Opera in Review

CANADA

CALGARY

Calgary Opera last programmed Bellini’s tragedy, Norma, 37 years ago, and it has never produced another Bellini opera since. In contrast, over that same period, the company has performed Carmen, La Boheme, Turandot, La traviata, Rigoletto and Tosca at least five times each. Norma’s return to the Jubilee Auditorium begs the question, what took so long?

The midseason mounting of this demanding bel canto work wasn’t exactly a gamble if Calgarians knew anything about the glories of Bellini’s writing, the vocally hazardous melismatic exertions, attractive melodies and bold orchestral composition. And, in retrospect, judging from the brimming opening night crowd on Feb. 1st, and its roar of appreciation as the curtain descended, it shouldn’t take another four decades before Norma or some other Bellini work returns to Calgary.

This Norma was, indeed, one of the most satisfying productions I have seen at Calgary Opera. The casting was uniformly excellent, and the Calgary Philharmonic, led by Alice Farnham—the first female conductor to appear in Calgary Opera’s pit—never played musical partner to a production better. The brass, in particular, were in their element with all the martial fanfares in Bellini’s score.

The set and costumes for this hyperdramatic study in complex psychology and the politics of colonialism came from Cincinnati Opera, and the rough hewn stone castle walls and minimalist suggestion of Druidic ritual space were sufficiently evocative to create the effect of a dark, disruptive emotional landscape.

Calgary-born soprano Aviva Fortunata, making her hometown debut in the title role, was outstanding. Besides her consistently strong musical form and unflagging stamina in a physically and vocally challenging role, she navigated the tribulations of the compromised lover, mother of her enemy’s children, and her Druid priestess’s responsibilities with convincing acting skill. Both in moments of seething rage as the betrayed lover of the Roman proconsul Pollione (tenor Andrew Haji) and moments of vulnerable intimacy, especially with her protege, Adalgisa (mezzo Annie Rosen), Fortunata demonstrated how suited she is for larger-than-life operatic moments. Her attacks on Pollione for abandoning her and their two children to pursue his new love interest, Adalgisa, screamed fatal threat. As she wrestled, sword in hand, with the urge to kill her own children, determined to thwart Pollione’s plan to take them back to Rome, she viscerally rendered an unhinged energy of uncontrollable vindictiveness.

Haji played the unfaithful Pollione with the appropriate demeanour of the selfentitled colonizer in more ways than one. He, too, managed the bel canto embellishments securely, and his tone throughout was uncompromised by the hard work it took to maintain it.

Rosen, who made her debut as Adalgisa at Utah Opera last season, was splendid as a source of Norma’s pain, as well as conveying her high priestess’s high-minded capacity for self-sacrifice. Adalgisa is the true victim in this tragedy—powerless, faithful and ultimately loyal to her higher calling, despite Pollione’s seductive temptation. Rosen has the sweet sound and girlish presence to be the kind of ‘other woman’ a good Norma requires.

One can’t beat Canadian bass Alain Coulombe for masculine gravitas and musical authority. As Norma’s father, Oroveso, the unflinching protector of the Druid heritage against Rome’s colonialist impositions, Coulombe was terrific, the definition of a true, commendable conservative. In declaiming the tribe’s will to defend itself to the death, he poignantly underscored his daughter’s divided allegiance and her emotional volatility.

Director Nicholas Muni moved the characters about the tightly framed proscenium stage fluidly. Moments of intense personal confrontation as well as grander scenes of agitated Druids congregating in ritual defiance were equally well crafted.

Two members of Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Development Program, tenor Scott Rumble (Flavio) and soprano Eden Tremayne (Clotilde), distinguished themselves in their small parts. And the Calgary Opera Chorus played their role as the Druid populace solidly. Their mob approval of Oroveso’s patriotic rhetoric was especially dramatic.

This Norma marked Chorus Director Sandra Atkinson’s final formal contribution to the company. Artistic Director Bramwell Tovey paid tribute to Atkinson’s 48 years of service before the curtain rose. Bellini’s chorus-rich masterpiece provided a fitting adieu to this much-valued artist. —Bill Rankin

EDMONTON

Edmonton Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro (seen Feb. 4th) represented an investment in young Canadian talent like few other of the company’s recent productions. The cast, for the most part, was a collection of singers who have several impressive stage credits, but almost without exception, their bios still emphasize work they’ve done in significant emerging artist programs at Vancouver Opera, Calgary Opera, and Edmonton’s Opera Nuova.

