Tonight I completed my Wajdi Mouawad trilogy. Last month I saw his production of Abduction from the Seraglio at the Canadian Opera Company twice, last week I saw Denis Villeneuve’s film Incendies, adapted from the play that I saw tonight. The show brings us full circle in an English translation by Linda Gaboriau presented by the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. For those wondering about the fellow behind the opera or the film, this is a great opportunity.
For those who haven’t seen the film or the play, I’ll tread carefully to avoid spoilers, as the story is a mystery worthy of Sophocles complete with a modern version of Tiresias, the infallible seer, handing out messages from beyond the grave, portentous communication. While the tale is a dark one full of death & murder, its redemptive promise, such as it is, must be through the women who are the most inspiring figures, as in Mouawad’s take on the Mozart Singspiel.
Director Djanet Sears
Director Djanet Sears had an ideal vehicle for a student group, challenged & pushed beyond what they likely would encounter in any professional show. That’s one of the great things about universities, where one can undertake difficult works. The commitment we felt from every member in this ensemble was total and absolute.
The dark story is mitigated somewhat by the ongoing singing presented live by the cast. While some of this is in the play, Sears explained to me a bit after the show, that it had to be found & assembled. As one of the transcendent women is known as “the one who sings” the music is in some sense unavoidable in this story. We listen to songs in another language, sometimes creating haunting moments of great beauty. Does it matter that we don’t understand the words? Surely not. We’re taken to a reflective place between the episodes, sometimes suggesting a transcendental community, multiple voices connected all around us, even as the story at times presents the agnostic position, the impossibility of love in a crazy time in a crazy place. We’re lucky here in Canada to have the luxury to reflect on such things, not under any sort of bombardment or attack.
At times Mouawad gets into speechifying, letting a character go off on a poetic tear, telling an epic story, while everyone listens. And while some of those stories are well-nigh unbearable, I’m reminded of an old saying about classic theatre, that deaths were described rather than shown, so that most of the deaths are in the prose rather than in the flesh: and thank goodness for that mercy, especially when one considers Villeneuve’s alternative: to show the violence in clinical detail. But it does make some of the speeches stunningly difficult, Olympian paragraphs and mountainous terrain to traverse for a young actor.
Scorched will be running at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse until March 17th .
Victor Davies is a Canadian composer whose work I have previously encountered in Toronto productions. His adaptation of Wilde’s comedy (in partnership with librettist Eugene Benson), called Earnest, The Importance of Being came to Toronto Operetta Theatre in 2015 (originally premiered in 2008). Another team effort with Benson gave us A Tale of Two Cities in 2016 at Summer Opera Lyric Theatre. I don’t pretend to know all his compositional activities (for instance he wrote Transit of Venus, an opera I never saw). But I do know that he has a very accessible and crowd-pleasing style, as you can tell from the over 200,000 hits for the youtube video of this movement from his organ concerto. Hot Pipes indeed!
And now Davies is preparing to premiere his adaptation of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe¸ an opera for which he did both the music and the libretto. Like me you may recall reading George Ryga’s play in high-school English class, one of my first encounters with the complexities of the Indigenous experience in Canada. Premiered in 1967 –the same year as Louis Riel—the world has changed since then. Its language still uses epithets we rarely hear anymore except perhaps in movies, as Davies explains in the introduction to the score:
ABOUT THE WORD “INDIAN” George Ryga has called Indigenous/Aboriginal/First Nations people this in the dialogue of his play which we continue in the opera. Note that the opera is set, as was the play in 1967, a different era from our own. As “Indian Friendship Centre” was widely used in this period we continue this here although of course many “Centre” names have changed to “Aboriginal Friendship Centre” etc.
I sent Davies a series of questions to find out more about him, and about the upcoming production of the opera, premiering here in Toronto March 24th & 25th.
Are you more like your father or your mother?
Composer Victor Davies in 1995 (photo: Francois Martin)
A mixture! My father was a classical music lover, and my mother was the one who brought the piano into the house (for my brother who wanted to play the guitar!) But the piano stayed and my sister and I started lessons. Actually I started on violin which I hated! I loved the big machine! Easier to play and lots more noise! I never knew til my mother was in her 90s that she actually played the piano as a girl. She was creative and artistic particularly with needlework. As my father was away during WWII my brother was my surrogate father and there was always lots of pop/big band music on the record player and the radio. He introduced me to Rhapsody in Blue which hit me like a lightning bolt! Besides my mother and father I had an uncle and aunt who played and sang. Going to their house with the baby grand (covered by a brocade cloth with tassels!) records of rag time music, et al it was like visiting Paris or New York in the 20s to me!
So music was a constant growing up and I was wedged between rag time (see above) church music (also the aunts and uncles sang in the choir) Beethoven at home, and pop music from my brother and sister. A rich diet! Then of course the legion band came once a year to play at the Anglican church right behind our house. Follow that parade! Real drums! You could FEEL that bass drum! I guess too my career as a performer (yes singing and dancing, high school, G &S, Broadway at university) was growing along with all the rest my life. (My father said rather derisively that I didn’t play football, I performed it!) When composition (I had a dance band by this time) emerged in university it came all together rather organically, but I was headed for a career in medicine. So it was a cross roads. My father who had a wonderful Welsh voice, grew up with some hard drinking mates and music was wine of the poor (he become a lawyer) so music was off the list. I was also very adept at dissecting things in zoology so I thought my path was surgery.
But one fateful year at the University of Manitoba, so many shows to be in, so many dance band gigs, and all that improvising songs at parties, months rolled by with no classes being attended. And came the glorious day with my visit with the Dean and my being thrown out of university, and my bondage of legitimacy was over, and I was free to fly on the wings of music! (As thin and cheap as they were at that point!)
Let my Victor go!
Yes Broadway beckoned! Yikes but I didn’t know much! So off to Montreal, Boston (Berklee School of Music) and New York to explore. Scary places. But finally Indiana U (a place entirely unknown to me said join us) And I began the climb up the musical mountain with the promises of grand vistas ahead. (But for years though I wasn’t sure if I should have been an actor or a composer. I guess this is why such an affinity to musical theatre)
What is the best or worst thing about what you do?
The best is when you hear your music come to life in the hands and voices of wonderful singers and musicians. Nothing quite like it.
Victor Davies in 2007 (photo by encourager Lori Davies)
Being a free lance composer the worst (or the least creative thing) is the huge amount of administration and marketing which you have to do to keep performances and commissions coming. Very fortunately my wife Lori (an ex cardiac intensive care nurse, and Executive Director) is quite brilliant at these things and she loves music and theatre and the people around it. (Someone once remarked the intensive care part was perfect for a harried composer!) I should also mention that Lori plays many roles in my/our lives and has been a constant companion on all these musical journeys since university days. She reminded me that she introduced me to opera (it was Porgy and Bess!) and was the greatest encourager when I started composing: “You wrote that!” she said. Instant bonding! She was hooked and so was I! I remind her of this when the music is coming slowly that she was the cause of this life path and so she has to be patient!
