Table of contents for Vol. LVII, No. 4 in Opera Canada

Notebook

There’s a birthday bias to this issue since we decided to devote our entire feature section to the new Canadian Opera Company/National Arts Centre production of Louis Riel. The opera was originally produced as part of the celebrations around the 1967 centennial of Confederation, but this new staging marks both Confederation’s sesquicentennial and the 50th anniversary of the opera itself. It’s still generally thought of as “modern” or “contemporary” music, though after half a century, neither label is very apt. Louis Riel holds an honoured but somewhat ambiguous place in Canadian opera history. As Linda and Michael Hutcheon note in their exploration of the opera’s politics (p. 18), the history of a leader hanged for treason might seem a decidedly odd choice of subject for a national celebration of unity—and…

3 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Letter from Aix-en-Provence

From its very beginnings in 1948, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence was an upstart venture, a “Yes, we can” response to the trauma of the post-war in a country where food was still rationed and the future uncertain. As one of the founding members of the festival, writer Edmonde Charles-Roux, recalls: “The inaugural summer was a sort of improvised party between friends endeavouring to forget the sufferings of the war.” For her, the fact that Austrian conductor Hans Rosbaud became the first Music Director and brought his 70-member Südwestrundfunks Symphonie with him was an “act of peace.” The 2016 festival was the first at which Charles-Roux was not in her usual seat. The 96-year-old had died earlier in the year. But the principles of tolerance and peace she embodied are still an…

7 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

HARRY SOMERS ON THE SCORE

Harry Somers (1925-1999) first became interested in music at the age of 14. After studying piano for two years, he entered Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, where he composed his first string quartet at the age of 17. “My early works went through various styles, but they were not imitative because I had no knowledge of music other than a few classics. I was fortunate in learning to speak for myself at the beginning.” Mr. Somers studied piano with Robert Schmitz in San Francisco and composition with John Weinzweig in Toronto. Later, he became a pupil of French composer Darius Milhaud, who, he says, “forced me to rethink and confirm my ideas and this was good.” Somers’s operas include: The Fool (1953), The Homeless Ones (1955), Louis Riel (1967), Death…

6 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

RESTAGING RIEL

Opera Canada: Louis Riel has been referred to as Canada’s “grand opera,” though the composer tended to talk of it in terms of “music theatre” and in some respects it seems to recall the work of Berthold Brecht and his musical collaborators. How would you position the piece? Peter Hinton: Well, I think it’s a re-examination of history, a retelling of history, but not just in a narrative sense. That’s why I think the grand opera definition is a bit faulty for it, because there’s nothing heroic about it. It’s critical, and examines what happened and how that’s understood. A thing that really struck me when I first approached the piece was that the work was commissioned to commemorate Canada’s centennial, and Somers and Moore chose the subject of Louis…

12 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

The final take

As a pairing, the Canadian Opera Company’s Apr.-May lineup of Harry Somers’s Louis Riel and Puccini’s Tosca requires some deft gear changes by the creative teams working on both productions. “It’s quite a contrast and seems like we’re working at both ends of the musical spectrum,” says Chorus Master Sandra Horst, who was immersed in Riel for a couple of weeks before Tosca rehearsals even began. Horst, though, is now a dab hand at dealing with such contrasts, looking forward to her 20th season directing the COC Chorus in 2017/18, and her 21st on faculty at the University of Toronto, where she is now Director of Musical Studies for the Opera Division. She fits all the demands of her double duties together like a jigsaw puzzle. Although the COC Chorus…

3 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Opera in the News

HONOURS AND AWARDS Soprano Kirsten MacKinnon was one of the six winners of the 2017 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. A recipient of a 2016 George London Award, the Vancouver native graduated as an Alfred Greenberg Memorial Fellow from the Curtis Institute of Music last year. I n a burgeoning inter national career, MacKinnon was heard recently as Pamina in the Canadian Opera Company’s Jan./Feb. production of Die Zauberflöte and has upcoming assignments with Opera Philadelphia, Glyndebourne Festival, Garsington Opera and Opera Frankfurt. Winnipeg native Lara Secord- Haid was winner of the 2017 George London Award for a Canadian Singer, one of the five US$10,000 top prizes. With a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music from The New England Conservatory of Music, she returns…

