Spend an intimate night at Nigredo Hotel
Nigredo Hotel is a bit of opera noir, dark comedy with jazz-based music
Vancouver Opera’s season starter, Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, is still a few weeks away. But both City Opera Vancouver and the Turning Point Ensemble are right off the mark with 2018-19 productions. Turning Point begins its year with the premiere of Victoriabased Rudolf Komorous’s Dada opera The Mute Canary, Sept. 1416 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. A week later, City Opera’s latest offering is Nigredo Hotel, a two-character piece based on an Ann-Marie MacDonald tale, with music by the late Nic Gotham.
City Opera’s mandate is to present — and in many instances, develop — new works, in what can be called “chamber opera” mode: smaller scale works with limited casts but maximum drama. Nigredo Hotel fits the bill perfectly: just two singers and four instrumentalists, in an intimate space where patrons can easily get all the dramatic and musical nuances.
What’s it about? “It’s a tricky story, so I can’t give too much away,” soprano Sarah Vardy said. “But I can tell you there is more than meets the eye in both plot and the two characters. It’s both an opera noir and a very dark comedy. When you start watching it seems to be one thing, but then it transforms into something quite different.”
Vardy’s character Sophie is no consumptive courtesan, Druid priestess or other traditional opera
stereotype. “When you first see her you kinda go, ‘Oh, she’s odd, maybe off her rocker.’ She runs a motel in the middle of nowhere, comes out wearing a muumuu and smoking a cigarette.”
Baritone Tyler Duncan essays the other role, Raymond, a brain surgeon who takes refuge in Sophie’s establishment after a car accident. Duncan is popular with local audiences and increasingly well-known on the international scene. Though he does plenty of opera, contemporary chamber opera is a new exploration. “I think the work is quite organic in words and music,” he said. “The music takes you through the psychological narrative quite delightfully. The writing is sparse and the instrumentation is very sparse — only four instruments, but they create an amazing soundscape.”
If new opera is a departure to Duncan, he’s enthusiastic about his role. “I loved the piece from the first sing-through. It’s really a fantastic project.” And the music takes Duncan back to his student vocal jazz roots. “I don’t go and sing jazz in clubs anymore, but I still listen to it and I can still make those sounds. The musical style is very jazz-based, so my training came in handy. There are jazz forms and jazz harmonies. Although it’s not in the score, I’ve heard through word of mouth that the composer wanted an improvised sound. As someone who jumps around from genre to genre, you try to figure out what the composer wants and do the best version of that you can.”
Vardy agrees, noting that the score ranges through a number of styles. “I start in a really contemporary musical vein, and we end up in Schoenberg country. I’m a Verdi soprano, so this allows me to explore a very different vocal range.”
Can all those disparate musical idioms create hazards for the singer? Indeed they can, said Vardy. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you could really damage your voice. Fortunately, like Tyler, I have a jazz background, and we both find it fun to go back to our roots — in a healthy way.”
Nigredo Hotel is directed by Alan Corbishley with set and lighting design by John Webber and costumes by Barbara Clayden. There are three performances opening Sept. 20.