Who do you like to listen to or watch?
I’ve been engaged with just about every kind of music in my career, from country, jazz, rock, classical, world music (listening, performing, arranging and composing). However when you are busy composing all the time the last thing you want to do is to listen to music! So we have a huge collection of LP’s/CDs (neatly stored in Ikea shelves in the living room!) but they never get played. However I/we try to go to lots of live music. Now mostly opera! Also there is tons of music on Youtube old and new! So I listen there too. But you can’t beat live. Watching: news (CCN, CBC), and PBS costume drama!
What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
The ability to quickly write down the music I hear in my head. Never had the proper musical training growing up although I did hear lots of original music starting around 8 years old. However no immediate person knew what to do about it. I can imagine tremendous things but they fly away greeted by trying to make them real on paper. So it is a lot of work to get things written down (now always via computer, no paper anymore!) (I tell myself I’m more like Beethoven than Mozart. It helps!)
When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?
Travel, TV (now media I guess, the internet) talking to family and friends on the phone!
Oh a voice from the other room…what?….yes walking and this means exploring places by foot here and abroad.
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More questions about The Ecstasy of Rita Joe
I recall a composer once telling me that one learns to recognize one’s own authentic voice by imitating the things you like, trying out different procedures and sounds, until finally you discover something you like. Our culture has a fetish for newness & originality, while some other cultures make more of a virtue of the imitation of models or emulation of styles. Could you please address this, namely how do you reconcile imitation and originality?
At the Transit of Venus premiere in 2007 (photo: Tony Nardella)
I actually started composing when my piano teacher of the moment (I was about 14) introduced me to Gershwin and Bach! Wow!! The major work which emerged from this however was ”The Battle”. Ghostly sounds of the battle field at dawn (sounds of birds!), the marches of opposing armies arriving, the battle (don’t remember how that went!) and the eerie calm of the battle field as the victor marches away. It was mostly for memory I don’t know if any of it got written down. Had never heard of Charles Ives then……. But I started composing in earnest later because of my love of musical theatre, Broadway, and pop music. There is a directness of utterance and connectedness to the audience that is inherent in this music. This is true for Mozart too. It goes straight to the heart.
I went through a phase of contemporary music, Webern (had the collected works!) Elliot Carter et al. (both great composers actually) I took a conducting course from Boulez. This course drove me completely back to my roots. I had been doing a CBC TV show which had opera, country, jazz and folk music, world music (Ravi Shankar was on one show!) which I left to go to the Boulez course. From this I realized that reaching the heart not the mind was where I wanted to be. Melody, rhythm was where the magic lay and discovering how to make it your own was the challenge I should grasp not reaching for new intellectual esoteric solutions. What is the identifiable/quantifiable magic from an intellectual/theoretical point of view in The Marriage of Figaro? All we know is this music continues to enchant us with no analysis necessary. So my challenge as I see it is to somehow find the musical magic in simplicity and directness.
What style of music—both in terms of harmony and vocalism—should we expect to hear in your new opera?
Like Mr Gilbert, I always say to the style question: “let the punishment fit the crime!”
So the opera is wide ranging musically. There is humour, a murder, two rapes, a fight at a dance, romance, a Father who tells wonderful stories, and some beautiful heart warming moments, and at the end a funeral. All these moments have to be clothed with music in the appropriate emotional and dramatic language. This ranges from the country music (ca. ’67) at the dance, to the murder, to the stories the Father tells. So there is an abundance of various kinds of melody (many of which I hope will be embedded in your brain so they can’t be removed!) to very dissonant music for the murder, fight et al. This is not 12 tone or serial but just very dense and nasty harmonic stuff which speaks of the threat, action, and emotional level of the events. The vocal writing is all about the characters, their emotions and the story they are living on the stage. There is no display of vocal fireworks for its own sake. Also as it is in English, I am a stickler with myself that every word be set so if properly executed, it can be clearly understood without surtitles. So the music is deceptively simple to hear but still challenging for the singers. And melody, melody, melody……the vocal line….
Pondering this question more, I’m sometimes asked by people about various kinds of chords, techniques etc When I compose I work something like a sculptor or a painter in the sense I have certain musical shapes or structures that I can hear, feel or sense, and I dip into the tonal, rhythmic musical universe inside myself to try to find the building materials which match what I am feeling. Kind of spreading tonal paint on the musical canvas…
Please tell me a bit about the story of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.
I’ve included a Synopsis.
The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is the story of two young First Nations people in love who venture to the city in search of new lives off the reserve. Ill equipped, they struggle to make their way, torn between the heritage of the world they grew up with on the reserve of close family and community ties and a dependence on nature to survive, and the future they hope for themselves in the new alien impersonal urban world. Forces attempting to draw them back to the reserve in the form of Rita Joe’s father, the reserve priest, and reserve opinion about the implicit evil of the city, along with their rootedness in family, conflict with their desire to embrace a new future in the complex, exciting and foreign world of the city. They are unprepared as the city is full of pitfalls: the structure of the white legal system, paternalistic social institutions (the Indian Friendship Centre) and finally the violent and predatory world of the street which ultimately destroys them.
There is a story in the play, but it is told through an expressionistic lens in Act 1 and a more conventional form of play in Act 2. I decided that my job as the librettist was to uncover a clear story path for the audience to follow, making it happen in chronological time, not the time shifting which happens in the play.
The chronological approach means that the listener can more easily pick up the developing emotional baggage of the characters and go on the story journey and landscape of the character. There are a number of musical ideas that accompany the characters in their journey. It is not leit-motif, but as Puccini does, the recurrence of a theme in a new context has real emotional power reminding us what the character has invested through this theme. However now that the score is done and I am looking at it, I see all kinds of recurring motives that I was not aware were emerging at the time, even though there were many that I was consciously using.
It took many drafts (20?) to unravel the brilliant tapestry George Ryga wove in and around the story in his play, to what I arrived at. However the story of the play is the story of the opera. (I had a friend who I gave the libretto to, and she said “it’s exactly like the play!”) A word too about Ryga’s language. It is a combination of brilliant play-writing and poetry. Every word counts, and the relationships between each word in each line counts, and the exact rhythm of each sentence has its own coherence. So you have to approach each line in terms of changing it (cutting, moving, making shorter, inserting) with great care to ensure the inherent power in the play and its language is not diminished. His biography speaks of his talent as a poet but also his high powered TV script writer career which he gave up to write plays, poetry and novels.
Please put Ecstasy of Rita Joe in context vis a vis operatic prototypes of the 21st century. How radical or conservative is this opera?
Hm….. In terms of contemporary operatic musical language it is conservative I guess. It’s not serial, minimalist, or any of the isms. Is La Boheme conservative or radical? I guess Rita Joe is radical in the sense it is meant to be immediately impactful and entirely popular and direct. It is full of melodies as I say above but also very eclectic. “To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the….” I can’t actually name something that it is like. Maybe Dead Man Walking, West Side Story, Peter Grimes?? (these are all from the 20th century!?) ( A 21st century opera that I have liked was Written On Skin (which I learned means parchment) because of the simplicity and directness of the vocal lines, placed in front of a vast rich harmonic tapestry of a huge and largely subdued orchestra.)
