Organizers sing praises of the city’s first opera festival
Vancouver Opera’s first opera festival was called a success even though attendance for one of the three premiere operas was disappointing.
Kim Gaynor, Vancouver Opera’s general director, said she was pleased on almost every level about the festival format, which concentrates performances, panel discussions, master classes and other events into a limited time period.
“It exceeded my expectations on many levels,” she said. “When you do a new thing, you expect complications and things to go wrong. I’ve got to say, it was pretty well smooth sailing for all of our events.”
The festival ran April 28-May 13. It featured three full productions: Otello and Dead Man Walking at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and The Marriage of Figaro at the Playhouse.
“People who attended all three really got their money’s worth,” she said.
Gaynor said about 20,000 people attended the festival.
Attendance overall was between 70 and 75 per cent, with many full houses for The Marriage of Figaro and half-houses for Dead Man Walking, she said.
The new production of The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart featured a cast of mainly Canadian singers. Dead Man Walking was based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean about her relationship with a prisoner on death row in Louisiana.
“I was a bit disappointed at the houses for Dead Man Walking — and the press was so fantastic. Everyone I spoke to who saw it was overwhelmed,” she said. “It was a terrific show.”
Dead Man Walking was staged four times during the festival; The Marriage of Figaro 13 times.
She said one of the challenges for a company such as Vancouver Opera is that its operas often have a short run of four or five performances. What can happen, she said, is that by the time people hear by word of mouth about a great performance, it’s over.
When Gaynor took over as general director last year, she replaced James Wright, who retired after 17 years. Previously, she was managing director of the Verbier Festival, a classical music festival in Verbier, in the Swiss Alps.
Despite the lower-than-expected attendance, the festival didn’t cost more than expected, she said.
“When the festival was announced two years one of the goals that was publicly announced was that it should save money,” she said. “I think that was quickly taken off the table.”
The festival featured initiatives to engage with people who don’t normally go to opera. They included a pop-up nightclub called Opera Bar, a Carmina Burana Sing-Along and an outside installation by multimedia artist Paul Wong called Five Octave Range.
Gaynor described the festival format as a “game-changer for Vancouver Opera.”
“I met lots of people who said, ‘Oh, you know, I never knew opera could be like this. I never knew opera would open the doors to people like me,’” she said. “It was fantastic to have that mix of ideas and people.” Opera isn’t an elitist art form, she said. Gaynor said she very much liked Pacific Opera Victoria’s slogan used in its marketing: “Stories so big they have to be sung!”
“That’s what opera is: It’s about life, big stories, big emotions, big plots,” she said. “I never think of opera as being in an ivory tower — lots of people do, especially people who don’t come. This event was good for us in terms of opening doors and getting people to come and have a look.”
Gaynor said that next year Vancouver Opera will offer two operas in the regular season and two in the festival.
“(Subscribers) can participate in the festival or not. But we’ll still have two main stage operas in the festival, plus a whole number of other activities,” she said. “We’ll keep the festival format as the season-closer and we’ll have the two other operas outside of the festival next year.”
In its 2017-18 season, Vancouver Opera will stage Turandot, L’elisir d’amore, Eugene Onegin and The Overcoat: an Opera.