Pyramus and Thisbe, a made-in-Canada world premiere
Canadian Opera Company throws its resources behind daring new opera about star-crossed lovers
Pyramus and Thisbe is an all-Canadian gamble.
Its Canadian composer, Barbara Monk Feldman, has never written an opera before.
It will receive its world premiere Tuesday at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, starring Canadians Krisztina Szabo and Phillip Addis with an appearance by Owen McCausland.
The new work is matched with short pieces by Claudio Monteverdi, one a mere fragment, written more than 400 years ago. The three stories are linked by themes of unrequited love and are all based on myths.
Will audiences come to see a modern, unknown work that plays with operatic conventions?
“No risk, no fun,” laughs Alexander Neef, director general of the Canadian Opera Company, which last produced a mainstage world premiere in 1999: The Golden Ass by Randolph Peters and Robertson Davies.
“There’s always a gamble with everything you do,” Neef says. “You do it because you believe in it.”
Describing Monk Feldman’s composition as “conceptual, very abstract,” Neef and music director Johannes Debus liked what they heard after the work came to their attention three years ago.
“We just decided to go for it,” says Neef.
Pyramus and Thisbe is loosely based on the Greek myth that formed the foundation for Romeo and Juliet.
The star-crossed lovers arrange to meet secretly, a bloody veil is found and Pyramus, believing Thisbe to have been killed by a lion, kills himself. Thisbe arrives to find her lover dead and takes her own life.
Monk Feldman was inspired by the Nicolas Poussin painting Landscape during a Thunderstorm with Pyramus and Thisbe, 1651. She first saw it in Frankfurt in 1983 and later wrote the opera for her own pleasure, then put it away in a drawer for years.
Achance meeting with a member of the COC orchestra brought it to the opera company. The set was also inspired by an artist, abstract American painter Mark Rothko.
The Monteverdi pieces, which open the 70-minute program, are Lamento d’Arianna and Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.
The first is the classical story of Cretan princess Ariadne, who betrays her country to save Theseus, only to be abandoned.
The second is about a knight who fights with and kills his disguised love, Clorinda.
In all of the pieces, mezzo-soprano Szabo and baritone Addis are the lovers, with tenor McCausland performing the role of narrator in Tancredi.
Musically, the evening will start off with only harpsichord, a theorbo and acello, with more instruments added until the ending, with more than 50 instruments in Pyramus and Thisbe. There is no intermission, as the three pieces are strung together seamlessly.
“To explore with the composer his or her own words is an adventure.” MUSIC DIRECTOR JOHANNES DEBUS ON WORKING WITH COMPOSER BARBARA MONK FELDMAN
The COC, aware it is putting something unique before Toronto audiences, invited media into a working rehearsal lead by Debus and American director Christopher Alden.
“For people like us, 90 per cent of the time we are doing pieces from the past,” Alden told reporters. “I can count on less than two hands the world premieres I’ve done.”
Working with a living composer “is a little like having Puccini in the room,” Alden says.
“The exchange with the creative mind is profoundly deep and fulfilling,” adds Debus, who will conduct the orchestra for the premiere. “To explore with the composer his or her own words is an adventure.”
As the opera slowly takes shape, Addis compares it to having a baby.
“You can feel the potential, but at the same time it’s a little scary.”
He called Monk Feldman’s composition “economical but not dry. We are bringing it to life.”
Pyramus and Thisbe is at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Tuesday to Nov. 7. Go to coc.ca or call 416-363-8231for tickets.