Please speak about the issue with portraying Indigenous characters, both as far as the appropriation of their cultural images and their music.
There is no Indigenous music, language, or traditional Indigenous story in the opera, thus there is no appropriation of this kind.
Dakota Sioux Artist Maxine Noel has graciously and enthusiastically allowed her beautiful painting “Not Forgotten” which speaks of the missing and murdered Indigenous women, to be used as the graphic identity of the production. When Lori and I saw this image we knew immediately it would be an appropriate and powerful one for the opera.
Not Forgotten, by Maxine Noel
The opera first developed by way of Manitoba Opera (Larry Desrochers) who I took the play to and he didn’t think there was an opera there. I said ”let’s go and talk to Rebecca Chartrand” (the Indigenous, singer and educator we worked with on the Opening Ceremonies of the Pan Am Games). Her response was “You HAVE to do it!” She said it spoke directly to the question of the missing and murdered Indigenous women. Thus the journey started. Guillermo Silva Marin was intrigued when we brought the project to him which resulted in a workshop reading of the libretto by OIC (with singers reading, dramaturged by our talented theatre director daughter Heather) three years ago and Guillermo has been eagerly encouraging and pushing its progress forward since.
In Winnipeg and in Toronto both Larry and Guillermo have worked to engage the Indigenous community to bring them into the circle. Winnipeg is easier as it is a more homogenous Indigenous population. In Toronto there is massive diversity with people from every First Nation in Canada making it harder to speak to a coherent community.
However, because we were reaching out to the community to engage them in some way in the productions and process, we have had very positive responses.
In the first draft of the libretto I said something like “at this time there are not any Indigenous opera singers etc etc and in the future etc etc.” But now that we have arrived at this moment we have five wonderful Indigenous soloists!
Back to appropriation for a moment. Every Indigenous person we spoke to was happy to hear what we were planning and that we had reached out to include them if possible in the process.
Ryga was very critical of Canadian society and many of the issues in the play are still with us, so the dramatic content is unfortunately not out of date after 50 years. In any event, the kernel story of two young people in love leaving the reserve/country and encountering the big city and things ending badly is a universal and timeless one. Mix in the pull to come back to the reserve/farm/old home town and the generational conflicts inherent there with “a fish out of water” story and it is a story applicable to every time and place.
The play is well known in the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community and was a theatrical landmark, dealing as it did in 1967 with issues between Indigenous peoples and Canadian society. The play has been done all over Canada and beyond with Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors playing all or none of the roles and has been accepted by all communities. Thus the opera is not breaking new ground other than the fact it is being transformed into a musical theatre work. (And also that we actually have Indigenous opera singers!)
What direction do you see yourself going after this?
A rest! Time to regroup and clean up the various works which are in need of tidying up, and piled all around me as I type in my office. Although I do have an idea for a comic opera (!)…..Hm…. And I do have requests for some new works I had to put off in this intensive year of writing Rita Joe. But first The Beach!!!
Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?
That could be a long list! (Influences?) OK I have two scores I go back to regularly – Peter Grimes and Porgy and Bess. But there’s also The Band’s brown album (Up On Cripple Creek) Oh Messiah, Hm Paul Simon…. The Duke….Beethoven’s 3rd symphony….
Two mentors I will always be indebted to were Bob McMullin the wonderful conductor and arranger for the U of Manitoba shows who encouraged me to follow a musical path, and my composition teacher Thomas Beversdorf at Indiana University who was a calm and steady captain on the turbulent composition ship at that time.
But of course I owe the largest debit to my muse, patron, partner, and the person who said “You wrote that!”, like I must be Beethoven, Bach and Bernstein all rolled into one, at that critical moment in my life, which pushed me onwards with musical creation, my wife Lori. That’s the person who was so happy that the score of Rita Joe got emailed to Guillermo Silva Marin at Opera In Concert just a few hours ago, and who can’t wait to hear what it will sound like!!
That’s it!
Oh, PS. A few years ago I got a call from the President of the University of Manitoba asking if I would accept an honorary Doctorate. I said did she know anything about my history with the university. She laughed and said “that she was sure I would have some interesting stories to tell the students in my acceptance speech” ……..!!!
[Here’s the first part of that address.]
When President Szathmary asked me if I would accept this degree, I asked her if she was aware that I had been thrown out of the U of M.
YES, today is actually my second graduation from the U of M.
My first being when Dean Broderson asked me to leave. I was in pre-med, but I was spending all my time composing and performing music. And on that day when I admitted to the dean that I hadn’t been to class for three months, he freed me to become a composer.
On that, my first graduation day, Dean Broderson sent me forth, with the following invocation –
FOLLOW YOUR OWN DREAM,
LISTEN, TO YOUR OWN MELODY,
SPEAK, WITH YOUR OWN VOICE.
Actually what he really said was “DAVIES, YOU’RE OUT!”
But I knew what he really meant.
[…cut to the end of the speech]
NOW GRADUANDS (or anyone else who’d like to) repeat after me –
“FOLLOW, YOUR OWN DREAM, ……
“LISTEN, TO YOUR OWN MELODY,…….
“SPEAK, WITH YOUR OWN VOICE”.……..
“Follow your own dream, listen to your own melody, speak with your own voice”…..
Just like the Dean told me to do, on my FIRST graduation day!
Graduands Good Luck!! Thank You!
The original caption for this photo: “Who really writes the music? Victor with Mr Red Ears”
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Victor Davies new opera The Ecstasy of Rita Joe based on George Ryga’s play of the same name, is to receive its world premiere through Voicebox – Opera In Concert the night of Saturday March 24th and the afternoon of Sunday March 25th. For further information click here.
The great piano virtuoso Lang Lang came to Roy Thomson Hall tonight to play with the Toronto Symphony. Because he’s suffering from tendinitis the program was changed to include his young protégé. Lang Lang & Maxim Lando played a series of pieces together, sometimes one on each “hand” of a two-handed piece, sometimes bringing more. It was a night to celebrate many kinds of mentorship.
Maxim with his teachers Lang Lang, Tema Blackstone, and Hung-Kuan Chen
Peter Oundjian, whom I’ve watched gently guiding the young talent of the TSO, and artists such as Jan Lisiecki, stood onstage reminiscing with Lang Lang, who first appeared alongside Oundjian twenty years ago at the age of fifteen years old. Now they both stood with Lando, who is himself fifteen, as we come to the twilight of Oundjian’s time with the TSO.
The prodigy-apprentice is now also a mentor. Lang Lang & Peter Oundjian enjoy a laugh with the TSO (photo: Jag Gundu)
And to begin the concert we watched the combined forces of the TSO and Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra (comprised of members between the ages of 12 and 25), over 130 players to undertake Paul Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice all under Oundjian’s baton.
In a hall jammed full of loving support it was a celebration of education & mentorship, a night to be remembered & cherished.
