The Merry Widow - Brief Impressions

Vancouver Opera began its season last evening with a production of Franz Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe(The Merry Widow) as joyous and bubbly as anything they have done in a long time.

The sets for all three acts were beautifully and tastefully done. The third act, set in Hanna’s recreation of Maxim’s, looked especially sumptuous. All the singers acted well and looked their parts. I thought that the lighting by Gerald King – giving the sets a magical glow - was particularly effective. I was grateful that director Kelly Robinson stayed true to the composer’s intent, and did not cheapen the work of falling into the trap of using art to further any political or social causes – something that seems to be the norm in opera and theatre today.

Legendary record producer Walter Legge, responsible for the casting of some of the 20^thcentury’s greatest opera recordings, was reportedly extremely picky about casting singers for operettas. I do think that in operetta, the singers have to be well casted to bring the music and drama across. Lucia Cesaroni was a wonderfully vivacious Hanna Glawari, with a voice that meets Lehár’s musical and dramatic demands. John Tessier’s portrayal of Camille de Rosillon (the tenor who didn't get the girl, or did he?) was for me another high point in last night’s performance. In fact, I thought that vocally, Tessier’s voice was most suited to his role in this production. In Act Two, the Marsch-Septett“Wie die Weiber…man behandelt?” was sung with a sort of controlled abandon and genuine humour, and deservedly brought down the house. I am convinced that this ensemble is the inspiration for “This is It”, the final chorus of the Looney Tunes cartoon.

John Cudia looks the part of Danilo Danilovitch, and his acting was effective and truly comical. However, his voice just did not project in the cavernous space of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. This was unfortunate, because it was obvious that his singing was musical and tasteful. This imbalance was especially apparent when he and Cesaroni sang together. Once again, last night’s performance was yet another reminder of how desperatelyVancouver needs a real opera house.

I liked conductor Ward Stare’s pacing of the work. His timing in the music was very good; he conducted sensitively, and he brought out wonderful playing from the Vancouver Opera orchestra (again, within the confines of the hall’s very dry and imperfect acoustics). It was only in the famous waltzes that the playing betrayed its lack of “Viennese-ness”.

All in all, it was a very good beginning of the opera season. Operettas are notoriously difficult to bring across in a convincing manner. Kudos to Vancouver Opera for giving us this tasteful, musical, humourous, and tasteful production of a classic work.

Now, coming back to that opera house for Vancouver…

Brief Impressions - L'Elisir d'Amore

This past Saturday, Vancouver Opera succeeded in making Gaetano Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore a delight, both vocally and visually, from beginning to end, a delicious dessert of a production.

Updated to Anytown, Canada – the production has been done in the United States, in which case it would have been Anytown, U.S.A. – at a time shortly before World War I, it makes the part about soldiers being drafted fit in with the plot. The set is simple but beautiful, and the entire performance was magically lit by lighting designer Harry Frehner.

Canadian tenor Andrew Haji has a light but very musical voice, and his portrayal of Nemorino as the guileless simpleton certainly endeared him to the audience. He very generously passed up the opportunity to make Una furtive lagrima, the tenor aria from the opera, a showpiece for himself, but sang it as a part of the musical and dramatic whole.

Soprano Ying Fang, who has been scoring successes at opera houses around the world, possesses a truly beautiful voice and an effortless delivery. She really plunged into the role of the coquettish Adina with relish. It is obvious that we have a star in the making here.

Brett Polegato as Sergeant Belcore and Stephen Hegedus as “Doctor” Dulcamara complete the well-balanced cast with their musical as well as dramatic contributions.

I sometimes feel that Jonathan Darlington is too laid back in his conducting, and doesn’t push the singers enough. Nevertheless, he led a beautiful and sensitive reading of Donizetti’s score, and was entirely supportive of every aspect of the singing. What I missed was more of a tension in the musical fabric.

In my mind, I try to “hear” what the voices and instruments would sound like in an acoustically ideal opera house. In the dull - dead would be a better word - acoustics of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, no amount of efforts by the singers or instrumentalist can be fully appreciated by the audience. This theatre should really be relegated to musicals, popular concerts, or other non-musical events.

