THE ANGEL SPEAKS – REVIEW OF OPERA ATELIER CONCERT AT THE ROM

Reviewed by James Karas

Every city deserves a Marshall Pynkoski and a Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg but very few have even one let alone two. Toronto does. As Co-artistic Directors of the incomparable Opera Atelier, they organized a highly civilized concert at the Royal Ontario Museum entitled The Angel Speaks.

The one-hour concert featured instrumental music, singing and ballet in a gorgeous combination. The music ranges from the baroque to the modern with Henry Purcell and William Boyce providing the former and Edwin Huizinga bringing the latter. 

Edwin Huizinga, Tyler Gledhill, Mireille Asselin, Jesse Blumberg and 

Tafelmusik members. Photo: Bruce Zinger

Soprano Mireille Asselin and baritone Jesse Bloomberg Sang pieces by Purcell (See Nature Rejoicing, The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation and An Evening Hymn. Members of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra played the music of the two baroque composers including Purcell’s Music for a While and his Trio Sonata in F.

Edwin Huizinga’s compositions were a major part of the evening. He has composed Annunciation inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s mystical poem as translated by Grace Andreacchi. Annunciation, of course refers to the announcement by Gabriel to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus Christ. Huizinga, a prominent violinist, also composed and played Inception, a piece for baroque violin. His music is modern but looks back to the baroque in an amazing blend of the two styles. Tyler Gledhill choreographed contemporary dance to accompany Huizinga’s performance and the singing by Asselin and Blumberg. Simply remarkable.

It is worthy of note that Opera Atelier commissioned Inception and its performance at the concert was its North American premiere.   

Most of the concert pieces were accompanied by dances performed by the Artists of Atelier Ballet. The five dancers, Tyler Gledhill, Juri Hiraoka, Edward Tracz, Dominic Who and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg performed the baroque sequences which were choreographed by Ms Zingg. 

Members of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra with Music Director David Fallis performed the music.

 Edwin Huizinga and Tyler Gledhill. Photo: Bruce Zinger 

The concert was performed in the Currelly Gallery in the Royal Ontario Museum. This is a rectangular theatre-in-the-round with several rows of seats surrounding the playing area. The spectators were no more than several feet from the playing area.

The Angel Speaks was originally performed in the Royal Chapel at Versailles in 2017. A photograph of the performance at the Royal Chapel makes you regret ex post facto that fate did not place you there for the performance.

It was a highly civilized evening. If the intent was to showcase the work of Opera Atelier, so be it. In early April, they are producing Mozart’s Idomeneo with Measha Brueggergosman at the Ed Mirvish Theatre.  My only and persistent complaint is why are there so pitifully few productions of baroque opera in Toronto?

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The Angel Speaks was performed once on Thursday, February 21, 2019 and will not be performed again as far as I know but you can ask Opera Atelier if it will be repeated. www.operaatelier.com

COSI FAN TUTTE – REVIVAL OF EGOYAN’S SUPERB COC PRODUCTION

James Karas

The Canadian Opera Company has very wisely revived Atom Egoyan’s 2014 production of Cosi Fan Tutte to go along with Richard Strauss’s Elektra for its winter season. It is a highly enjoyable and brilliant production and the only thing for you to do is high-tail it to the Four Seasons Centre for tickets. However, I will make a few comments on it.

There are two images that will mark this production in seeing it and in memory. The first is a large reproduction of Frida Kahlo’s surrealist painting The Two Fridas and the other is the setting of the opera in a school for lovers. 

Cosi Fan Tutte is about love, fidelity, treachery and reconciliation. You remember Ferrando and Guglielmo are in love (that does their passion an injustice) with Dorabella and Fiordiligi. They will not brook any doubt about the depth and constancy of their loves. Needless to say, the young ladies reciprocate in equal measure. Are women fickle? Don Alfonso bets that they are and to prove his point he has the men appear disguised as Albanians and woo the women. Guess what?

Johannes Kammler as Guglielmo, Emily D’Angelo as Dorabella, Kirsten MacKinnon 

as Fiordiligi and Ben Bliss as Ferrando. Photo: Michael Cooper

Love is a matter of the heart and the lovers in Cosi talk of broken hearts and ripping out hearts at the thought or fact of infidelity. Kahlo’s Two Fridas is a double self-portrait of the artist wearing a European dress, with an anatomically visible heart and a vein dripping blood on one side and of herself wearing a traditional Mexican dress, perhaps a broken heart and holding a portrait of her estranged husband in her hand. .

The two sisters of Cosi are very much alike but they are also very different and one can draw parallels between them and the two Fridas.   You can make whatever you want of the portrait as it relates to the production, but Egoyan makes sure that you pay attention to the details of the painting.

Rather than a café, Egoyan with Set Designer Debra Hanson, sets some of the action in a school for lovers. The “students” will make up the chorus and provide some humorous appearances. And you will see numerous large size butterflies and they can mean whatever you want but you may wish to think of them as symbols of freedom.

If you want to ignore all the above, you will still enjoy an effervescent, marvelously sung production. Start with soprano Kirsten MacKinnon as Fiordiligi, the sister who refuses to fall for the pursuing “Albanian.” She tells us she is solid as a rock in the octave-leaping aria “Come scoglio immoto resta” only to live to sing the gorgeous “Per pieta” asking for forgiveness.

