Muddled messages overwhelm opera
The Abduction From the Seraglio (out of 4) Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Direction and dialogues by Wajdi Mouawad. Conducted by Johannes Debus. At the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen St. W., until Feb. 24. 416-363-8231 or coc.ca.
Nothing makes a better case for commissioning new operas than to see Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s youthful Escape From the Seraglio butchered by a director trying to make it current and relevant.
The real victim of the abduction in the Canadian Opera Company’s latest effort, co-produced with Opéra de Lyon in France (which premiered this production in 2016), was any compelling reason to sit through to the bitter end. And the seraglio was our prison, too: At Wednesday’s opening performance, the 3 1/4-hour running time, including intermission, felt like an eternity.
The blame for this lies on the shoulders of Lebanese-Canadian director Wajdi Mouawad, a lauded and accomplished writer who was asked to bring 18th-century European sensibilities into the 21st century by balancing Europeans and Arabs as equitably as possible. In the process, he turned a lighthearted romp about the power of love into a tedious lesson on women’s equality and the relative merits of all cultures.
Mouawad is absolutely right in insisting that no one should claim superiority in cultural or religious matters. He is also spot on in focusing on awoman’s right to be her own person in matters of love. But his new dialogues pitted words against music and arias against dialogue in ways that created nonsense on many levels.
His staging is no better, sucking the life out of nearly every scene with a variety of approaches and tricks too numerous to mention. It’s not just movement that undermines the singers’ expressions of love and longing; Emannuel Clolus’ design was
The seraglio was our prison, too: The 3 1/4-hour running time, including intermission, felt like an eternity
even worse, giving us, in place of a Turkish palace, a brutalist-sci-fi backdrop that looked like it was plucked from The Handmaid’s Tale and populated by cult followers and death-camp inmates.
And if we are being fair to the Arab world, why were the six little girls doing their homework by writing left to right, and why does the program bury the credit for the prayer leader we hear after intermission?
The production may be ugly, static, tedious and self-contradictory, but the music and singing were exquisite at the opening performance. Music director Johannes Debus and the COC Orchestra were superb in their lively and nuanced approach.
The singers were a treat: Canadian sopranos Jane Archibald and Claire de Sévigné were wonderfully assured as Konstanze and her companion Blonde, who are captured by pirates and sold to Bassa Selim; tenors Owen McCausland (Canadian) and Mauro Peter (Swiss) were excellent as their European boyfriends; and Croatian bass Goran Juric was solid as Selim’s right-hand man, Osmin. Selim’s spoken role was well-filled by Israeli actor Raphael Weinstock.
Toronto’s Opera Atelier has proven that this 1782 opera can make for a fabulously guilt-free night out. If we really want to address today’s issues on a musical stage, let’s give them an operatic vehicle on their own terms, not with bits and pieces borrowed from another era. Classical music writer John Terauds is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.