Politicians and the moneyed people in Vancouver should remember that any society or city, past or present, is remembered by its artistic achievements. I pray that Vancouver will one day have an opera house and a concert hall (to replace the beautiful but acoustically less-than-ideal Orpheum Theatre) that would allow us to fully enjoy the music making of the many talented musicians in our midst.

Patrick May

January 29, 2018 

Macbeth from Congo

The late great Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan once said that even in a small theatre with a small orchestra, Verdi’s music “works”, which presumably means that the power of the music comes across.

I attended last night’s Vancouver Opera presentation of Macbeth with a great deal of trepidation, mainly because I had read that the score had been “reworked” for a mere 12 musicians by Fabrizio Cassol. I came away from the performance convinced that this production of Macbeth absolutely “works” as a theatre piece, if not exactly as “grand” opera.

I was thankful that the performance was held at the acoustically acceptable Vancouver Playhouse, and not in that travesty of a hall called the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. All of the voices were clearly heard, and the power of the music came through much more effectively in the smaller venue.

The set was incredibly simple. The chorus was seated (mostly) on stage left, and acts as a sort of Greek chorus commenting on the unfolding drama. The instrumentalists and the conductor were seated on stage right, and not in an orchestra pit, which also contributed to the immediacy of the sound. All of the action took place in an elevated area center stage, the size of a boxing ring, with black and white painted squares on the floor like a chessboard. Changing scenery was very effectively and evocatively achieved by back projections.

Rather than Scotland, the opera had been relocated to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, with Macbeth being an ambitious Congolese warlord. Against this backdrop the director was able to address the many atrocities committed today on the African continent, exploitation of the land as well as the people, intimidation and raping of women, ethnic conflicts, and child soldiers. The performance, which lasted only one hour and forty minutes, necessitated streamlining of the story, which made the dramatic impact of the story much more powerful.

None of these things would matter if the music making were not up to standards, which it was. This reworking of Verdi’s score did not destroy the music, and the singing of the chorus as well as all the principals were Italianate, strong and beautiful. Nobulumko Mngxekeza, as Lady Macbeth, possesses a voice that soars over the most dramatic musical outbursts. And Owen Metsileng strikes a perfect balance between Macbeth's cowardice and ambition. Performing this work with such minimal forces did not diminish the power of the music or the message of the drama.

At a time when so many iconoclasts seek to, in their works, insert their dose of political correctness or political agenda, it is refreshing to see a production such as this, which gives us a new and different glimpse of this all too familiar tale, and yet retaining all the essence of Verdi’s masterpiece. In the end, it is not about whether the opera is set in Scotland or Africa, but how the artists were able to use this timeless tale to highlight Shakespeare’s insight into the human heart.

Patrick May

January 20, 2017

The Elusive Bohème

What is it about Puccini’s La Bohème that makes it so difficult to bring off? Technically, it is certainly less complex than anything by Wagner, or even Verdi. To be sure, it requires very good voices, as any great opera does. But a great performance of La Bohème calls for more than great voices, or beautiful tunes.

Vancouver Opera’s latest production of the perennially and justifiably popular opera again illustrates the difficulties in any performance of this great work. Other than a very moving fourth act, the performance was strangely lacking in passion. All the principals had beautiful voices, the orchestra played competently, and conductor Leslie Dala held everything together - but there was no sense of urgency in the performance. Once when coaching tenor Vinson Cole, Herbert von Karajan told him to sing “as if the police were behind you,” precisely the kind of urgency, an ardent quality in the music making, that the performance lacked. When we add up all the elements of this particular production, it just doesn’t add up to be more than merely the sum of its parts.

