Nuova Opera Festival returns as essential stage for emerging talent
Trio of productions take centre stage in post-pandemic return to a full schedule
Opera Nuova, Edmonton's opera and musical training company for young would-be professional singers from across Canada and beyond, has returned post-pandemic to a full slate of activities in its 2022 Opera and Musical Theatre Festival.
Chief among these are the three traditional mainstage productions that began Wednesday and run through July 16.
This year there are 48 singers in the program, few of whom have had any opportunity to sing in public in the last two pandemic years. That's a long time for singers in their stage of development, and Opera Nuova's artistic director Kim Mattice-wanat says the coaching team has been very aware of the special assistance needed for these performances.
In the mainstage productions, those singers work with professional stage and music staff, and Mattice-wanat sees a theme this year.
“All three works witness women making decisions that define their lives … and the lives of those they love,” she explains.
The opening opera is a powerful rarity, The Consul by Italian-american composer Menotti (June 29-30, July 2-3). It's being staged in the Freemason's Hall, with the audience surrounding the singers and 20-piece orchestra.
Written in 1950, it had a long Broadway run and won a Pulitzer Prize. It's set in an unidentified European totalitarian country, where a young radical escapes across the border, leaving his wife, Magda, and his mother behind.
The work then centres on an unidentified consulate in the same country, and the main story is about the futile and repeated attempts by Magda and others to see the consul and get a visa to emigrate.
It's very theatrical (Menotti called it a “musical drama”) and the music has echoes of Kurt Weill, Broadway and Hollywood, with intensely dramatic moments.
The scenario is Kafkaesque, harrowing and ultimately tragic, all too reminiscent of the treatment of so many refugees today. To acknowledge that, the role of the Italian woman (sung in Italian in the original) has here been changed to a Ukrainian woman, and the text translated into Ukrainian.
The Consul is directed by a regular visitor to Edmonton, Brian Deedrick, and conducted by Gordon Gerrard, the music director of the Regina Symphony Orchestra.
The other two mainstage works are being presented in Macewan University's Triffo Theatre.
Mattice-wanat directs a classic of early opera, Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea (July 9, 10, 12,14).
Premiered in 1643, it presents in its own way a world as deranged and immoral as that of The Consul, based on real events in Rome during the reign of Emperor Nero. Poppea's eventual coronation as the emperor's wife is only possible through a series of murders and banishments.
“The music is breathtaking,” says Mattice-wanat, “and the drama is filled with complex characters.”
The musical director is the early music and baroque specialist, Christopher Bagan. He's joined by Toronto's Jonathan Stuchbery, an early music instrumentalist who will be playing the continuo on his theorbo and baroque guitar.
The final show is Tuck Everlasting, a musical based on Natalie Babbitt `s much-loved children's novel of the same name (July 13, 15, 16).
The story revolves around the Tuck family, who drank from a spring whose water has made them immortal. When Winnie Foster meets Jesse Tuck, he is in his 90s, but perpetually looks 17. Winnie discovers their secret, and Jesse proposes that she drinks the water when she is 17, so she can marry him.
There's a villain, an apparent kidnapping and a ballet section depicting Winnie's later life. Opera Nuova is partnering with Celtic Ceilidh, a community dance company specializing in Celtic dance, but at home in the numerous dance styles required in this score. The attractive music is by Chris Miller, very much in a traditional Broadway-style, with touches of jazz.
With stage direction by another regular Edmonton visitor, Rob Herriot, and musical direction by Edmonton-born Ryan Sigurdson, this looks like an attractive family show.