OPÉRA DE MONTRÉAL GOES GLOBAL
Performance takes on JFK’s last night
The Opéra de Montréal will uphold its reputation as a bastion of contemporary repertoire next season by presenting JFK, an opera that uses the last night of John F. Kennedy as its point of departure.
“As much as we are a Canadian company, we try also be a global company,” said OdM general director Patrick Corrigan. “JFK is a global phenomenon. “We are always open to collaborate with companies on new projects and we thought this one was very interesting. I think Montreal is going to enjoy it.”
Written by composer David T. Little and the Canadian-born librettist Royce Vavrek, JFK opened last April in Fort Worth, Texas, to generally positive if not unqualified reviews. It will become the fourth contemporary mainstage opera presented by the OdM in so many years.
Kevin Puts’s Silent Night was given in 2014-15 and Kevin March’s Les Feluettes (a production in French with a libretto by Michel Marc Bouchard) was seen last May. Julien Bilodeau’s Another Brick in the Wall runs for 10 performances from March 11 to 27. The trend started in 2012-13 with Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.
A quartet of principals from the Fort Worth Opera première — baritone Matthew Worth as Kennedy, mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack as Jackie Kennedy, mezzosoprano Katharine Goeldner as Jackie in her later years as the wife of Aristotle Onassis and bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch as Lyndon B. Johnson — will be complemented by the Montrealbased tenor John Mac Master as Nikita Khrushchev.
The symbolic rather than realistic narrative is based substantially on dream sequences that are apparently enhanced by the morphine the U.S. president takes to relieve back pain. A maid and secret service agent double as a kind of Greek chorus. The two Jackies at one point sing a duet.
Okulitch sings parodies of country songs in an episode Scott Cantrell in the Dallas News called “acutely offensive in perpetuating the worst stereotypes of Texans.”
The director of JFK is Thaddeus Strassberger, whom Montrealers will remember from Verdi’s Nabucco in 2014 and Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West in 2008. JFK runs from Jan. 27 to Feb. 3, 2018, and features the OSM in the pit. All other productions in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of Place des Arts are serviced by the Orchestre Métropolitain.
Admirers of standard repertoire need not fear. Puccini’s Tosca (running Sept. 16-23) opens the season with American soprano Melody Moore — a successful Madama Butterfly in 2015 — in the title role. Chilean tenor Giancarlo Monsalve is Cavaradossi and the Canadian baritone Gregory Dahl is the villainous Scarpia. Jose Maria Condemi, a newcomer to the OdM, directs.
Next comes Rossini’s La Cenerentola — Cinderella — with the acclaimed Quebec mezzosoprano Julie Boulianne in the title role. Joan Font of the madcap Barcelona comic troupe Comediants is the director of this production, which features giant rodents and other surreal elements (Nov. 11-18).
The mandatory French-language presentation (and season closer May 19-26, 2018) is Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Spanish tenor Ismael Jordi and Quebec soprano Marie-Ève Munger are the star-crossed lovers. Canadian Tom Diamond directs.
The season includes another contemporary foray: Svadba by the Montreal composer Ana Sokolovic. Written for six unaccompanied female singers and inspired by Stravinsky’s Le Noces, this opera evokes the traditional preliminaries to a Serbian wedding. Martine Beaulne, who is well-known in Montreal theatrical circles, directs. Originally written for the defunct Queen of Puddings Musical Theatre, Svadba will be given at Espace Go from March 24 to 31, 2018.
Dáirine Ní Mheadhra, a Gaelicspeaking Irish conductor, is assigned to Svadba — logically enough, since she has led the piece on tour. Stephen Osgood, conductor of the original Forth Worth run of JFK, is another inevitable choice.
Add Giuseppe Grazioli (Tosca), Jose Miguel Perez-Sierra (La Cenerentola) and Giuliano Carella (Roméo et Juliette) and you have a remarkable situation: Every conductor is new to the company and none are Canadian. Go to operademontreal.com for subscription information.
Contemporary music is getting on. The Société de musique contemporaine du Québec is operating its biennial Montreal/New Music Festival this year under the rubric of Back to the Future as a celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary.
“Above all, I wanted the program to be festive,” SMCQ artistic director Walter Boudreau writes.
The schedule opens officially on Feb. 23 in Pollack Hall. Boudreau leads the McGill Symphony Orchestra through Berliner Momente I (1988, revised in 2006) and II (1991, ditto), the two completed movements of his projected large-scale tribute to the German capital. Alexis Hauser then takes the helm in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. This Schulich School of Music co-presentation is repeated on Feb. 24.
Meanwhile, the OSM under Vasily Petrenko performs Plages (1981), the valedictory work of Serge Garant (1929-86), one of Boudreau’s SMCQ predecessors. The 12-minute piece is heard in the Maison symphonique on Feb. 22, 23 and 25.
Also on Feb. 25, but back in Pollack Hall, you can hear Timber, in which composer Michael Gordon uses six pieces of wood to construct a soundscape that, paradoxically, evokes the ambience of electronic music. On the afternoon of Feb. 26 St. Joseph’s Oratory will play host to Boudreau’s indoor arrangement of the Millennium Symphony.
Philippe Ménard and Mathieu Côté are the conductors. Those armed with handbells from the 2000 event are invited to participate in the revival. This concert, scheduled to start at the numerically evocative time of 3:33 p.m., is free.
Other events include a 50thanniversary tribute on Feb. 27 to the “First Live Electronic Music Festival” (FLEM) in California. One highlight is a digital version of Gordon Mumma’s Mesa (1966) with Université de Montréal Boulez authority Jonathan Goldman playing bandoneón. This takes place in the UQAM building at 175 President Kennedy Ave. The Capitano, Bozzini and Molinari Quartets are featured in sequence at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on Feb. 28 in music by various composers, starting with Claude Vivier and ending with John Zorn. All of Jean Lesage’s music for string quartet will be heard in between.
Orford Six Pianos offer Debussy’s La Mer and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring as well as a piece for pianos and kitchen pans by Simon Bertrand on March 1 at the Montreal Conservatoire. Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat is performed in the Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts on March 3 by the visiting ensemble of the Stravinsky Foundation of Geneva (which also supplies a film).
The final day of the festival, March 4, includes a recital by pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico of music by MichelGeorges Brégent (1948-93), to whom she was once married. There are other events. Have a look at smcq.qc.ca.