 A scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Così fan tutte, 2019, photo: Michael Cooper

Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo as Dorabella is more easily convinced to fall for the Albanian visitor but we like her for her practical and perhaps even modern thinking about love. All protestations to the contrary, she understands human nature and the attraction of love at hand over love in the absence of a lover. Well sung, well done.

Tenor Ben Bliss and baritone Johannes Kammler as Ferrando and Guglielmo respectively are classic lovers, full of passion, hot wind, irrational thinking and splendid singing.  Baritone Russell Braun who sang Guglielmo in 2014 takes on the role of the philosopher Don Alfonso.

No Cosi is complete without a very good Despina. She is the sisters’ maid and plotting partner of Don Alfonso. Soprano Tracy Dahl is a spitfire of a singer and performer in the role. She is funny, sings with great verve and moves with amazing speed. A delight to see and hear.

Bernard Labadie conducts the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and Mozart’s music is a sheer pleasure to hear.

With Egoyan at the helm, you may want to describe the production as the thinking man’s Cosi Fan Tutte but that may discourage some people from seeing it. Like the lovers at some point, you can enjoy the opera without thinking, if you so choose.     

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Cosi Fan Tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte opened on February 5 and will be performed eight times until February 23, 2019 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  416-363-6671. www.coc.ca

ELEKTRA – REVIEW OF CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

James Karas

“Disgusting” and “degenerate” are the words used to describe Richard Strauss’s Elektra. No, not the current production by the Canadian Opera Company (which is quite thrilling) but its first staging in England in 1910.

Strauss’s 4^th opera, by turning Greek mythology on its head, has aroused incredible passions, but the complex score and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s masterly libretto provide a powerful operatic experience.

Strauss and Hofmannsthal throw the idealized view of Greek culture into the dustbin. Their Elektra although based on Sophocles’ play features a woman who is unhinged and whose sole mission in life is revenge. Her father was brutally murdered by her mother Klytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Now Elektra wants to kill both of them.

 Christine Goerke as Elektra (at left) in a scene from the COC's production of 

Elektra, 2019, photo: Michael Cooper

 Director James Robinson in the revival of his 2007 production takes a middle road in his portrayal of Elektra. He does not overplay her madness or the squalor of her life but gives us a woman who is consumed by hatred and a desire for revenge but who is not completely deranged. 

Soprano Christine Goerke (a notable and well-known Wagnerian, especially to Torontonians) delivers a powerful and obsessed Elektra. She is on stage longer than the rest of the characters and from her opening howl of “Agamemnon” to her final eruption of joy at the end, she dominates the production. Robinson does not make much of Elektra’s final dance of triumph before she drops dead. This is not Salome but the scene could use a few more dramatic steps. 

Elektra is very much an orchestra versus the singers opera and unfortunately there were a few occasions when the orchestra overshadowed not to say drowned out Goerke. They struck me as unnecessary lapses in balance between stage and pit and did not detract from Goerke’s overall thrilling performance.

Soprano Erin Wall sings Chrysothemis, Elektra’s sister, who dreams of a life that involves children and is not consumed by hatred. Wall is better known for lyric soprano roles and Strauss puts the same vocal requirements on Chrysothemis as he does on Elektra. Happily, Wall belts out her part with power and resonance and shows that she can handle Strauss as well as Mozart.

Soprano Susan Bullock who sang Brunnhilde in the COC’s Ring Cycle of 2006-2007, sings the role of the troubled Klytemnestra. After the description by Elektra of how Klytemnestra murdered Agamemnon in the bath with an axe, our sympathy for her is limited but Bullock makes her more pathetic than loathsome. For those with long memories, Bullock sang Elektra in COC’s 2007 production.

Her lover Aegisthus (tenor Michael Schade) gets no sympathy as a character but Schade gets kudos for his performance.

Bass Wilhelm Schwinghammer plays Orestes, the key person in effecting the revenge and the most important male role in the opera as the instrument of revenge. Otherwise it is a relatively small role but the recognition scene is done well and Orestes does his job as does the singer.

A scene from the COC’s production of Elektra, 2019, photo: Michael Cooper

The set by Derek McLane is a challenge to understand. A few steps lead to the courtyard of the palace where the floor is tilted to the right. There is a wall with two entrances on the right which are rarely used and what looks like a garden shed at the rear. This is Klytemnestra’s entrance and when the door is opened we see gilded walls. The set may well represent the confused interior of Elektra’s mind. 

The costumes by Anita Stewart are 19^th century dresses for the women and black suits of the era for the men. This is not a throwback to fifth century Athens but an original view of the Greek myth

Elektra may well be described as an opera starring the orchestra and some outstanding singers. Strauss demanded a large orchestra and from the opening thunderclap of Agamemnon’s motif to the final dance sequence and death of Elektra the music is electrifying. Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra perform magnificently.

The ills of the mythical House of Atreus lasted for five generations have been around since the dawn of western civilization. They have inspired countless works including over 100 operas alone. Klytemnestra is queen of Argos or Mycenae not of Thebes as stated in the programme. The version of their story that inspired Strauss and Hofmannsthal about a century ago reached back across the eons to shock people in 1910 and thrill us in the 21^st century.

Go see it.  

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Elektra by Richard Strauss opened on January 26 and will be performed a total of seven times on various dates until February 22, 2019 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  416-363-6671. www.coc.ca