Table of contents for Winter 2021 in Opera Canada

Opera in Canada seems to be in a very ‘in between’ phase right now pandemic-wise. This issue includes reviews of live performances from Winnipeg and Montréal…the first we’ve had in a long while. Vancouver Opera just opened…and as our Take Note section indicates, things look promising for the coming months. But as we go to press, large companies in Austria and Germany have gone back into full lockdown after a brief autumn ‘return to normal.’ Hopefully omicron won’t mess up plans at home. It’s early days, but there’s disturbing financial news from even the biggest state-funded European companies like Frankfurt and Paris. Former COC General Director Alexander Neef reports that in Paris, subscriptions have fallen 45%, as well as a further 20% revenue loss due to the absence of foreign…

On Nov. 15th, the Opera Canada Awards—‘The Rubies’ took place at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in a welcome return to a live celebration….one of the first in-person live opera events in Toronto since the beginning of the pandemic. For all those who could not attend, a digital version of the event has been released. To view, simply register at operacanada.ca/rubies-registration where you can also make a donation. For the 21st anniversary edition of the Rubies, Opera Canada celebrated four Canadian artists who have dedicated their careers to forwarding the art of opera at home and abroad. The 2021 Rubies were awarded to tenor PAUL FREY, director SONJA FRISELL, baritone ALLAN MONK and soprano ERIN WALL. Featured performers were tenor Andrew Haji, mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy and COC…

Written at the tail end of the dysfunctional Weimar Republic, the administration that preceded Germany’s Third Reich, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny tells the story of a decadent pleasure town founded to profit from mankind’s excesses. A new production by the company’s Artistic Director, Barrie Kosky, premiered this fall at Komische Oper Berlin (seen Oct. 9th). A gang of women emerges from a pit in the floor. Mahagonny’s workforce. The women drape themselves on each other as their leader Jenny (Alma Sadé), her hair matted, croons their credo of nomadic lives as whores. Sadé slims down her voice for Jenny’s funeral dirge, the “Alabama Song,” even imbuing it with a hint of roughness as she floatingly describes the moon. As Mahagonny has grown, it…

P. 3: Chris Hutcheson P. 4: Tobias Regell; P. 5: (Top) Houston Grand Opera’s Carmen:Lynn Lane, (middle) Festival d’Aix en Provence’s Innocence: Jean Louis Fernandez, (bottom) Opera Parallèle’s Everest: Mark Simmons P. 6: (clockwise from top L): Wikimedia Commons; Eri Nakamura by Chris Gloag; Bohème shot: Harder Lee Photography; Traviata, Opéra de Montréal. P. 7: (clockwise from top L): Othalie Graham by Tina Mackenzie; Carmen, Pacific Opera Victoria; Lizzie Hoyt by Simeon Rusnak; Julie Boulianne by Julien Faugère P. 8: Élisabeth Boudreault by Edmond Choo P. 10-11: Jean Louis Fernandez; P. 12-13: Falstaff: Monika Rittershaus, Don Giovanni: Ruth Walz, sidebar: Wikimedia Commons; P. 14: W. Hösl; P. 15: Enrico Nawrath P. 16, 18: Gaetz Photography P. 19: Courtesy Nancy Silcox; P. 20: Courtesy Sonja Frisell; Fred Monk; P. 21: Michael…

RAMEAU UNITEL 804804 RAMEAU’S PLATÉE IS A RATHER cruel satire on appearance and perception. Jupiter woos the unattractive swamp nymph Platée in order to prove to Juno how ridiculous her jealousy is. Platée is led to think that she is so beautiful that Jupiter will marry her…only to be mocked and deflated when the crowd turns on her. Robert Carsen decides to use the narcissistic setting of Paris Fashion Week as his vehicle for exploring the central themes of the opera. Jupiter is conceived as Karl Lagerfeld (complete with fluffy and very mellow Persian cat); Juno is Coco Chanel. The settings include the mirrored showroom at Chanel and Coco’s hotel suite. Throughout, mirrors and reflective surfaces are used to reinforce the narcissism. The production premiered in Paris in 2014 with Lagerfeld in…

JANUARY Calgary Opera Calgary Opera makes a lighthearted return to live, mainstage opera with The Merry Widow, premiering Jan. 29th. Directed by Omer Ben Seadia and conducted by Tania Miller, this sumptuous belle époque staging previously appeared at Vancouver Opera in late 2018. In Calgary, an all-Canadian roster features Aviva Fortunata, Andrew Love, Colin Ainsworth and Jacqueline Woodley. Opéra de Montréal Verdi’s La traviata opens Jan. 29th in the much traveled, cross-Canada co-pro inspired by Josephine Baker. In Montréal, Québec soprano Marie-Josée is Violetta, Kosovo tenor Rame Lahaj sings Alfredo and Canadian baritone James Westman is Germont. FEBRUARY Canadian Opera Company, Toronto For its first mainstage offering in two years, the COC presents Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in Brian Macdonald’s traditional 1990 production, this time revived by young Canadian mover and…

MUNICH Stay at the cozy Hotel Opéra in St.-Anna-Strasse, just a 10-minute walk from the opera. Visit the Pinakothek der Moderne specializing in post-1900 art, including works by the “Brücke” and “Blaue Reiter” groups. AIX-EN-PROVENCE Château La Coste is a delightful day trip, just 15 minutes away—an international art destination and organic winery offering syrah, cabernet, sauvignon, and vermentino varietals. BAYREUTH The small Hotel-Restaurant Bergmühle is perched on a scenic river in the town of Neudrossenfeld, just 15 minutes outside of Bayreuth. Its simple restaurant is the well-guarded secret of opera insiders such as the Wagners for late, post-opera dinners. SALZBURG Jog along the Salzach river and stop at the edgy Salzburger Kunstverein contemporary art gallery run by its stalwart Canadian director, Séamus Kealy.…