7 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Artists on Stage

It took about 10 years due to the vagaries of opera funding, but Aaron Gervais’s first full-length opera finally has its world premiere this spring. He met librettist Colleen Murphy in one of Toronto-based Tapestry Opera’s LibLab collaborations and immediately knew they wanted to work together on a story of a woman caught in a web of international sex trafficking. Fast forward through workshopping, fundraising, planning, a change of leadership at Tapestry and a casting change or two, and Oksana G, scored for an orchestra of 18, three principal singers and a dozen secondary roles, will bring Tapestry’s season to a resounding close in May. From early days Gervais developed an “in-depth dramaturgic back-and-forth” with Murphy that made it easier for him to understand the characters and write them in…

16 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

SOMERS IN PRIVATE

Old Mavor evidently has heard that I’m also doing an opera for the CBC and is worried whether one composer can do two at the same time and especially on the Canada theme bit. Ole. Well, I’ll be talking to him on Saturday. Riel is really a fine subject for opera. Love to do it, but as you know, my reservations are with the possibility of interference by the backer, no doubt perfectly reasonable to him when he’s putting up the dough.” LETTER TO BARBARA CHILCOTT, ACTRESS AND SOMERS’S SECOND WIFE, NOV. 26, 1964 “Old Riel is shaping well in the vacant rooms of me head. With no furniture up there, the footsteps are deafening.” LETTER TO BARBARA CHILCOTT, AUG. 4, 1965 “The only guy who keeps sticking his nose…

2 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Calendar

Listings of Canadian stage performances April-July 2017 For U.S. and international schedules and more, go to: operabase.com Compiled by B. Krsek. Legend: C: conductor; D: stage director; Des: designer; Ctms: costumes; Lght: lighting; Chor: choreographer; *new production; **world premiere; ***national premiere; Op: opening date; M: matinée. Information correct as of March 30, 2017. Programs subject to change Brott Music Festival (Hamilton, ON ). 905-525- 7664. brottmusic.com. Popera. Jul 06. Carmen (Bizet). C: Brott; D: Hansen. Kalender, Stolz, Kirby, L. Margison, Rus, Vaculik, Traynor, Chan, Abel, Ludwig. Jul 13. The Canadian Art Song Project Recital Series (Toronto). canadianartsongproject. ca. 21C Music Festival performance. MacNeil, Lorèn, D’Angelo, Sheppard, Roy. May 25. Canadian Children’s Opera Company (Toronto). 416-366-0467.canadianchildrensopera.com. Commedia (Sideris). Apr 21, 22. ** Mulligan’s Toy Shop (Raum). May 13. Spring Concert. May…

4 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Opera in Review

CANADA BU RNABY, B.C. A vigorous Carmen graced the boards of Burnaby’s Shadbolt Centre as Burnaby Lyric Opera presented a vigorous Carmen at the Shadbolt Centre in Feb. Following his success last year with La bohème, director Richard Berg created believable characters the audience could relate to and sympathize with in anticipation of the inevitable outcome. Music Director Angus Kellett set the pace at the outset with a brilliant overture that drew the audience immediately into the drama. The lecherous attitude of the soldiers towards women was evident in the opening scene during Micaëla’s entry, with baritone Mark Pepe’s Moralès setting the tone. This provided a marked contrast to Don José’s naivety. David Gibbons portrayed the hapless soldier, out of his depth in his attraction to Carmen and in real…