In the middle of the program was a bold performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé suite No 2 from the TSO, the orchestra now more normal sized. Oundjian seemed to have a great time, as the orchestra responded to his leadership.
After the interval we shifted gears for something quite different. After a bit of talk, Lang Lang & Lando sat at the keyboard for a pair of pieces without any orchestral support.
First came a very delicate reading of Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium” from the Carnival of the Animals, Lando seated towards the bass end, Lang Lang taking the treble. His right hand seemed to be fine, while he sometimes gestured with his left, partly to conduct his partner, partly because he’s a flamboyant creature.
Next came a wonderfully jagged performance of “America”, meaning the song from West Side Story, likely in homage to Leonard Bernstein’s hundredth birthday. In this energetic piece I wasn’t thinking about anything resembling an injury, although I couldn’t see how much Lang Lang was able to play. At times they would suddenly become super soft in their volume, always wonderfully well co-ordinated.
For a piece I’ve heard as many times as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, this was an eye-opener. In the recent interview with Lando I linked to his highly original reading of the piece. But this version was a quantum leap beyond that.
L-R, Peter Oundjian, Lang Lang & Maxim Lando (photo: Jag Gundu)
In places Lang Lang improvised, ornamenting extra notes that were entirely welcome in this funny hybrid piece that is a bit of jazz fused with something symphonic. While it’s unlike any version I’ve ever heard, I think Gershwin would love what they did, at times crossing over one another, a technical tour de force. Sometimes we heard playing of restraint & wonderful elegance, sometimes big full sounds and everything in between.
And for their encore we got a flashy Sugar Plum Fairy, Tchaikowsky for one piano (mostly) two handed but occasionally embellished beyond that.
I’ve just seen Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar nominated film adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad’s play Incendies.
I’m looking forward to seeing a translation of the play presented here in Toronto next week, titled Scorched.
I couldn’t miss the parallels to what we saw in the Canadian Opera Company production of Abduction from the Seraglio.
We’re again in the presence of violations and victims across generations, cultures at war, but with a quantum leap in the amount of violence. Our experience of Mozart here in Toronto that seemed to outrage the purists is like Monty Python or Mr Rogers Neighbourhood compared to what we see in the film, a retelling of the Oedipus myth in search of a happy ending to the tragedy.
This is the same Villeneuve who gave the world Blade Runner 2049, except that believe it or not, the sci-fi film is tame and gentle in comparison. If you’re easily upset by violence please don’t see this film. There are moments of unforgettable horror.
Onstage I suspect it will be easier to stomach than in a film. Yana Meerzon, in a paper discussing film & play observes that the play is perhaps more in the poetic direction while the film is more in the historical / factual direction. I have to wonder, given that there are certain mechanical differences in what film or theatre can do. There is still a great deal in the film that is ambiguous, poetic, mysterious, even with the graphic horror of some of the scenes of death and destruction. But of course I have no right to disagree, when I have not yet seen or read the play, right?
Playwright & director Wajdi Mouawad
I am very curious about Mouawad’s experience of women, given that in the Mozart he makes the presentation of both women stronger and more heroic than I’ve ever seen in any other production. I won’t post that bad-ass photo of Jane Archibald again –having posted it three times already–but if you saw the production you know what I mean. He has a rare approach to women. And in Incendies too, the women are heroic, both the mother –who is legendary—and her daughter, who has more backbone than her brother.
I’m looking forward to seeing the show at the University of Toronto, beginning March 7th.
2017 may be remembered as a year that two movies gave us detailed portraits of Winston Churchill.
Darkest Hour is the one you’re probably aware of, starring Gary Oldman in an Oscar-nominated performance. But I stumbled on another one with Brian Cox, titled Churchill. Each has a very tight timeline concerning one small part of the biography of the great man. While what I’m about to say is historical fact, please don’t read this if you’re afraid of encountering a spoiler. For starters, Germany lost the war, but at the time it was far from certain.
Darkest Hour takes us from the time in 1939 when Neville Chamberlain is replaced as the leader of the Conservatives (making Churchill Prime Minister without the necessity of an election, but also without the blessing of a popular mandate), showing the doubts of all around him.
Churchill happens much later in the war, on the eve of the 1944 invasion of Europe and again concerning the conflicts between Churchill and all those around him.
Darkest Hour is a very inspiring tale showing a man full of doubt finding his authentic voice. Churchill, in contrast, shows a man who is again full of doubt, his own finest hours now behind him. Where Darkest Hour is triumphant and uplifting, Churchill is a much darker exploration of the human soul.
I saw Darkest Hour on a big screen, so it’s perhaps not a fair comparison, but Churchill did not seem so impressive. How could it? The budget for Darkest Hour is reported as $30 million while that for Churchill is but $10 million, and alas the latter film has only taken in roughly half of that total so far. Chances are Darkest Hour will help swell that total (that is, people watching Churchill either by accident or design) by creating additional interest in the subject. So far Darkest Hour has earned over $54 million, and that’s sure to swell in the aftermath of the Academy Awards, where the film has six nominations.
The portrayals are quite different, as indeed is the writing and cinematography. And perhaps I can’t make any unbiased comparison between the actors, not when one of them is my favourite actor working today.
I know Cox for a role & portrayal I really disliked, namely Agamemnon in Troy. As I scan his listing on IMDB, I see lots of films I saw, but can’t recall his performances: because they didn’t really make an impression. Nor did this one as Churchill.
And then there’s Oldman, who I treasure for
His portrayal of Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, a film I watch over and over
His portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK¸ another film I watch over and over
His portrayal of Dracula
His portrayals of Commissioner Gordon in two of the Batman movies
His nasty creation as Zorg in The Fifth Element
Each of those five (a deaf composer, a killer, a vampire with a heavy Hungarian accent, a boring cop with heart, and a psychopathic criminal) are completely unique and unlike the others. Indeed, what makes Churchill a worthy addition to this list is how fluid his portrayal, one that rarely calls attention to the artist. This isn’t a virtuoso turn, one of those films where you know every moment that you’re watching the great Olivier as Hamlet (splendid but ostentatious), or F Murray Abraham as Salieri (did the Oscar go to the wrong actor?). I was distracted a few times by this nagging need to see, hmm, is that really Oldman? And usually I would get lost in the story-telling and not bother with the game of spot-the-star.
Meanwhile, there’s also the question of his consort. I think Miranda Richardson as Clementine Churchill is far more believable to my eye and ear than the still stunningly beautiful Kristin Scott Thomas. Thomas was very very nice to her Winston Churchill, while Richardson was very difficult, and actually stole the picture out from under Cox. Her drama –trying to figure out how to talk to a larger than life personality—was in itself larger than life. But she wasn’t a diva. I found I was watching her rather than him whenever they were on the screen together.
Both films feature a stenographer who endures a trial by blustery fire, eventually finding her place at the great one’s side, and including a story about a loved one in the war. Oldman’s is Lily James, while Cox’s is Ella Purnell. I suppose each of them is somewhat electrifying in contrast, a stunning young woman onscreen beside a bunch of tired old farts. I’d like to think there’s some truth behind their stories but who knows?