“I always liked words,” reminisces a wistful Eurydice, title heroine of Matthew Aucoin’s new operatic retelling of the classic mythic tale, its words crafted by playwright Sarah Ruhl. “Words and books and stories. Words were my music. But … Orpheus never liked words. He had his music.” That’s an in-a-nutshell statement of a problem facing this conflicted, dead-on-her-wedding-day bride, recollecting their relationship from the Underworld: she’s a bookworm, he’s a musician. It’s a problem faced, too, by the audibly gifted Aucoin, Orpheus to Ruhl’s Eurydice, in creating a musical world for her terse, verbally evocative play of 2003. Ruhl’s play inspired him, he asserted in an interview before the opera’s premiere in Los Angeles in 2020: “You tap almost any word, and there are wells of emotion underneath it. It’s…

HENZE CAPRICCIO C5460 HANS WERNER HENZE LEFT a large body of work on his death in 2012, including 21 completed stage operas, three radio operas, three specifically tailored for children and 11 ballet scores. You’d never know the centrality of theatre to his composing, however, from the currency of his works. His operas have enjoyed relatively few productions in North America (and hardly any in Canada), though some, including Die Bassariden, Der Prinz von Homburg, Der junge Lord and Elegie für junge Liebende, have enjoyed continuing traction on European stages. Henze’s operas have fared considerably less well in the contemporary repertoire globally than those of, for example, Benjamin Britten, who was an admirer of the younger composer and whose Aldeburgh Festival generously featured his music over the years. This release…

HAHN NAXOS 2.110697 A CABBAGE, A SACK OF FLOUR, and a letter delivered on a tambourine: these are the things that ensure a happy ending for Ciboulette, the title heroine of Reynaldo Hahn’s delightful operetta hit of 1923, who in three elegantly tuneful acts progresses from vegetable-marketing farm girl to toast of the Parisian music-hall stage. If you detect a whiff of a Cinderella story, well, you’re not wrong; and if Ciboulette doesn’t wind up with a prince, she does nab a handsome young aristo-crat of definite means, and if she doesn’t enjoy the magical talents of a fairy godmother, she does benefit from the skilled match-making and career-launching services of one Monsieur Duparquet. In a charmingly sentimental twist, he turns out to be none other than Henri Murger’s bohemian…

Originally from Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, the 26-year-old soprano first appeared on stage at the age of 9, taking part in Québec Issime’s hit production of Décembre. She continued to perform with the company for many years while singing pop and writing songs for her own pleasure. Soon after taking her first classical voice lessons in high school, she started singing small roles with the Société d’art lyrique du Royaume and made her debut at 16 as Lisa in La sonnambula. A recent McGill graduate from the class of Aline Kutan, she finished her degree a semester early in order to make her European debut as Barbarina in a production of Le nozze di Figaro by acclaimed film director James Gray at Opéra national de Lorraine in Jan. 2020. “I was lucky. During…

…Discuss the state of music education in our country. Cite examples and show your work. How is it that a singer’s perspective on the opera industry has rounded on education? Isn’t this someone else’s job? The classical music industry in Canada is tiny and shrinking. To offer solutions, we must attack the problem holistically. We’ve looked at the importance of moving artists into leadership, bringing their skill set and creativity to bear on casting, management and big picture paradigm shifts. We’ve discussed mentorship as an efficient way to prepare them. The skills pipeline as my corporate colleagues call it—the entry point, into whose gaping maw we pour 17-year-old talent—is a university education, usually culminating in a master’s degree. Owing to the depth and breadth of this training system, of educators…

Houston Grand Opera had to cancel the end of its 20/21 season because of the pandemic and instead presented a series of digital productions, recitals, and aria concerts. Returning to live, in-person performances on Oct. 22nd in Wortham Theater Center’s Brown Theater, the company launched its 21/22 season with Carmen. I kept thinking there hasn’t been as much dancing in Bizet’s opera since the great Alicia Alonso turned it into a ballet. For the revival of a 2014 co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago, associate director Stephen Sposito and associate choreographers Ashley Elizabeth Hale and Marty Lawson recreated Rob Ashford’s original staging and dances, and Michael James Clark duplicated Donald Holder’s lighting. The footwork started with the opera’s prelude. A shirtless dancer in a bull’s-head helmet squared off with men…

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio always ends to thrilling effect, no matter the exact qualities of any given performance. And thus it played out with San Francisco Opera’s new production, robustly conducted by its new music director Eun Sun Kim (seen Oct. 17th). The audience erupted with enthusiasm at the finale, perhaps as much with joy at sitting in the opera house again—a kind of liberation—as for the traits of this current rendering. The company in fact reopened in August with Tosca but the ‘return to live’ still remains fresh for many people. Elza van den Heever stood tall as Leonore, the wife who, disguised as a youth named Fidelio and working in a dreadful prison, saves her husband Florestan from the profound dungeon where he languishes at the tyrannical hand…

EMILY D’ANGELO DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 486 0536 DEBUT ALBUMS FROM YOUNG singers usually play it fairly safe but mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo’s is anything but. Her new album, enargeia, on the Deutsche Grammophon label is bold indeed. All twelve tracks on the album feature works by contemporary female composers, though with a nod to the medieval Hildegard von Bingen. The accompaniments vary from solo cello to orchestra augmented with electric guitar, electric bass and drum kit. Singing style varies from austerely classical to verging on rock opera. This could come off as pretentious but it doesn’t. Rather, it convinces as a well thought out program by a very intelligent and thoughtful musician with the self-confidence to challenge the orthodox. The organising principle lies in the album title. ‘Enargeia’ is a classical Greek…