47 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Letter from Vienna

Like the Magi of old in search of a distant promise, I, too, followed the stars. Not those twinkling in the night sky, mind you, but the man-made pentagrams encased in sidewalk cement along Vienna’s Linke Wienzeile:⋆ Otto Klemperer⋆ ⋆Erich Korngold ⋆ Ernst Krenek ⋆ Antonio Salieri ⋆ Claudio Monteverdi ⋆ Jacques Offenbach ⋆ Antonin Dvo?rá ⋆ Joseph Lanner ⋆ Albert Lortzing ⋆ Leonard Bernstein ⋆ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ⋆ Emanuel Schikaneder ⋆ Ludwig van Beethoven Following these stars along the Musik Meile Wien, the Austrian capital’s answer to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, I arrived at my goal, the Theater an der Wien, first on New Year’s Eve 2011 for Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, then again in March 2016 for Robert Carsen’s take on Handel’s Agrippina. My latest visit came this past…

6 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

IDENTITY CRISIS

Imagine being an opera-lover living in late 19th-century Europe. In the newly formed nations of Italy and Germany, in particular, opera has taken on national(istic) importance. This is not only because its stories can parallel local national politics (often repressed), but also because the powerful immediacy of opera’s music both evokes and even provokes (and not only represents) nationalist feeling. Think of “Va pensiero,” the chorus of the oppressed Israelites from Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco that is Italy’s unofficial national anthem still today. Now, imagine you are living in Canada in 1967 and the opera by Harry Somers and Mavor Moore called Louis Riel has just premiered at the Canadian Opera Company. The librettist has also stated that the goal in writing the opera was to “use the conventions and traditions…

16 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

THE THEME IS TIMELESS

In the new West, instead of rapid settlement, the curse of racialism descended and its two armed outbreaks disturbed the peace of the entire country. Canada’s tragic leitmotiv, which for a few years seemed to have been left behind, once more made itself evident, and rose to new heights. It is only as love replaces hate (whenever that distant day shall be) that Canada’s tragedy will be resolved.” —Arthur R. M. Lower Even Arthur Lower, the dean of Canadian historians, could not resist thinking of Louis Riel in operatic terms. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls him simply “Canadian agitator,” but cannot check the impulse to take sides: calling Riel “flighty, vain and mystical,” it allows the half-breed leader only one compliment—he died “meeting his fate with courage.” There is something about…

4 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Starting at 1 p.m. EST unless otherwise stated Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts Apr. 15 12:30 PM Aida Verdi Apr. 22 Eugene Onegin Tchaikovsky Apr. 29 Der fliegende Holländer Wagner May 6 12:30 PM Cyrano de Bergerac Alfano May 13 12:30 PM Der Rosenkavalier R. Strauss Saturday Afternoon with Ben Heppner (Opera personalities’ favourite recordings) May 20 (Sondra Radvanovsky) Tosca Puccini EMI Classics: 47175 May 27 (Timothy Vernon) Cunning Little Vixen Janaˇcek L’enfant et les sortilèges Ravel Decca: 417129/2381602 Jun. 3 (Jonathan Darlington) Der Freischütz Weber DGG: 415-432 Jun. 10 (Judith Forst) Norma Bellini Decca: 08770059 Jun. 17 (Peter Sellars) The Indian Queen Purcell Sony: 88875049519 Jun. 24 (Gerald Finley) Otello Verdi RCA: 6699713 Summer Series Jul. 1 Don Quichotte Massenet Lyric Opera of Chicago Jul. 8 Semiramide Rossini…

2 min

Opera Canada|Vol. LVII, No. 4

Opera at home

CDs DON GIOVANNI MOZART Sony Classical: 531603 Anyone debating purchase of this new Don Giovanni might do well to avoid Sony’s promo video, in which conductor Teodor Currentzis, peacocky in gold-brocaded black, conducts his MusicAeterna musicians with ecstatically rolled dark eyes and swoopingly emotive gesticulation, and makes, in interview, such grand pronouncements as “We are here because we want to create the music we want to create” and “My desire was to create a world, not a career.” The “here” and the “world” are located in Perm (specifically, its Tchaikovsky State Opera and Ballet Theatre), a site sufficiently removed from “the centers of the massive [sic] culture” to allow full immersion in the musical matters at hand.But whatever skepticism his grandiosity may engender, Currentzis gets results, and they’re excitingly audible…

17 min