Both films feature a handsome fellow as the king, -James Purefoy in the 1944 story alongside Cox, Ben Mendelsohn as the 1939 king—although only Mendelsohn bothers to give him the stutter (and it’s wonderfully well done) that we know from The King’s Speech.
Alongside Oldman & Cox there are some good portrayals. Samuel West deserves to be better known (you may remember him from Howard’s End or Notting Hill), often sharing the frame with Oldman as his supporter Anthony Eden, while the two chief antagonists (Ronald Pickup as Neville Chamberlain and Stephen Dillane as the Viscount Halifax) glare and scheme quietly, Pickup helping things by portraying Chamberlain’s growing illness quite beautifully. As he drifts towards death he stops resisting Churchill.
In the end I think Darkest Hour will be remembered as Oldman’s star vehicle rather than for its historical accuracy. And while Churchill has lots of good moments, I think it’s already well on the way to being forgotten, which is unfortunate. If Churchill can emerge from the shadow of the comparison, it might actually get noticed.
I had a second look & listen to Wajdi Mouawad’s Abduction from the Seraglio, my second time coming in the closing performance of the run with the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre.
Wajdi Mouawad (photo: Jean-Louis Fernandez)
I wanted to reflect on what did & didn’t work for me, while aiming to be mindful of multiple objectives & points of view.
While this production added a prologue, additional dialogue & restored music that’s often cut, making for a long evening, it was still the most absorbing Entfuhrung/Abduction I’ve ever sat through, never letting down in intensity, never boring me. I’ve yawned in every other production, a work that sometimes seems overlong in the way the musical numbers go on and on (or in the immortal critique we hear in Amadeus: “too many notes”). Do I sound like a Philistine? I don’t care. If we’re going to talk about hits & misses, first off in a production adding to an already long work, I’d be surprised if no one suggested that they consider judicious cuts to go with their creative additions.
And yet the result feels very Wagnerian in its intensity. I don’t know Mouawad’s work, don’t know about his possible acquaintance with the works or dramaturgy of Richard Wagner, only that I think it might be terribly interesting to see what he as an artist with Muslim roots might make of Parsifal for example.
Top l-r Jane Archibald & Claire de Sévigné, bottom l-r Owen McCausland & Peter Mauro (photo: Michael Cooper)
The headline above (“Vanderdecken” being the character in the Heine original adapted by Wagner as The Flying Dutchman ) is an indication of how I read Pasha Selim last night in Mouawad’s version of Abduction. No it’s not a light comedy, but something very serious and perhaps therefore requiring such length. In the final tableau Selim gets inside the enclosure of the set—where the captives were held—with his Janissaries and is moved upstage. It’s almost like a ship sailing off. I couldn’t help thinking that this reminds me of the Flying Dutchman, who would come ashore at regular intervals seeking love and redemption. As the enclosure is shaped like a globe I took it to represent the world in some sense. If we think not simply in terms of the romantic plot (and the question of which man Konstanze chooses) but rather the larger inter-cultural encounter at the core of the story, Selim is in a sense still looking for the redemption that Mouawad himself might seek of a real enlightened meeting between cultures, unhindered by cliche or over-simplification.
I should probably not project the director’s notes so far as to conflate Mouawad & Selim, although I can’t help it. After reading his notes (that spoke of “caricature or casual racism.”) and seeing the show early in the run, I was reminded of Peter Hinton’s attempt to update & redeem aspects of Louis Riel through the framing device of an onstage group of silent witnesses, counter-balancing or weakening some of the poison in the text. Some critics found it heavy-handed. I won’t go on about this, only to suggest that what struck me as a wonderfully fertile pathway turned many other people off.
Perhaps I read too much into Pasha Selim being Mouawad, if we notice the casting of Raphael Weinstock, an actor born in Haifa. At the very least this is an intriguing & inclusive choice.
Raphael Weinstock as Selim, Jane Archibald, Peter Mauro and upstage an un-named Janissary on guard (photo: Michael Cooper)
I asked about the appearance of the Janissaries yesterday on twitter. I tweeted:
“For today’s show I sat beside someone who was really disturbed / upset by the way the chorus looked, and said so aloud. Now that it’s over, do you mind me asking, what if anything did it mean?”
No I wasn’t disavowing by blaming my seatmate, (who found them scary). I just wondered what they were meant to signify.
I was told
“We represented how alien the east was in the minds of the western world. I wondered how shocking it was from the house. Not our favourite look! Tough to wear for over 4 hours.”
Thank you Alexandra Pomeroy @ladychyld for the reply.
Goran Juric as Osmin (Photo: Gary Beechey)
I think that these zombie-like creations were mysterious and fearsome while dodging clichés, which is what one usually encounters (thinking for instance of movies such as the aptly named True Lies). I don’t blame Mouawad for talking out of two sides of his mouth, when staging an opera full of two-dimensional caricatures, thinking especially of Osmin, whose aria “O wie will ich triumphieren”, is a celebratory rant about the joys of torture. By directing it to a child (who might represent his own daughter inside Blonde that he’ll never see) he deconstructs much of the rage & violence. Again, this cryptic moment was intriguing and for me, very rich even if I might be decoding it all wrong. Similarly, while the Janissaries could represent the most fearsome side of Ottoman culture, Mouawad opted for something gentler & more ambiguous.
Three other things really worked for me
The first big aria from Konstanze, sung not to Selim but framed by Belmonte in the meta-theatre set up at the beginning
As I mentioned in my review, the aria “Marten aller Arten” that closes the first half, which was even more powerful for me, knowing it was coming.
The celebratory aria from Blonde “welche Wonne welche Lust” just after the interval, includes dancing from the other women onstage resembling dervishes, making her celebration seem inter-cultural, and beautiful in so many ways.
Claire de Sévigné and Goran Juric (photo: Gary Beechey)
Some things were a bit obscure, only reading retrospectively. That Osmin is playing with a mobile through the first scene, and then sings his aria “O wie will ich triumphieren” to a little child who seems to sweetly kiss him goodnight at the end as though he is her papa singing a bedtime story, reads a bit differently when we discover that Blonde is pregnant. At the very least Mouawad seeks to make Osmin a three-dimensional character rather than a nasty buffoon.
And I wish there had been more of the meta-theatre set up in the opening. I have an idea that they might want that costs no money whatsoever for the ending, namely to bring down the reflective curtain that was used to set up the flashback scene a bit earlier. We see this curtain come down just at the moment when the music ends, sealing off the flashback and the Ottoman world; why not bring it down 30 seconds or even a minute earlier? Let us hear that celebratory chorus snuffed by the curtain, sounding far off as though in the heads of the quartet onstage, remembering.
Oh well, like so many, I’m a vicarious backseat driver wishing to grab the steering wheel…
And for those who want more Mouawad?
His play Scorched is to be presented at the University of Toronto in March at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, March 7-10 and 14-17, two weeks of Wednesday to Saturday.
Sometimes interviews are a pretext to get closer to someone you’ve admired for awhile, watching their development as an artist.
