It’s that time of year when we reflect on the intersection of Truth and Reconciliation with opera. So yesterday I attended a lecture/recital by young Métis singer and scholar Camryn Dewar in the RBA at lunchtime. The title was The Evolution of Indigenous Female Representation 1879-Present and the domaine was Canadian opera; so no room for La fanciulla del West or Doctor Atomic. In fact, truth to tell, there Wasn’t much Indigenous female presence in Canadian opera until quite recently. There’s the really awful colonialist Canada’s Welcome by Dixon and Clappé which was dealt with. Somers’ Louis Riel which got a brief mention but doesn’t have much in the way of female characters. Victor Davies’ The Ecstasy of Rita Joe which didn’t get (or deserve) a mention. Perhaps Jani Lauzon’s I Call myself Princess might have deserved a mention even if it’s about opera rather than being an opera.
The latest concert in the Confluence series featured Marion Newman and friends addressing the question “What is Indigenous classical music?” through a carefully curated programme of works; all of which featured words by Indigenous women. We began with Marion singing Barbara Kroall’s Zasakwaa (There is a Heavy Frost) with words in Odawa describing the earth going to sleep for the winter with flute accompaniment by Stephen Tam. It was followed by Rebecca Cuddy singing three of the Five Songs on Poems by Marilyn Dumont by Ian Cusson. These are really fine settings of interesting, pithy, angry texts that have a wicked humour to them. I particularly like Letter to Sir John A. Macdonald which I’ve written about before.
How, collectively, we remember is a cultural act defined by both choices and the general milieu in which the remembering takes place(*). Sometimes this results in stories being distorted and “misremembered”. The story of Shanawdithit, the last survivor of the Beothuk people is, perhaps, one such story. Her life and death, the final act in the campaign of genocide against her people is still “remembered” in Newfoundland culture but how much do we really know? The “evidence” boils down to a handful of sketches by Shanawdithit, annotated by one William Cormack; pretty much the only white person to show her any kindness or to display any interest in her people. Dean Burry and Yvette Nolan’s new opera; a co-production of Tapestry Opera and Opera on the Avalon asks what we know and how we know it. I attended a workshop presentation of the incomplete work yesterday.
Tapestry’s 2018/19 season has been announced. There are two new operas plus Tapestry Briefs and Songbook IX. So here’s the lineup:
