I get older I’m getting bolder about asking them what, exactly, they are doing to support new creators as we learn our craft. Because it takes a lot of learning, and learning costs time and concentration, both of which cost money. So the funding for new creators, and our trial-and-error, has to be there. Lab-style, festival-style, small-theatre opera where we can learn our craft: then follow through and build those mainstage opportunities for us when you’ve seen the work is promising.
BB: In your interview you spoke admiringly of singers. Some composers write difficult & virtuosic music, while others are more (musically) plain-spoken and direct in their style. If you’ll forgive me for sounding simplistic, I wonder if you know your preference between these two poles?
Myself, I lean towards what I think you mean by ‘plain-spoken’ and ‘direct’. But there’s a time and a place for both polarities you’ve identified. As a listener, I’m annoyed when I can’t hear what is being sung and I can’t discern why that is the case – like, there’s no aesthetic or dramatic justification for that choice. And I’m concerned when I suspect that the composer is imposing unhealthy or unsustainable vocal practice on singers, particularly when those are early-career singers who may not feel they can speak out.
Singers are the best guide here: they know what they do best and what they want to experiment with. I remember a masterclass (actually, one for instrumentalists) and a young composer said “but I want it to sound laboured” and the clinician-composer just looked at the guy and said “they can act that. All you are doing here is asking them to hurt themselves.” I want singers to want to sing my music. If they don’t, they won’t, and it will sit in a drawer, and for me that defeats the whole purpose.
BB: The writer Slavoj Zizek in Opera’s Second Death spoke of the function of opera before the time of Freud, as psychotherapy (and opera’s death he would ascribe at least partly to therapists, now supplanting opera by performing the same function). Would you rather write something that gets into someone’s head obsessively making them a bit crazy (I’m sure you can think of examples of composers who did that) or instead do you want to create something that is the cure?
I want to do both, because I think ‘both’ is what art can do. I think good opera creates these moments that haunt the imagination, that play out on the mind’s stage over and over again – an afterimage burned into the retina, etched on the eardrum. And I think those are the moments that also point to opera’s cathartic opportunities – and I use that word ‘cathartic’ deliberately. Which are deeply bound up in opera as a live performance medium… clearly, we are going to need do another interview!
BB: While you’re in Britain, Balancing the Score, do you miss anyone? Do you want to say hi to anyone here?
I miss everyone! It takes a village, this composing life. So let me say a huge thank you to all the people who have helped – you know who you are and I hope I have made clear how much I treasure your support and faith in me. You give me the courage to dream big!
*****
And speaking of “it takes a village” I refer you to The Next Wave Workshop from Musique 3 Femmes. For further information please look at their press release. to know more about the upcoming presentation on March 23rd at Ernest Balmer Studio.
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