Oh sure, I’m interviewing Geoffrey Sirett because he’s about to star in the Canadian Stage – Tapestry Opera—Vancouver Opera co-production of The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring. But I’ve been a keen observer, watching Sirett:
Not only does he do many things, he does them well. His tiny role in the Canadian Opera Company’s Arabella made a huge impression on me, and I’m hoping the boss noticed, because he’s done excellent work every time I’ve seen him. I hope we see more of him with the COC and elsewhere.
But in the immediate future? The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring in March and the occasion for some questions right now.
Baritone & conductor Geoffrey Sirett
1) Are you more like your father or your mother?
For those who know me, this answer will be no surprise: I am most like my father. For one thing, I am a few grey hairs short of being a 1.3x scale replica in physical attributes. My father is also a musician: he has a doctorate in choral conducting and pedagogy, making music, and singing in particular, a significant influence in my childhood. My musical training began at age six, singing under the direction of my father. My mother also sang, and continues to sing, in my father’s choirs, so advocacy for the arts, passion for musical expression, and support of my career pursuits is certainly owed to both of them.
2) What is the best or worst thing about what you do?
I often feel that the best and worst things in this career are one and the same. That is, the experiences that offer reward and fulfillment as an artist often are the same experiences that produce challenges and grief. Day to day, contract to contract, the balance shifts; sometimes favourably, sometimes not. I’m not sure if that is a necessity as an artist, but it’s certainly part of the cultural narrative and expectations for artists: make a lot of sacrifices. The more sacrifice, the more reward.
The rewards, no doubt, are numerous: creative expression, being a member of an artistic community, developing intense relationships, opportunities to travel, getting paid (hopefully in money) to do something you love, etc.
Sacrifices, though, rarely see the spotlight, and I think they need to play a larger role in the discourse of the arts and theatre: constant criticism (self and other), financial instability, significant time away from family and friends, etc.
Special, meaningful experiences sway the balance favourably. These are different for each artist, but I tend to find the greatest reward in the process of creation, and I am grateful that many opportunities for creation and development have made their way into my career. The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring is no exception. It is an opportunity to be instrumental in the creation something new and vivid, which will no doubt contribute to the rich tapestry (pun intended) of new works that push the possibilities of this art-form forward.
3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?
I don’t listen to a lot of music. Audiobooks occupy the majority of my listening these days. Almost all non-fiction: lots of psychology, sociology, behavioural economics. [also, Bryn Terfel:. because I have two ears and a heart]
Fellow nerds should check out: Thinking, Fast & Slow – Kahneman Nudge – Sunstein and Thaler The Black Swan – Taleb
4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?
I used to wish my falsetto was better, so I could be a counter tenor. It will never happen, so I’m content to live vicariously through Dan Taylor.
5) When you’re just relaxing and not working, what is your favourite thing to do?
Spend time with my wife, family, and friends, in whatever form that takes: Netflix, going out for drinks, playing squash (only if I’m winning), hiking/biking through nature.
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More questions about Geoffrey’s projects, especially The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring
1- Please tell me a bit about the adaptation of Gogol’s story The Overcoat
The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring is a landmark partnership and co-production between Tapestry Opera, Canadian Stage and Vancouver Opera.
It is the operatic re-imagining of the classic theatre production The Overcoat reuniting the original creative team twenty years after its debut.
Award-winning composer James Rolfe (whose works include Inês, Elijah’s Kite and Beatrice Chancy) joins forces with Morris Panych, the acclaimed co-creator of The Overcoat, in order to bring bold operatic voice to a beloved tale. This is Morris’s first libretto.
Music for The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring will be played by a live orchestra, as opposed to the pre-recorded Shostakovich musical score in the theatre production.
The world premiere of The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring will take place on March 29 at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto running through to April 14. The production then heads west for Vancouver’s second annual Vancouver Opera Festival on April 28 and 29 as well as May 4 and 9-12.
The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring was conceived in Tapestry Opera’s 2014 LibLab, a program that pairs up leading librettists and composers.
The two venues are the original Toronto and Vancouver homes for the critically-acclaimed theatre production of The Overcoat, created by Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling. The theatre production in 1998 was praised as an “elegant expression of accomplished theatricality” by Variety Magazine. [The cast & creative team are listed below ]
Some thoughts from my own voice: The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring is beautifully rendered because it has managed to create something new and exciting while being faithful to, and drawing inspiration from, the original production. For those who don’t know, the original stage play The Overcoat was a non-verbal, movement-based theatre piece set to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. Its success was ubiquitous, I think, due to the clarity of the story-telling and narrative as crafted by Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling. Because the vision and narrative of the original was so finely tuned, I believe the ‘Musical Tailoring’ enters this story with such a solid foundation that all text, singing, and new music serves to enhance the drama in a unique way. Fans of the original production will love this, as will new audiences.
2) What style of music—both in terms of harmony and vocalism—should we expect to hear in the new opera?
I know that Morris prefers to call this piece a “musical” rather than an “opera”. I don’t think the words need to be mutually exclusive, however I think the concern is that “new opera” or “contemporary opera” conjures images of atonality and a potentially inaccessible musical style. This is far from the case. James Rolfe has created a hauntingly beautiful, lyrical score, with memorable melodies in a tonal environment. That said, do not mistake this to imply simplicity. James is a masterful composer, every bit of music required to aid the story/drama but nothing superfluous. I think those who are opera-lovers will love this piece, as will those who love musicals. At the end of the day, it is its own piece, and it is splendid no matter what you call it.
3-Does riding a bicycle through the summer –as you have done with The Bicycle Opera Project—help your singing?
I do think that being on tour with the Bicycle Opera Project has provided advantages to my singing, at least regarding breath control and stamina. More than anything, though, tour cycling is meditative for me, provides an opportunity to clear my mind, and creates special bonding with my cast/cycling mates. These features of cycling likely contribute more to a healthy singing lifestyle than the physical benefits.My wife, Larissa Koniuk, is the driving force behind BOP. She determines its future and I support her as best I can. I expect it will always play a role in our lives and future, though, in some form or other.
Sirett & soprano Larissa Koniuk, L’Homme et l’Ange qui a venu du Ciel, from summer 2014.
4-please reflect for a moment on the challenges a singer faces doing a new work, as opposed to a standard work
No singer likes to admit that they listen to recordings when preparing roles. But the reality is, we usually do. Not to learn notes and pitches, but often to draw inspiration, learn about musical style and precedents that have been set by artists over many decades or centuries. Historical precedent can be oddly suffocating as an artist, since there are a lot of expectations about how a role “should” be done, and it can be difficult to find and explore oneself artistically within these confines.With new works you have the luxury of starting from scratch. It is both a daunting task and a great opportunity to create a unique role, find a vocal character that is idiosyncratic, and be free from expectations.
5) I think you have a gift for comedy, so much so that they’re promoting this show using your by now recognizable face. Have you heard this before?
