Opera continues to thrive, evolve in Toronto
They say opera isn’t what it used to be. Well, it is what it used to be and that’s what’s wrong with it. Or so argued the famously witty playwright Noel Coward several decades ago.
Were he alive today, Sir Noel might not earn his chuckle. True, Carmen is still popular and so is La Bohème, and there are still companies staging them over and over as if time has stood still.
But look what is happening in Toronto this month. Next Thursday through Sunday at the MacMillan Theatre, the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music is staging Handel’s Imeneo, a work most opera lovers have never heard of, while in neighbouring Koerner Hall next Wednesday and Friday, the Royal Conservatory is staging Piccinni’s La Cecchina ( La buona figliuola), whose composer most opera lovers have never heard of.
Both are 18th-century operas new to the city; both will be staged in modern dress and both are being presented by educational institutions charged with preparing the next generation of operatic professionals.
So much for standing still. The art form once considered to the right of Louis XVI is revitalizing itself these days, expanding the active repertoire backward and forward in time and revolutionizing the look of what appears onstage.
Local opera lovers will recall the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Gotterdammerung, in which Tim Albery sought to establish a parallel between Wagner’s mythological characters and today’s corporate establishment by seating his business-suited singers around a huge boardroom table.
Well, the same Albery is not only taking Handel’s mythological characters into modern times, he is taking the audience out of the auditorium and bringing it onstage with the performers.
“We are living in a time when, with the help of recordings and films, we can see wonderful authentic productions of the operas, as well as experimental ones,” the veteran English director suggests. “And we are sometimes using non-traditional spaces, as in this production, bringing audience and performers closer together to make possible greater intimacy. It can be frightening and also exciting.”
As Albery is by no means alone in recognizing, young voices are not always ready — some voices never will be — to take on heavy Wagnerian roles. One of the reasons the Royal Conservatory is staging La Cecchina is the success it enjoyed in Colmar with the young voices of the Opera du Rhin’s ensemble studio, conducted by Leslie Dala and directed by Matthew Jocelyn (now head of Toronto’s Canadian Stage).
Like Albery, Dala has experienced working with both students and professionals. His next assignment will be to conduct Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for the fully professional Vancouver Opera.
“I never thought I’d see this opera ( La Cecchina) again,” the peripatetic conductor admits, “but even if it is seldom performed, what young singers learn by doing it can be used as well when singing Rossini. We are making some cuts of music that doesn’t move the story along, including some of the da capo arias, but there is an amazing range of music and Piccinni was a great orchestrator.
“For a professional company to put this on is a great risk. People don’t buy tickets to things they don’t know, so this is the perfect kind of place to present the piece.”
Albery makes the same point regarding Imeneo, drawing attention to the value of visiting an unfamiliar score: “It is one of Handel’s late operas. He was low on money so there are no special effects, but it is musically very rich. It also gives the university’s opera department its first chance to collaborate with the early music department.”
Student singers sometimes complain when their educational institutions mount works such as Imeneo and La Cecchina rather than Carmen and La Bohème, arguing that works that they are more likely to be hired to perform would be of greater value.
What both the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory appear to appreciate is the difference between education and job training.
What opera lovers in Toronto can also appreciate is the opportunity, thanks to both institutions, to laugh at rather than laugh with Noel Coward.