A FEAST FOR OPERA BUFFS
Festival shines spotlight on Russia
VANCOUVER OPERA FESTIVAL
When: April 28-May 6
Where: Various venues
Tickets and info: vancouveropera.ca It’s festival time again at Vancouver Opera, and the accent this spring is on things Russian.
The second instalment in VO’s bold reconsideration of how and when to do opera is a slightly less sprawling proposition than last year, but there are still events galore on the docket.
At first it seemed that the festival format was going to be an all-ornothing proposition. Now things have morphed into what could be termed a festival within a season. And opera aficionados have already enjoyed a rather good season: a grand, flashy Turandot in the fall and an exemplary Elixir of Love earlier this year.
Now come the heady, eventcrowded weeks of the festival. There are three main components: staged productions; other musical events; and add-on activities.
Let’s start with the shows. The blockbuster is Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Queen Elizabeth Theatre, April 29, May 3 and 5).
While Vancouver hears plenty of Tchaikovsky’s instrumental music, his stage works are rarely seen in this part of the world — reason enough to plan to see Onegin, deservedly the most renowned of the Russian master’s 10 operas. It has a first-rate libretto (based on a classic by Pushkin), the music is splendid, and the major characters are vividly and exquisitely drawn.
VO has engaged Russian singers for the three principal roles. Konstantin Shushakov sings the title role, Svetlana Aksenova will be Tatyana and Alexey Dolgov is Lensky. The days of difficulty rounding up singers happy to work in Russian are thankfully long gone, and companies can now hire principals who understand the cultural as well as the linguistic nuances of the piece.
From the audience’s perspective, surtitles really matter in Onegin. Consider the famous letter scene, one of the wonders of opera (Russian or otherwise) because the marriage of words, subtext and music is so sublime. Director Tom Diamond is in charge, with Jonathan Darlington on the podium. One anticipates a musical treat of the highest order.
Festivals need novelties, and for that we have a production of Toronto-based James Rolfe’s new opera, The Overcoat — a musical tailoring, (Vancouver Playhouse, April 28 to May 12) based on the Nikolai Gogol story about a statusconscious clerk.
Rolfe’s Overcoat is new to Vancouver, but The Overcoat as a theatrical event isn’t. Twenty years ago Wendy Gorling and Morris Panych made local theatrical history with a thrillingly innovative staged silent movie to music by Shostakovich. Panych is librettist and director this time around, in a co-production with Toronto’s Tapestry Opera that premièred there a few weeks ago.
Rolfe made a splash in Canadian opera with his 1998 Beatrice Chancy and has been busy with music for the stage over the last two decades. As well as The Overcoat, we get a program of smaller works by composer Rolfe as part of the Russian Chamber Music Series (CBC Studio 700, April 29).
Though it hasn’t been nearly as touted as The Overcoat, there’s a third stage work on tap: Requiem for a Lost Girl (May 4 and 6, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts), billed as a chamber opera about homelessness.
Though the very idea is not without its naysayers, socially conscious opera is a big deal in the contemporary scene. Requiem is very much a collaborative community proposition that included the participation of The Kettle Society and SFU Woodward’s cultural programs.
Composer and conductor Marcel Bergmann, and writer-director Onalea Gilbertson had an enormous responsibility in bringing such good intentions to the festival audience. Members of Requiem’s artistic team will discuss the multi-faceted project during a free talk (April 29, SFU Woodward’s).
These staged works are by no means all the music crammed into the festival’s days. Easily the most exotic aspect is a program of Russian opera arias from 18th century St. Petersburg with Karina Gauvin and the Pacific Baroque opera (Chan Centre, May 6).
Russia’s upper strata were well aware of “European” music ideas — of which opera was the most attention-getting. They imported experts (often from Italy) and in no time locals were trying their hand. The chance to hear from these figures is rare and wonderful, just the sort of thing possible only in a festival context.
There’s a good deal more Russian music on offer in other festival projects, including the five-event Russian Chamber Music Series (April 28 to May 5 at CBC Studio 700). Leslie Dala has curated an event heavy on chamber music with voices, starting with musical settings of the poet Anna Akhmatova; the showcase of chamber works by Rolfe; two programs that juxtapose Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich; and ending with the Bergmann Duo playing the rarely heard twopiano version of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and a suite of excerpts from Tchaikovsky operas arranged by Marcel Bergmann.
There will also be a grand event: From Russia with Love to Jonathan Darlington (Vancouver Playhouse, May 1), a celebration of Darlington’s unprecedented and successful 15-year tenure as music director of Vancouver Opera.
We’re promised “a lighthearted evening of musical surprises,” anchored by Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale — narrated by guess who?
The final festival component is made up of various lectures and special target programs. These include a trio of free Opera Speaks sessions; an art exhibition by students from the Arts Umbrella program; films including the CBC broadcast version of Gorling and Panych’s The Overcoat; and options for families. (I think my favourite is two performances of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (Vancouver Playhouse, May 5). What a great way to introduce kids to classical music.