In 1982, New York’s Metropolitan Opera put on a new production of La Bohème, directed and designed by Franco Zeffirelli. The performance, televised on Public Television, remains for me, one of the most moving performances of that opera. Even with the extremely poor sound quality, all the singers poured their hearts out and became, a la Stanislavski, the characters they were portraying. Years later, I visited the Metropolitan Opera and saw the same production of the opera with a different cast of singers and a different conductor, and the performance was one of the least inspiring and most lacklustre La Bohème I had seen.

Other than total commitment on the part of the singers, La Bohème requires a conductor that does more than direct traffic, but one that possesses a definite vision of the score. On opening night, Leslie Dala merely accompanied the singers in beautiful singing, rather than drove and inspired everyone on stage and in the pit to give more of themselves than they thought possible. There was a complete lack of tension in the music making – not physical tension, but a tension in the musical fabric.

Once again, singers and instrumentalists were not helped by the dead acoustics of the atrocious Queen Elizabeth Theatre. No matter how hard they are singing or playing, the sound just does not bloom in that dreadful space.

Nancy Hermiston directed the production with her usual thoughtfulness, but I believe that she was somewhat limited by the constraints of the rather small set, and thereby missed many dramatic possibilities in the action.

And so, I will continue to search for that perfect La Bohème. Perhaps one fine evening, when all the stars are aligned correctly, we will see and hear a performance of this magnificent opera when all the elements come together to give us a Bohème that far exceeds the sum of its parts. Perhaps that is asking a lot, but it was and is what Puccini’s great score calls for, and it is what every piece of great music calls for in its performance.

Dreaming Out Loud

Peter Ladner, a former city councillor and mayoral candidate in Vancouver, recently said that our city “desperately needs a visible centre for the high-tech industry.”

Well, Mr. Ladner, there has been something I’d want to get off my chest for a long time now. What this city truly and desperately needs are some world class performing arts centres. Let us look at what we have right now.

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, opened with great fanfare in 1959, represents the absolute worst of architecture from the 1950’s and 1960’s. This hall is now, unfortunately, the home of the Vancouver Opera. Whenever I am inside the theatre, I am taken back to the time when Vancouver was a quiet and very provincial backwater. What is more, the acoustics of the hall is deplorable, and both the stage and the orchestra pit are far too small. Unless you are seated at the first ten rows from the stage, there is no immediacy in the sound. If you happen to be unlucky to be seated in the upper balconies, you can perhaps see figures moving on stage, but the music being played on stage would, unless amplified, sound like listening to a stereo system from far, far away. The theatre is one of those so-called “multi-purpose” halls that ends up being good for not much else, and is a disgrace to our city. Perhaps it is good enough for Andrew Lloyd Webber, with all the voices singing into hidden microphones, but it is certainly not good enough for Mozart.

The Orpheum Theatre, home of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, dates from 1927 and was restored in the 1970’s. It is, and deserves to be, a heritage building, because of its old world splendour. But it is not a concert hall. No matter how many acoustical panels they install, there are far too many dead spots for sound. Again, unless you are one of the lucky ones sitting close to the stage, you might as well stay home and listen to your own sound system.

We are certainly fortunate in our city to have the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, situated in the campus of the University of British Columbia. The hall, not much to look at from the outside, does have comfortable seating, and the acoustics is beautiful. But the hall is limited because of its small stage and lack of an orchestra pit.

Apparently Vancouver did have a “real” opera house once upon a time. In 1890, the Canadian Pacific Railway built The Vancouver Opera House, on

733 Granville Street

, for the sum of $100,000. At the time, it was considered outrageous to spend such an amount of money for a “small town”, but it was an indication of the CPR’s optimism in the city’s future. The opera house seated 2,000 - when the population was a little over 10,000 - and it opened in 1891 with a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin.

I have a dream. That one day we will have a world class performing arts complex that can house both our orchestra and opera company. I have a vision that the complex will be situated in the Vanier Park area, looking out towards Burrard Inlet. Like Sydney Harbour, we will then have a beautiful performing arts centre in the midst of spectacular natural beauty. Do we have someone with the optimism in our city’s future to initiate such a project?

When that day comes, Vancouver will truly be the international city it purports, or wishes to be.

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?