The title role of Figaro was sung by bass-baritone Simon Chalifoux, making his Edmonton Opera debut, but local audiences have seen him perform in a few Opera Nuova summer festivals. Making Figaro a bass means whatever lightness there may be in his personality, the musical tone will be darker, but Chalifoux, as the groom on the cusp of marriage, played up his youth with an unassuming acting style, and a matter-of-fact vocal delivery. In the end, though, despite the title, he is not the central character in this opera; his wife-tobe, Susanna is.

Alberta-born soprano Caitlin Wood is a little further along in her career, having sung Susanna with Vancouver Opera and a lead role in Missing, the new opera about missing and murdered indigenous women which premiered at City Opera Vancouver in 2017. Wood’s Susanna had all the infectious energy of the classic clever servant. The Act II scene in which she tries to conceal Cherubino (Stephanie Tritchew) from the jealous Count (Phillip Addis) in the Countess Rosina’s (Lara Ciekiewicz) bedroom, was particularly lively, in large part thanks to Wood’s efforts. Tritchew, making her debut in the trouser role of Mozart’s callow youth, showed some talent for broad comedy, and she captured her moments in the spotlight with a confident performer’s flair.

Addis’s lascivious Count Almaviva was a blend of self-entitled aristocrat and awkward predator. No one in this production took their character over the top. The farce was in the plot, including the Count’s machinations, but the singers avoided overacting, which must be attributed to the tight direction of Rachel Peake. She used the set, designed by recently graduated Brianna Kolybaba, to play up the physical comedy and arrange the singers in their various ensemble moments to best effect. (There was no chorus of peasants at the wedding. In fact, the wedding ceremony, itself, was so perfunctorily presented, you could have missed it.)

Amid all the zaniness, there is the wife of the sleazy Count, Countess Almaviva, who sings beautiful arias and, notwithstanding her plot with Susanna to reveal the Count’s infidelity, essentially hopes that he’ll stop his randy antics and be a proper husband. Ciekiewicz, making her company debut, played her melancholic part wonderfully. This is not grand opera, and Ciekiewicz recognized the idiom in her approach to her music. Her “Porgi, amor” stylishly captured her feeling of impotence in an appropriately demur way.

The secondary characters were also well-played. Tenor Kevin Myers has a lovely voice, and the few times we heard it as Don Basilio and Don Curzio, I wanted more. Peter Monaghan’s inebriated Antonio lent a rustic, peasant feeling to the affair, and both Vanessa Oude-Reimerink (Barbarina) and Whitney Leigh Sloan (Marcellina) made their presence felt in their modest parts.

The costumes came from Vancouver Opera’s 2017 production, and they were a bit of a hodgepodge. Susanna wore a white suit with no particular suggestion of period. In the opening scene Figaro wore a wife-beater, revealing an assortment of tattoos, but in later scenes Dr. Bartolo (Peter McGillivray) appeared bewigged in a black garment more typically worn by professionals in Mozart’s day.

Kolybaba’s set was versatile, with plenty of routes onto and off the stage to facilitate the flow of the farce, and it converted to a garden scene nicely for the last act.

Under the baton of Peter Dala, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra’s contribution was largely understated, serving this Mozartian confection that clearly pleased the audience. —Bill Rankin

MONTREAL

Kurt Weill gave an optimistic speech in 1936 where he claimed that the musical play is superior to ordinary theatre because it balances “the opposed values of humour and tragedy without having one destroy the other.” This was ten years before the premiere of Street Scene, which he wrote to reinvigorate opera with the bouncing baby energy of American musical theatre. Weill would take Broadway’s direct appeal—minus the outbursts into song that don’t advance the plot—and integrate it more fully with the score, using music as a dramatic force in the operatic manner, as a character rather than incidental support. Rather ambitious then and still exciting now.

At the centre of is the intense unravelling of a couple, Anna and Frank Maurrant, both miserably trapped in traditional roles, and their daughter Rose, who still has a chance at independence. Mrs. Maurrant has become so lonely that she’s having a desperately obvious affair, which ends fatally; it’s all commented on by the five other families who live in their building, who all have their own troubles too. Seamlessness between song and speech together with sleek passes between the serious so special.