FAUST – REVIEW OF 2024 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

Faust has had a happier relationship with the COC than Nabucco.  It was last produced by the COC in 2007 and it got seven performances that season.

If Faust had consulted a good lawyer, say Sir Thomas More, about the bargain he was making with the Devil, Mephistopheles, the man for all seasons no doubt would have said “why Doctor, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for a woman.”  Faust sold his soul and did not get the whole world but did get some youth and the young and lovely Marguerite for a brief time. Not a great bargain for him but a huge boon for poets, playwrights and composers.

The COC production tries to capture the essence of the bargain and entertain us with some of the liveliest music on the subject. The production tries illustrating the theme in the detailed set by Emma Ryott and lighting by Charlie Morgan Jones. There are stairs leading up to heaven, I suppose, that also look like the backbone of a prehistoric animal. We have a projection of a human chest that looks like an enhanced x-ray so that you have to look at all its details to get the full picture and all the symbolism. I took their word for it. The church scene was different and starkly impressive.

Mephistopheles (Kyle Ketelsen), dressed in high hat and tails, is the essence of a gentleman. When he strikes the bargain with Faust, he asks him to sign a contract without any information about what is in it. Faust becomes young and able to seduce Marguerite (Guanqun Yu) but we only find out about that when we learn that she had a baby that she kills. We assume that Faust ends up in the place where the sun does not shine but we don’t learn much more about his faith. Marguerite is destroyed and gets a reconciliation scene with Faust but she has God on her side and does not join her lover in the “Other” Place where we assume he goes. She sings her two big arias beautifully.

Kyle Ketelsen, Long Long and Guanqun Yu in COC’s Faust. 
Photo: Michael Cooper

Director Amy Lane embellishes the plot by adding some characters. Mephistopheles is accompanied by two beautiful silent dancers dressed as if they work in a cabaret in Berlin in the 1920’s. They do not sing but they do look good. During the famous Jewel Song, the jewels are shown off by the dancers.

I admit that the familiar story as worked out by Gounod does not grab me but Gounod’s music does. I found a disconnect between the tragedy of Marguerite even if it is relieved by the choir of angels and the grace of God and the beautiful music and melodies. Where is Mephistopheles’ evil to make us cringe with horror?

I cannot complain about the singers. Kyle Ketelsen is a distinguished bass-baritone and he sang a swaggering Mephistopheles, not evil but a fine-voiced man-about-town accompanied by two lovely cabaret girls. Tenor Long Long gave us a well-sung Faust who, as far as we can tell, got Marguerite and, as I said, then destroyed her life. I still can’t figure out why Siebel, a man, is sung by a woman, the lovely-voiced mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington. Baritone Szymon Mechlinski sings Valentin, Marguerite’s brother, who gets the sonorous and moving aria ‘Avant de quitter ces lieux’’ He bids farewell to his sister and entrusts her care to the Lord and goes off to war where he is killed.

One can argue about Gounod’s treatment of the Faust legend and the creaks of his famous opera but there can be no disagreement about the sumptuousness of his music. The melodic waltz, the Soldier’s Chorus, the beautiful Jewel Song and much more carry the opera and the audience with them. Conductor Johannes Debus conducts the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra and Chorus with superbly.

Amy Lane directs the production at its best and its creakiest and does her best under the circumstances. 
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Faust by Charles Gounod, directed by Amy Lane, conducted by Johannes Debus ran until Nov. 2, 2024, at the Four-Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W. Toronto. For more information go to www.coc.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press 

 NABUCCO – REVIEW OF 2024 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

For its fall season the Canadian Opera Company has chosen Verdi’s Nabucco and Charles Gounod’s Faust. Both operas are reasonably well known but not exactly chestnuts. Faust was last produced by the COC in 2007 and it has never staged Nabucco before and even this time it offers a production from the Lyric Opera of Chicago. We are happy and grateful for it.

Nabucco has several distinctions, including that of being Verdi’s first great success and being an opera that may best be known for its famous chorus, “Va pensiero.”   A more dubious distinction may be that it has a soprano voice killer role of Abigaile for singers who take on the role while young, undisciplined and unmentored.

The role demands vocal range and prowess that very few sopranos possess. The number of singers who possessed those vocal qualities in the past century can be counted on your fingers so to suggest that Mary Elizabeth Williams, the COC’s Abigaile, does not fall in that category is not to diminish her abilities. She does give us Abigaile’s emotional conflicts, and her ambitions. She reaches vocal and emotional peaks but understandably cannot maintain them throughout. At 47 Williams is not young but she is disciplined enough in not attempting to sing at full throttle for the entire performance. I give her credit for her peaks and understand her care not to overdo it.

Roland Wood as Nabucco and Mary Elizabeth Williams as Abigaille 
in the COC’s production of Nabucco. Photo: Michael Cooper/COC

Baritone Roland Wood has a clarion voice that he unleashes for his performance as Nabucco. The king is arrogant, of course, then he loses it, then he regains his sanity and then he converts. That’s keeping the character and the singer very busy but Wood handles the role well. Mezzo soprano Rihab Chaieb plays the nice Fenena, Nabucco’s real daughter and she sings well and provides a contrast to the megalomaniac Abigaile. But she is not without problems. The nice Babylonian has fallen in love with Ismale (tenor Matthew Cairns), a Hebrew, whom she in fact helped him escape from captivity, and became a hostage of the Israelis. Cairns and bass Simon Lim as the Hebrew High Priest Zaccaria deserve kudos for their performances. Lim”s Zaccaria is a steadfast and sonorous leader who keeps the spirits of the Israelites in check under trying conditions.

Verdi paid special attention to the choruses and the dream of freedom of “Va pensiero” is only one of them. They vary from martial bravado, to fear, to expression of triumph. The  COC Chorus under the direction of Sandra Horst is simply outstanding. The COC Orchestra is conducted in exemplary fashion by Paolo Carignani.  

The sets by Michael Yeargan and the lighting by Mikael Kangas favour dark tones and spotlights. The Babylonian throne at the top of a staircase looks like a simple bench and we have the right to expect something more ostentatious. A few brightly lit scenes would help.  

The same observation applies to Director Katherine M. Carter, who may have had to face budget restrictions rather than failure of the imagination in some of her decisions. I feel that perhaps I am being churlish when I should be grateful and applauding loudly for a production that is highly laudable, of an opera opera that for all its shortcomings, deserves to be produced more frequently.

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Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi (music) and Temistocle Solera (libretto) was performed seven times between October 4 and 29,  2024 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. West Toronto, Ont. www.coc.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press