The spring production from UoT Opera is Mozart’s Così fan tutte and it’s playing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre. Anna Theodosakios directs with some conceptual input from Michael Patrick Albano. The production is interesting and I think there are three layers to unpack. On the surface it’s a fairly straightforward 18th century setting with uniforms, wigs, elaborate dresses and so on but with a rather striking colour scheme; pinks and lilacs.
Lysistrata Reimagined is this year’s UoT Opera Student Composer Collective production. It’s a setting of a libretto by Michael Patrick Albano loosely inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. In fact about all of Lysistrata that remains is that it’s in Greece, there’s a sex strike to stop a war and a couple of character names are retained. But then, as the first scene tells us, nobody reads that stuff, or remembers it, anymore.
So, we are in a city. The men, up to now gainfully employed making triangular wheels, writing romance novels or teaching interpretative dance decide that “war” is a good thing and they want one. Lysistrata who is, apparently, the leader of the local womenfolk isn’t so keen and persuades the ladies to withdraw their favours until the men drop the war idea. One woman, though, Lampito (inevitably), rather likes the war idea and kits herself out for it but doesn’t really convince anyone else. With deadlock reached after three weeks Lysistrata calls on the local (female) sage for help but all she gets are “a string of proverbs and useless clichés”. But then a miracle happens. Overnight some people change gender and some realise it’s just a social construct. So now there’s nothing particularly masculine about war which persuades the boys (or whatever they are now) to drop the idea and normal relations are resumed though one suspects in greater variety.
This year’s fall offering from UoT Opera is three short comic operas presented at the MacMillan Theatre in productions by Michael Patrick Albano. The first is Paul Hindemith’s Hin und Züruck; a twelve minute musical joke which manages to send up a lot of operatic conventions in a very short time. It’s a musical and dramatic palindrome. A man discovers his wife has a lover and shoots her. The paramedics arrive and attempt to revive her. In this staging this includes a giant syringe and no prizes for guessing where that goes. The remorseful husband shoots himself. An angel (Ben Done) appears and explains that the usual laws of physics don’t apply in opera and the entire plot and score is replayed backwards. It was played effectively deadpan by Cassandra Amorim and Lyndon Ladeur while Jordana Goddard, as the elderly deaf aunt, sat through the whole thing entirely oblivious. Good fun.
It’s been three long years since the UoT Opera Program students performed in the RBA. Unsurprisingly none of the current crop are familiar to me at all. They are a strong group though and I look forward to seeing them again over the course of the academic year.
Yesterday’s programme was a curated and directed selection of duets and larger ensembles from 19th century repertory. Introductions were provided by Sandra Horst who conducted and Michael Albano and Mabel Wonnacott who directed. With fifteen singers involved in a show lasting well under an hour including the intros there wasn’t really enough time to get more than a very superficial idea of what each singer is capable and so I think it would be inappropriate to write a conventional review. Let’s just say that it was wonderful to see them back, a great way to spend a lunchtime and that there was some very classy singing.
Watch this space…
Robert Carsen’s 2021 production of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria was recorded at the Teatro della Pergola during the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. The theatre, opened in the 1660s and very much a “renaissance theatre”, is very much part of the production; the loge boxes are used during the prologue, entrances are made through the unusual parterre (individual chairs not rows of seats) and the gallery behind the stage is used by the gods to observe the action below. Monteverdi used three distinct styles of music for gods, royals and lesser folk, Carsen mimics this by giving the three orders distinct costume and acting styles. The gods (and there is the full pantheon, not just the ones who appear in the opera, each with his or her distinctive emblem), costumed in opulent crimson 16th century style costumes, act in a stylised manner. The royals get smart modern dress and naturalistic acting while the others are scruffier and act more broadly.
Scarlatti’s Griselda is based on a story from the Decameron. Gualtiero, king of Sicily, has married Griselda, a shepherdess. The people are upset that the king has married beneath him and are getting stroppy. Gualtiero sets out to prove Griselda a worthy consort by testing her constancy. He repudiates Griselda and sends her back to shepherding while arranging to marry an Apulian princess Constanza, who both he and Corrado, duke of Apulia, know to be his daughter by Griselda. It’s complicated by one Ottone who is infatuated by Griselda and Roberto, son of Corrado, who is in love with Costanza, who returns his feelings. Griselda is put through various humiliating trials in which she repeatedly shows her devotion to Gualtiero. Eventually the people recognise her virtue and all is restored. One notable thing, unlike his predecessor Cavalli, Scarlatti doesn’t inject any incongruous or comic passages into the opera. It’s all deadpan serious.
Once more the week’s Youtube offerings show that digital works best when it’s “made for digital”. Who’d a thunk it eh! Anyway there’s very watchable new content on Youtube from Alexander Hajek, Opera Revue and Domoney Artists. Best of all though is a new short film called Sempra Libera from Carsen Gilmore and the very good soprano Michelle Drever. If you like the look and feel of Morte you’ll love this. It’s really dark. It’s the grimmest take on Violetta I’ve seen; Natalie Dessay included!
UoT Opera’s fall production is Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro which opened last night at the MacMillan Theatre. It’s a period production directed by Michael Patrick Albano set in the “Opera 18th Century”; more Chatsworth than palace near Seville, but it looks pretty, the action is skilfully composed and the physical comedy works.
The students of the post graduate program at UoT Opera were on show in the RBA yesterday with a show made up of staged opera excerpts curated and directed by Michael Patrick Albano. It’s right at the beginning of the academic year and these sorts of concerts are a bit of a calibration exercise for those of us who follow the progress of young singers. The starting point this year is decidedly high.
I don’t think I’m ever going to love Mozart’s La finta giardiniera. It has some pleasing music, though oddly the two principal characters don’t get much of it, but the plot is ridiculous and it really outstays its welcome. That said, Michael Patrick Albano’s production for UoT Opera in the MacMillan Theatre at least makes the complexity clear. We never lose sight of who is who; even if the other characters do, and what logic there is in the plot comes through clearly enough. Albano sets it entirely realistically in 18th century dress with set elements efficiently dropped in from the fly loft or carried around by a small band of liveried servants. There’s a fair bit of “park and bark” but then there’s a lot of prosy explaining going on.
operaramblings 