I’ve not heard this much, if ever. In standard repertoire, the lyric baritone is either heroic or villainous, and I haven’t often had the opportunity to play comedic characters. On tour with bicycle opera, though, I’ve been able to play around more with comedic characters, and I enjoy it a lot. There is, I think, more artistic freedom in comedy. It can be choreographed, to a certain degree, but it needs to come from within and have the feeling of spontaneity, otherwise the jokes don’t land. Comedic works also lend themselves to improvisation, as you connect with the audience, play off of their energy, and refine timing and delivery in the moment.
6-The singing actor is a curious mix of skills. I was impressed by your appearances in Arabella (you made much of a tiny role that isn’t usually noticeable) and earlier in Against the Grain’s Messiah (the funniest moment in this piece was your inspired work in “All we like sheep”), leading me to ask about the actor side of your personal equation, and your background as an actor.
My acting experience is typical of most trained opera singers. At various points in our education, we are involved in acting courses, masterclasses and/or workshops, but for the most part we mostly learn it “on the job” and formal training is relatively minimal. I don’t think I offer much unique as an actor, but I try to commit to new ideas and push myself a little further each time. It’s a balance between pushing yourself towards the character, but also recognizing your limitations and pulling the character towards yourself and your own strengths.
7) in Bicycle Opera’s 2017 production of Sweat you were the music director. Will we see you pursue this aspect of your career further?
My venture as MD for Sweat was my opera conducting debut. Prior to that, I had training and some experience conducting choirs. This past year I have been working, periodically, as assistant conductor for the Cantabile Choirs of Kingston, a community choral organization founded by my father in 1996. This is a great platform for me to continue my training as a conductor, and also revitalize my love for choral music. This is a role that I will continue next year, so I do expect it to be a part of my future.
8-What direction do you see yourself going after this?
The most recent undertaking in my life has been the pursuit of a Masters degree in clinical psychology. This is a departure for me, as a life-long musician, but has long been a passion of mine and I enjoy it tremendously. How this will develop into my future life, I do not yet know, but in the mean time I am saturated with curiosity and enjoying learning everything that I can. I am approaching the end of my second year of course work, which will be followed by an 8-month clinical placement, likely some time next year.
9) Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?
One of my first teachers, Alvin Reimer, continues to be an inspiration to me. He built the foundation of my vocal training, but was also a tremendous artist and exceptional human; I owe a lot to him, and am so grateful for the impression he made on me and my whole life. That is not to say there haven’t been many incredibly influential teachers and mentors over the years, but my heart tends to turn to Alvin first.
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The world premiere of The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring will take place on March 29 at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto running through to April 14. The production then heads west for Vancouver’s second annual Vancouver Opera Festival on April 28 and 29 as well as May 4 and 9-12
It was a happy celebration of the birthday of George Frideric Handel at Koerner Hall tonight, feasting on the bounty that is Alexander’s Feast, one of the Dryden odes for St Cecilia’s Day, celebrating the power of music. Thank goodness for Handel’s setting, which is indeed like a big party.
Admiration is a big part of the Augustan Aesthetic, the artists showing off their abilities to emulate models of beauty and virtue, to instruct & delight us. We the audience can stare and listen in wonderment, although if this had been an 18th century space there would have been lots more going on, besides. Koerner Hall in Toronto is much more polite, so much so that –when a fellow snored a few feet away from me – no one woke him (indeed when the fellow in front of me heard of it from his wife, he replied “good for him”). From solos to concerti to choruses untroubled by snores, there was indeed much to admire, in a very cheerful Friday night audience.
Of the vocal soloists, I think two seemed more attuned to the baroque display while the third, splendid as he was, conformed more closely to modern ideas.
Baritone Alexander Dobson (photo: Melissa Tremblay)
Alexander Dobson seemed particularly attuned to Dryden’s text & Handel’s setting. When we heard of Timotheus crying “revenge” it was delivered in a most ostentatious manner, the furies rise causing his eyes to bug out of his head, enacting a hissing when he sung of snakes. And when the ghosts of the unburied warriors haunt the battlefield, and Handel’s music shudders for us, anticipating the horrors of romantic tone-painting, Dobson modeled horror, unexpectedly bringing a sympathetic quiver running down my spine. While it’s bass writing, Dobson interpolated higher baritone notes in his da capo repeats, while modeling the defiant cries of the poetry.
Amanda Forsythe too inspired silent awe at times, from the beauty of her appropriately direct baroque sound, unsullied by excess vibrato but pure of tone and precise of intonation. I have to think Handel picked up the challenge from Dryden’s text to inspire something voyeuristic in the audience, writing music that teases us as she sings “And sigh’d and look’d and sigh’d again”. Ah yes indeed we did sigh and look, the place was silent, listening to every playful nuance of her delivery, sighing and looking and listening with admiration.
Soprano Amanda Forsythe (photo: Arielle Doneson)
Tenor Thomas Hobbs sounds lovely but didn’t invoke any of the theatricality I mention for the other two, giving us something much cooler, refined & accurate, an excellent performance all the same.
There are also two concerti in this big glorious work . In the first half hour we hear a harp concerto that is quite well-known. I remember the melody of the first movement vividly from the agonies of my youth. Have you ever turned on the radio to hear the end of something, and wondered “but what was that”? At the age of 12 or so, I had that experience with this stunning piece, that I sought for years until luckily catching up to it. The performance tonight was wonderfully nuanced, slower than the versions I know –such as the Judy Loman performance that used to be played so often on CBC (the theme music on one of their programs? Can’t recall which): because Julia Seager-Scott was elaborating repeats with all kinds of decorations, wonderful repeated phrases that pulled us to the edge of our seat because the second utterance was so soft and delicate. This was a revelation, conductor Ivars Taurins wonderfully supportive in this as well as the D minor organ concerto that comes near the end, played by Neil Cockburn (thank you Larry!), substituting on short notice for an indisposed Charlotte Nediger. The two movement concerto began with a stunning slow D Minor theme, not terribly complicated just a noble theme, followed by the complex & fast moving contrapuntal finale you might expect.
And yes there was a ton of choral work as well. As I’ve observed before it’s fascinating watching Taurins conduct, because he seems to treat the orchestra & chorus in much the same way, his gestural language helping us to observe the different sections & voices in each: which strikes me as a wise approach especially for someone like Handel. The work deserves to be better known, full of gorgeous music.
They repeat this intriguing work on the 24th and 25th at Koerner Hall.
Yes I hate shoot-outs, those contrived rituals to determine the outcome of a game. While they are full of drama, I detest them, because they are an alternative way of resolving the outcome of a game that in someone’s opinion is taking too long, the cheap alternative to letting the game play to its natural conclusion.
Two teams are locked in a close contest, and you wonder who will win: so you suddenly stage a contest between goalie and solo players skating in on the goalie? But that’s not hockey.
Imagine a boxing match that’s so close that they decide it by asking them to play a hand of poker. Or a close game of soccer decided by flipping a coin.
Perhaps you’d say “but that’s now a part of the game”. But only recently.
The FIFA World Cup (soccer) is coming. Please please please don’t let anything be decided by a shootout..!
