Aventa performs première of chamber opera
What: Aventa Ensemble: The Undivine Comedy, by Michael Finnissy When/where: Sunday, 8 p.m., Phillip T. Young Recital Hall (School of Music, MacLaurin Building, University of Victoria); pre-concert talk at 7:15 Tickets: $40
There are many and diverse concerts on offer in the coming days, by local and visiting musicians.
On Friday, the Victoria Baroque Players, joined by London-based violinist Kati Debretzeni, perform concertos and other works by Italian composers (victoria-baroque.com). On Friday and Saturday, there is a lecture and performance at the University of Victoria by the Vancouver-based composer and conductor Owen Underhill (finearts.uvic.ca/music/calendar). On Saturday, the New York-based Diderot String Quartet play music by Bach and Mendelssohn (early musicsocietyoftheislands.ca). On Sunday, the Sidney Classical Orchestra is joined by oboist Russell Bajer (sco-wp.pentire.ca), and, in Metchosin, violinist Philip Manning and pianist Robert Holliston perform an all-German program (2:30 pm, Church of St. Mary of the Incarnation Church, Metchosin, $20, under 12 free). On Wednesday, in contemporary repertoire, Duo 1010, a fluteclarinet combo from Vancouver, play at James Bay United Church (aplacetolisten.wordpress.com).
The Aventa Ensemble's performance on Sunday, however, is of international importance — the première of The Undivine Comedy, a chamber opera by the British composer Michael Finnissy. It was commissioned by Aventa, and mostly funded through the British Columbia Arts Council.
It will be the third opera Aventa has mounted here. It presented Danish composer Anders Nordentoft’s On This Planet in 2007, and gave the world première of British composer (and part-time Metchosin resident) Gavin Bryars’ Marilyn Forever in 2013.
The Undivine Comedy is based on a dark, dreamlike, manylayered “metaphysical drama” from 1833 by the Polish Romantic writer Zygmunt Krasinski. Finnissy calls it “a satire about the opposition of self-obsessed, conventionally poetic idealism and the idealism of social and political revolution — a choice between individual fantasy and collective action.” This opposition is expressed through warring protagonists, an aristocratic poet named Dante and a revolutionary leader. Ultimately, Finnissy says, the story is “about the failure of utopias and the unrealistic expectations human beings have of each other.”
Finnissy already wrote an opera based on this play; it was mounted in Paris and London in 1988. But only a little of this version survives, and, for Aventa, he has written a new libretto and score. (Aventa previewed five of the opera’s 17 scenes in concert in May 2015.) British baritone Richard Morris, who appeared with Aventa in the Australian première of Marilyn Forever in 2015, will play Dante, and soprano Helen Pridmore, a renowned contemporarymusic specialist based in Regina, will play the dual role of Dante’s wife, Beatrice, and their son.
Dante and Beatrice are initially happily married, but he eventually abandons her, preoccupied with his art. Driven insane, Beatrice dies in an asylum giving birth to their son, who is born blind and never reconciles with his morally weak, directionless father. This family drama unfolds against the backdrop of an ultimately failed political revolution, the two levels of narrative commenting on each other. (Though both plots end unhappily, the opera gets an ironically upbeat ending.)
One other performer, Keenan Mittag-Degala, will play a nonsinging, speaking role as Virgil, our guide through the tale, and all three performers double as newscasters who reflect on the action.
The Undivine Comedy runs about 90 minutes with no intermission, and Sunday’s performance will be fully staged. The eight-person instrumental ensemble will be conducted by Aventa’s co-founder and artistic director, Bill Linwood.
Finnissy, 71, who was born in London and lives in rural England, is a very prolific composer whose output is conspicuously diverse, eclectic and original.
Voraciously curious and inclusive, he draws inspiration and material from an immense range of musical sources and other artforms, and fearlessly tackles political, religious, social and sexual themes. In The Undivine Comedy, he says, he has “substantially restructured” Krasinski’s play in light of “the recent, and still current, blatantly corrupt state of English politics,” and his diverse score alludes to classical works and Polish folk music.
Linwood calls Finnissy “one of the greats,” an “unbelievably influential” musician with a passionate international following. His ensemble has performed half a dozen of Finnissy’s works over the years, including some Canadian and North American premières and the world première of his Horn Trio (2015), another Aventa commission. Finnissy will be in Victoria for Sunday’s première.