Opera in Review
CANADA
CALGARY
Calgary Opera’s 40th season opened in much the same way as its very first: with a fine performance of Puccini’s beloved hit La bohème (seen Nov. 9th). Everything about this choice, including its down-to-earth production and straightforward characterizations, had the makings of a real crowd pleaser.
Director Brenna Corner, returning to her childhood home after a successful stint in Atlanta Opera’s Studio Artist Program, played it safe with this production by shying away from more modernized staging. We all bought tickets to see vintage Puccini and that is what we got, showcasing the best of what Calgary Opera has to offer.
The all-male Roommate Quartet was well cast and entirely suited to their roles: Colline (Neil Craighead) and Schaunard (Peter McGillivray) especially were deftly inhabited and had the audience eating out of their palms. Both singers brought vocal depth to their respective characterizations, and were truly the key to bringing the Latin Quarter ensemble to life.
Likewise, Marcello (Peter Barrett) had a good night. His voice easily met the amplitude and fullness demanded of his role. Clear diction, strong acting, and strongly-directed vocal lines were the name of his game. It was fun watching Marcello’s self-control eroded by Joanna Latini’s ostentatious yet carefree Musetta, the perfect foil who was more man-eater than heartbreaker. Latini explored the stage to great effect with a Musetta who evolved and expanded in depth by Act IV’s sombre tears.
Antoine Belanger’s Rodolfo struggled to project at many points during the performance, and was at times overpowered by his co-stars. I’m willing to bet it was an off-night—Belanger did not have the same trouble during the dress rehearsal I attended two nights earlier, and it is a shame he lacked his more typical form for the season opener. Despite this, he remained effective and provided an emotional performance that quite likely would have brought the house down under better circumstances.
What really shone through in this production was the quality of acting. Every character truly evoked the joie-de-vivre of Paris’s famed Latin Quarter. It felt like we were privy to real lives rather than two-dimensional characterizations. Credit is due to all the cast and what must have been tireless direction. The production’s finer points were also easily demonstrable in the set design (Olivier Landreville) and Harry Frehner’s lighting, which embodied an art-that-conceals aesthetic. Beautiful moments like the sunrise in Act III, or the moonlight through the windows of Act I, had me smiling from ear to ear.
The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra seems to have been on the rise since its astonishing playing for Korngold’s Die tote Stadt three years ago. Conductor Jonathan Brandini played an extremely active role, particularly in Act IV’s crowning moments when Rodolfo realizes Mimi is dead. Belanger’s agonized cry was timed precisely with the musical dissolution into percussion. It may not have rattled my rib cage, but it certainly shook my soul.
Saving the best for last, soprano Miriam Khalil showed us why it’s no secret that Mimi makes or breaks every Bohème. A Mimi lacking dramatic power can leave an audience wondering what could have been.
Not so on opening night when the Jubilee Auditorium crowd joyfully lapped up this masterful performance. The control and sheer power Khalil exhibited was unmatched all night. One could have been overwhelmed by her power during“Si, mi chiamano Mimi,” and heartbroken by her dying whispers in Act IV, even while sitting in the second balcony. We all fell in love with Khalil’s Mimi.
It is difficult enough during good times to draw general interest in the arts from this famously conservative city, but somehow Calgary Opera felt different at this performance. Even in a city going through some tough times they managed to fill the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium to the rafters, with swaths of twenty-and thirty-somethings in addition to the Old Guard regulars. This city loves its opera, and we surely hope this is a good sign of things to come, despite Schaunard’s portents of doom.
—Christopher Carnduff
EDMONTON
Edmonton Opera opened its season Oct. 19th withVerdi’s Rigoletto, last seen in the city nine years ago. The company has its own production facility now, and so more and more of its stagings are created locally. What was most striking about this new Rigoletto was how un-striking it was visually. Set designer Camellia Koo’s concept was not just lean and unadorned, it was emphatically featureless, which put the singers in a place that in a way was no place at all.
The set consisted of two levels of translucent panels that served as sliding doors and scrims, with which lighting designer Bonnie Beecher conjured a murky void where this tale of class privilege, female objectification, and egregious injustice unfolded. When Rigoletto agonized over his daughter Gilda’s abduction, the empty set underscored his precarious social status as court jester and insecure father, and ultimately his descent into helplessness and hopelessness. While serving this aspect of the story well the austere staging was less good at conveying other key aspects of the opera’s premise, such as the Duke’s royal status or its more sexually charged moments.
Costume designer Deanna Finnman helped define the modesty befitting Gilda’s innocence versus the tawdry cruelty of the Duke of Mantua’s court, as represented by the male chorus. Rigoletto’s sheltered daughter wore a white, shapeless garment throughout. The Duke’s gang distinguished themselves with machismo and vocal heft, clad in street gang leather. Gilda’s abduction scene, staged almost in the dark except for flashlight beams wielded by the chorus, had a palpably sociopathic energy, heightened by the thuggish-looking garments.
Director Rob Herriot, who is a regular in Edmonton, used the spare set adroitly, marshaling the Duke’s henchmen evocatively behind the murky screens and bringing the main characters into dramatic focus whenever they carried the plot. The way Herriot staged the revelation scene in which Gilda, hiding herself in the shadows, saw her erstwhile ‘lover’ cavorting with a new, provocatively attired conquest distilled the moral complexity of the opera with poignant clarity.
Canadian coloratura soprano Sharleen Joynt was a revelation in her national debut as Gilda. She sang with a pronounced, tight vibrato that was both musically penetrating and dramatic. As her story descended into tragedy her vocal colour followed suit, and the effect was an appropriate diminishment in starry-eyed vivacity as suited the narrative.
The villain was exceptionally well cast. Tenor Matthew White as the Duke sported a mane of blond locks and displayed an athlete’s physique, exhibited unabashedly in the abovementioned scene with his latest conquest, where he engaged in some shirtless simulated sex. And he sang brilliantly. He gave the audience the full tenor experience with his self-entitled demeanor and a warm, confident voice full of character and projective power.
Baritone James Westman sang the title character. For the most part, he offered his own kind of vulnerability in the face of the Duke’s disrespect and the mob’s violence. However, even when outraged at his daughter’s kidnapping, he still didn’t sing as though he could take the law into his own hands. During Gilda’s tender death scene in the final act, he evoked the weariness of a man who had long ago been defeated, now punctuating this woeful status with the ultimate blow: killing his cherished child.
Krista de Silva sang the role of Maddalena, one of the Duke’s sexual playthings. Dressed in revealing blue stockings, she exuded every quality of the compliant sexual object during her prolonged centre stage dalliance with the Duke. She did not sing, though, as much more than an animated prop, which was a shame because she was cast as more than a supernumerary. For a character with such shameless sensuality her musical character was positively shy.
On the other hand, bass Aaron Dimoff, in the dual roles of Monterone and Sparafucile, projected his grievance with the despicable nobleman, as the father of another misused young woman, with stentorian
