Canoe; libretto by Spy Dénommé-Welch, music by the librettist and Catherine Magowan, had its world premier at Trinity St. Paul’s on Friday evening.  It’s a complex work and adopts some interesting approaches to telling an Indigenous story within the conventions of European opera.  It’s effectively directed, on quite a minimal but functional set (Lindy Kinoshameg), by Dénommé-Spy and Moynan King.

(L-R): “Gladys” Nicole Joy-Fraser, “Debaajimod” Michelle Lafferty, “Tree Spirit” Conlin Delbaere-Sawchuk, “Constance” Kristine Dandavino

The basic story is the creation/flood myth in which Debaajimod; the Rock Turtle, emerges from a primal inundation to form Turtle Island.  The twist is that this is not linear time and we begin in the 1980s with two sisters living in an isolated house somewhere “up North” near an abandoned army base.  One (Constance) has been raised traditionally and acquired a good deal of traditional knowledge from here Grandmother.  The other (Gladys) is a survivor of a Residential School and displays a PTSD inflected skepticism towards her sister and her “knowledge”.  It’s not the first time I’ve seen the device of the “traditional” and the “westernised” sister used to good effect.

They live in a blighted landscape; the result of Agent Orange experiments, and only one tree; planted by their mother survives.  Gladys, in a fit of pique, cuts it down.  And then we discover it’s no ordinary tree.  The spirit world starts to intrude on the lives of the two sisters and affect them in different ways.  Debaajimod appears and triggers the Great Flood.  The felled birch tree is revealed as Tree Spirit who transforms into a canoe which carries the sisters to safety at the Eastern Gateway of Turtle Island where Creation is begun/renewed and the sisters are revealed as Fire Spirit and water Spirit who have been sent into the human world to learn and acquire wisdom.  Can we hope that the reset heralds a new world where the lessons from the mistakes of the old one have been learned?

All this is conveyed through a really unusual libretto and some cool choreography (Montana Summers) plus, of course, music of which more below.  The libretto doesn’t just combine a supernatural and a very down-to-earth story it does it in in an intriguing mix of the highly colloquial (“You can fuck that idea”, “Whatever”) and quite high diction at times even as rhyming couplets.  In some ways it’s jarring but it works.  It’s the same with movement.  There’s a slovenliness about the humans which is contrasted with a profound gracefulness in the Spirit characters; especially Debaajimod.  This is paralleled in costuming (Sherri Hay) with extremely scruffy, casual for the sisters but an impressive stripy number with very full skirt (at times) for Debaajimod.

The music is really unusual too.  It’s scored for a sort of Renaissance type ensemble; lute/theorbo, harpsichord, recorders, violin and cello.  Most of the time I’d say it sounds like Elizabethan consort music, or maybe that music reinterpreted in a slightly more modern idiom.  I’m thinking something like Britten’s Gloriana.  At other times it’s more like a ballad opera and when set against a very colloquial speech like vocal line there are echoes of The Beggar’s Opera.  The ensemble is also used onomatopoeically.  Who would have thought a cello could sound like a chainsaw though recorder evoking loon is a bit more obvious!  There’s a lot of complexity for such a small ensemble and on occasion I was almost pulled out of watching the story through listening closely to what was being played.  It’s an impressive score and the ensemble was skilfully directed by Magowan.

The vocal writing and its interpretation is interesting too.  The sisters mostly get pretty straightforward recit like music which matches the colloquialism of the text but Kristine Dandavino, as Constance, gives it a more operatic inflection than Nicole Joy-Fraser’s more musical theatre style Gladys.  Conlin Delbaere-Sawchuk as Tree Spirit also has pretty straight forward music but he handles it with quite a lot of humour.  The showiest music is written for Michelle Lafferty’s Debaajimod and she produces the most impressive singing to match it.  This is some fine singing that goes well beyond what anybody else ir required to do.

All in all, Canoe works.  In the introductory speeches we were asked to reflect on how we could live within the spirit of the Dish with One Spoon wampum and this music drama really does ask questions about that; particularly about sustainability and environmental degradation.  The use of different styles of text and music blended in creative ways is effective.  The conventions of western opera are cleverly adapted to support ancient and modern Indigenous stories. It feels like a piece with legs and I expect we shall see it again.

Canoe is presented by a collaboration of Unsettled Scores, The Toronto Consort, Native Earth Performing Arts and Theatre Passe-Muraille.  There are two more chances to see it, both today, at 2pm and 7.30pm.

Photo credits: Kaytee Dalton