Telling new Calgarians’ stories.
Clem Martini loves stories, and his latest gig exposed him to some real doozies. That’s because the author, playwright and University of Calgary professor was commissioned by the Calgary Opera to meet with 30 Calgary newcomers to help him create What Brought Us Here, a new community opera created by Martini and composer Arthur Bachmann.
The show has its debut Thursday night at Arrata Opera Centre, before a sold-out audience, many of whom may well be attending their first opera ever.
Martini spoke to nearly 30 different people from all over — Nigeria, Sudan, Vietnam, China, Russia, Khazakstan, Latin America, Columbia, Venezuela — who have settled in Calgary, before choosing three of them.
“All of the stories were great,” he says. “in different ways.
“People come (to Calgary) for different reasons,” he adds. “Sometimes, they have aspirations and dreams that are fulfilled in going to a new place, but many are about people leaving their home country under some conditions of stress and anxiety — sometimes war, sometimes political turmoil.”
Martini chose to tell the stories of newcomers from Sudan, Iran and Bosnia, then wove them into a libretto, from which Bachmann wrote the musical score.
Onalea Gilbertson, who turned a choir of homeless singers she met hosting an open mike at the Drop In Centre into an offBroadway show that just got back from performing at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, was brought in to direct.
She held several workshops, with local actors performing, allowing Martini and Bachmann to sharpen the material before the Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist and several other singers took over to put the show on its feet.
It’s a lot more challenging than pulling out an old Puccini classic, slamming on some wigs and costumes, and recreating the 18th century in Europe. But partly the goal of the Calgary Opera is to find opportunities to connect a classical art form to an urban, 21stcentury community.
“The whole point of this piece is to be taking opera into the community in a new way,” says Gilbertson. “I really applaud the Calgary Opera for moving in this direction.”
By telling the stories of Calgary — and Canadian — newcomers in an opera, not only does a 19thcentury art form leap into the 21st, but they introduce themselves to a whole new demographic that otherwise might not have even known they existed, Gilbertson says.
“Taking something that’s kind of perceived as a high art form,” she says, “and taking it to the different cultures that are present in Calgary that might not necessarily have been coming (to see opera) — and who might not have been connecting with some of the stories that were being presented — it’s incredibly special.”
One of the stories in What Brought Us Here is a blend of both the personal and political, telling the story inspired by one Iranian woman’s experiences with the Million Signatures Campaign in Iran, a movement by Iranian women to gain fundamental human rights, Martini says.
“(It was) on the one level, very successful,” Martini says. “It got many people involved. But on the other level, it was very vigorously suppressed by the Iranian government.
“Some of the people who participated were imprisoned,” he continues, “some were tortured, and in following this young lady’s story, you realize how difficult it is to get some of the things we take for granted.”
For Calgarian Mandana Kisomi, who grew up in Iran, What Brought Us Here offers the opportunity to do something she’s dreamed about since she started singing as a five-year-old: a chance to perform.
“It is very wonderful experience (performing with the Calgary Opera) because since I was five years old, I started singing Persian songs,” she says.
“My father was my biggest encouragement. He says, you’re going to grow up to be a great actor, or you’re going to grow up to be a great singer.”
Then, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and exile sent Kisomi’s life in a much different direction.
“I believed,” she says, “that I had to take all my dreams to the grave.”
Kisomi, who never received any formal vocal training as a child but rather is self-taught, is one of an estimated (by her own account) 5,000 Iranian-Canadians based in Calgary, many of whom work in the oil and gas industry.
Over the years since she settled in Canada, she’s been offered a recording deal by a producer in Toronto and an acting part in a Vancouver project that included Whoopi Goldberg. But if there weren’t small children to raise, there were the accounting and computing courses she was taking to upgrade her skills that got in the way.
“I was always thinking, would I ever be able to accomplish my dreams?” she asks.
“But then this Calgary Opera thing came up, and a friend in university told me about this, so I just came in here and I said, for (the) first time, even a little bit of a part is still going to satisfy me.” The other thing Kisomi has discovered lately? It took a trip back to Iran for a visit with her ailing father and family to discover that she’s every bit as much a Calgarian as an Iranian.
After a nice visit, Kisomi woke up one morning in Iran a little bit startled to discover what she was thinking.
“After a week I was missing here so bad. I wanted to come back,” she says. “And then I landed in the airport and I was like, I’m in Calgary again!
“I will never complain about -28 or -38 (again),” she says. “Because what’s wrong? My car is warm. My house is warm. My office is warm, so everybody’s warm! Who cares about a little bit (of winter) walking?”