And in the NHL? Yes they do the shootout thing in the regular season, but they allow the full spectacle of overtime to play itself out in the playoffs, making the post-season feel that much more special.
And in baseball when you have extra innings they don’t force an outcome but let the game play out: even in the regular season! That’s one reason I adore baseball, a sport with a great reverence for traditions. In the later innings you may witness the madness of an outfielder pitching because there are no other players available. And that’s part of the game, and actually tremendously exciting, watching the struggle.
Of course when a Canadian team loses to an American team in a shoot-out for a gold medal, naturally there’s this assumption that I’m whining for partisan reasons. But when a Canadian team wins a shootout I STILL hate it. I want to see the game won through hockey, not a shootout.
….I feel your pain, ladies.
There are alternatives that stay within the boundaries of the game, but help bring a result that is determined by the game of hockey, not this alternative game of “the shootout”.
The best one I’ve heard involves the removal of players.
Imagine…you play a period of overtime. And if after 80 minutes (the game plus an overtime period) they are still tied, what if you remove a player from each side, and they play 4 on 4 (plus the goalie) for that next period? More space on the ice likely makes a goal easier to come by, and makes it harder to obstruct the offensive players.
Hm still no result after 100 minutes?
Take off another player, play 3 on 3 (plus the goalie). I think that’s where I’d leave it, and see. But what if, at the end of the next period, you went to 2 on 2 plus goalie. And after another period, one on one plus goalie. Is that crazy? If you remove the next player it’s a lot like a shootout: except it’s hockey, not a staged shootout. Oh I just wish they would let them play to a conclusion. Maybe stop removing people, once you get to 3 on 3. But wow imagine the space, the room for a good player to move the puck.
OH and it would work for FIFA too, instead of a shoot-out. Take a player off every 30 minutes.
The other factor in this –and I’m really talking about YOU, my dearly beloved NHL—is the officiating. At playoff time the rules seem to change. Where hooking and interference is clearcut in February and March, once we get into the playoffs, things seem to revert to the Don Cherry school of “oh no, don’t let the referee decide it” hockey. The problem with this is that, if you now have a kind of unwritten permission to clutch and grab and tackle people in front of the net. When it’s politically incorrect to call penalties, especially late in the game or overtime: then the referee is STILL deciding it, by allowing aggressive play without any sanctions. Whoever is better at passive aggressive play –that is, breaking rules nonchalantly and without embarrassing the referee by being too obvious about it –has a big advantage.
So in other words, referees must call the game by the same rules for the entire game. This is one of the things I LOVE about the NFL, who seem to have no fear of calling penalties at any moment of the game. And this is what fairness really looks like, when holding is holding whether in the first minute of play or overtime.
And now the hockey season gets more serious with every game as the playoffs get closer.
Today I sat in a very good seat to hear Jane Archibald sing and she sang very well. I am a very lucky guy.
She doesn’t need my review to validate her (ha, but then does any artist?). This is a singing actor who’s hit her stride in mid-season, at the top of her game, another Canadian treasure like Virtue & Moir, (to drop the names being spoken with pride over and over today). I don’t know if the template requires it to be a Canadian as their artist in residence, but Archibald is a great ambassador whether she’s singing in Europe or Toronto.
I think it’s accurate to say we’re past the midpoint of Archibald’s year as the first “artist in residence” for the Canadian Opera Company. Last autumn she was Zdenka in Arabella. The Nightingale & Other Short Fables is still to come in the spring season. She’s nearing the end of the run as Konstanze in Abduction from the Seraglio, with a pair of final performances this week.
I love this take-no-prisoners photo from an earlier incarnation of this co-production. Her Toronto version of the aria she sings at this moment is every bit as intense. While you’d never know it from this photo, she was all smiles today, as indeed we were as well, even if she didn’t sing any Mozart. For that you have to come see the opera later this week.
If I am correct in my understanding that the artist in residence will mentor the young artists of the Ensemble Studio, today’s noon-hour concert was like a clinic, a masterful display of self-knowledge for singers of any age, in partnership with pianist Liz Upchurch and Dominic Desautels, clarinet.
Archibald told us that the program is one she’d be singing again in Halifax:
“Sweeter than roses” and “If music be the food of love” by Henry Purcell
“Pierrot”, “Regret”, and “Apparition” by Claude Debussy
“Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” by Franz Schubert
“Ich wollt’ ein Sträusslein binden”, “Säusle, liebe Myrthe!” and “Amor”, by Richard Strauss
It’s a rich hour of singing demanding a great deal of the pianist, and in the Schubert, of the clarinet as well.
We’ve heard Archibald in Toronto in some of these guises. The German repertoire seems especially congenial, whether we look far back to her COC Zerbinetta in 2011 or to this autumn in Arabella. The Strauss songs are full of coloratura fireworks that Archibald pops with stunning ease. When she’s singing this rep it’s as though she’s totally at home, and having a great time. And how wonderful that we get to share in that pleasure.
There’s an old saying that comes to mind, perversely. “Do what you love and the money will follow”. The saying is really about finding a career, but I think it could apply to singing and repertoire. How often have you seen a concert where the artist seems to be fighting the repertoire, singing an aria or playing a sonata that was perhaps chosen for them or maybe a case of wishful thinking? There is a real tao of music that comes into play when one really pays attention, both to the comfort / discomfort of your body & your instrument as well as the visible comfort / discomfort of your audience. Archibald sang music well-suited to her voice, some very difficult material that seemed easy.
While the Schubert is a more conservative exercise than the Strauss songs, we are still in the realm of beautiful sound that emerges organically from the singer. It’s a song with great leaps —not just big intervals such as ascending ninths or descending tenths—but also huge arcing arpeggios, and a delightful call-and-response dialogue with the clarinet. This relatively early attempt at the romantic sublime leads to a charming affirmation of spring-time, that Archibald joyfully seized in the blush of the warmest day so far in 2018. But it would be great February programming even if we had to endure snow instead, as the song is all about the dream.
There’s nothing easy in this program, though. The Debussy songs are especially challenging for the piano, played with wonderful subtlety by Upchurch. While Archibald barnstorms up and down, dazzling, Upchurch kept it light as quicksilver. And to begin, the Purcell songs showed us that Archibald was ready, soft but intensely committed from the first note. As an encore we were given a gently intimate “Du bist die Ruh”.
It was a pleasure observing the body language, as Archibald sang for the most part in two positions. In her softest moments she’d lean her weight onto her right hand that held fast to the piano, while angling over about 30 degrees from upright, as though the music was singing her rather than the other way around: ecstatic and gentle music-making. And then purposefully she’d stand straight and tall gesturing before her as she sang coloratura. Again there’s no sign she ever sings off pitch, her intentions clear in her mind. She knows where she wants the voice to go: and it goes.
Archibald has two performances left as Konstanze this week, and then in April – May, we get The Nightingale & Other Short Fables.
I’ve just seen Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar nominated film adaptation of Wajdi Mouawad’s play Incendies.
barczablog 