Opera

U of T and McGill collaborate to stage North American premiere of banned Haydn opera

siddiq22 — Wed, 17 May 2023 15:55:01 +0000

U of T and McGill collaborate to stage North American premiere of banned Haydn opera

siddiq22 Wed, 05/17/2023 - 11:55

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The cast and creative team behind a new production of Orfeo gather for rehearsal in the Geiger-Torel Room at U of T's Faculty of Music (supplied photo)

Tabassum Siddiqui

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Austrian composer Joseph Haydn may have been known as the “Father of the Symphony,” but he also penned a number of operas – including one that was declared contraband and shut down before its premiere in 1791.

Caryl Clark

Now thanks to a collaboration between the �ؿ�ζSM and McGill University, that opera – L’anima del filosofo (or Orfeo: The Soul of the Philosopher) – will be staged in North America for the first time. The production, which includes students and professional artists, will be performed on May 26 and 27 at the MacMillan Theatre at U of T’s Faculty of Music, alongside an academic symposium about the opera at Walter Hall on May 27 supported by U of T's Jackman Humanities Institute in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the opera was never performed during Haydn’s lifetime after “authorities in London, fearing that the new plot resonated too closely with liberal Enlightenment ideals advanced in revolutionary France, shut down the production during rehearsals in May 1791,” says musicologist and Haydn scholar Caryl Clark, a professor of music history and culture in the Faculty of Music who spearheaded the project.

To stage the opera – which lay dormant in Eastern European archives until the Cold War – Clark and fellow musicologist Dorian Bandy, a professor of early music and music history at McGill who will serve as conductor for the production, brought together a cast and crew from both universities along with award-winning theatre practitioners from Canada and the U.S.

Clark and Bandy told U of T News about the challenges of mounting a long-lost opera for the first time and why such an ancient tale still resonates onstage today.

What is the story behind Orfeo?

Clark: With his great musical powers – he’s a singer and lyre player – Orpheus gains entry to the Underworld to rescue his beloved who died of a snake bite on their wedding day. Warned not to look back at her on their journey out of Hades, his passions overtake his rational mind – he looks at her, and she vanishes forever, leaving him to lament into eternity.

How are U of T and McGill working together on the production?

Bandy: Collaborations of this nature are usually between individuals – in this case between me and Caryl. However, both of us have gotten many other people from our respective universities involved in the production. The performances are taking place at U of T, and U of T students are making up most of the cast and chorus. U of T colleagues have also been helping with many behind-the-scenes aspects of the production – from choral preparation and vocal coaching to elements of lighting and design. McGill’s Early Music program, meanwhile, is responsible for the period-instrument orchestra that will be playing in the pit during the production. The performances will really embody an ideal synthesis of the strengths and energies of each university.

What made you want to take on this opera for the first time – and what challenges did you face in mounting a production that’s a North American first?

Bandy: Haydn’s lost Orfeo opera has been on Caryl’s radar for more than three decades! Caryl first learned of this opera as a graduate student at Cornell University, and she spent much of her career working on it – publishing articles, presenting papers at conferences and even delivering pre-concert lectures at productions in Europe. In late 2019, we met at a musicology conference and both agreed that launching a production at one of our universities would make for a stimulating project.

Clark: The challenges of putting together a production of this opera are not unique to Haydn. Opera is expensive, so many of the primary hurdles have involved fundraising. However, equally crucial has been the assembly of a keen and visionary creative team, including our energetic young director Nico Krell, who has taken a leading role in shaping the look, feel and underlying message of our production.

Although the lack of a North American staging tradition for this opera might seem an obstacle – after all, most members of the creative crew were not already familiar with this work when they signed up to be a part of the show – this also affords us a huge amount of artistic freedom and flexibility. The audience will not be entering the theatre with the baggage of preconceptions about the music, memories of favourite past productions and the like – and this means that we will have the pleasure of presenting this piece to many listeners for the very first time, and shaping their expectations and experiences more actively as the performances unfold.

(L-R) Orfeo performers Asitha Tennekoon (who plays the title role) Parker Clements (Creonte), Lindsay McIntyre (Euridice) and Maeve Palmer (Genio) (supplied images)

What can attendees expect to learn at the corresponding symposium on May 27?

Clark: Along with colleagues from Northeastern University and Brown University, we will discuss the intellectual context for the opera and the process of mounting this production – and students from both U of T and McGill will present their experiences of preparing the opera for public performance.

Opera and politics are inextricably intertwined. Music, art and literature have the power to shape the thoughts and minds of listeners, readers and audiences, so governments and politicians are particularly sensitive to the potential of theatrical representation and other forms of artistic expression to destabilize society and undermine government authority. Indeed, Haydn’s Orfeo was to have premiered a few months after the statesman Edmund Burke penned his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790. There are many historical precedents for banning works of art deemed too politically sensitive for their times. Our production focuses on the extinguishing of Enlightenment values and delivers a powerful contemporary environmental message by staging “nature’s revenge.”

Undead diva: U of T opera students mix high art with zombie kitsch

geoff.vendeville — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 21:00:23 +0000

Undead diva: U of T opera students mix high art with zombie kitsch

geoff.vendeville Thu, 02/02/2017 - 16:00

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Rebecca Gray, a master's student in opera and an award-winning composer, rehearses the role of the undead Nellie Melba, in U of T Opera Student Composer Collective's latest production, “Prima Zombie” (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

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They researched their parts by watching “Night of the Living Dead,” YouTube videos

Rebecca Gray had never practiced groaning for an operatic role, until rehearsing for the lead in the �ؿ�ζSM Opera composition program’s 20th anniversary production.

The master’s student in opera stars as the un-dead diva Nellie Melba in Prima Zombie: The Diva that just Wouldn’t Stay Dead, an original work composed by seven students. The libretto was written by the opera program’s resident stage director, Michael Patrick Albano.

In the early 20th century, the real Dame Melba regaled audiences from Sydney to Brussels. In the U of T production, critics pining for the “golden age” of opera bring the coloratura soprano – who gave her name to Melba toast and peach Melba – back from the grave using a gypsy curse and a cartoonish electric generator.

Safe to say, the role was a departure for Gray, who more recently played Frasquita in Carmen with the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Summer Studio. Although she usually doesn't like to put on much makeup, she is excited to sing in zombie face paint.

“I have really enjoyed being ridiculous, and it has been a chance for me to explore sounds I never knew I could make,” she said during break at a recent rehearsal at U of T Faculty of Music’s MacMillan Theatre.

She researched the part by watching Night of the Living Dead and YouTube-ing videos of “teenagers in their bedrooms making zombie noises.”

For the young composers, too, the piece presented unique challenges. Stephanie Orlando, who is pursuing a master’s in music composition, says she drew on music by Melba’s historical near-contemporaries (composers like Donizetti, Puccini, Verdi) but added a dark twist.

“She’s a little distorted now, as a zombie, and so is the music,” she said.

Each composer wrote their scene individually, and the work was stitched together like “the Frankenstein monster of an opera” that it is, said Liam Ritz, in the bachelor’s of composition program.

Opera aficionados sometimes take the genre too seriously. But no one would accuse the composers and performers of the irreverent Prima Zombie of that.

The production pokes fun of diva worship and music snobs, said Daevyd Pepper, who plays theatre critic Addison Witless. It’s also full of in-jokes like Pepper’s favourite scene, Melba’s zombie aria:

It’s not enough to give my art
My fans demand my heart
So take it, take it now!

At that point, Gray rips a plastic heart out from under her shirt and throws it at the audience.

“It’s a joke about how we have an unrealistic idea of perfection,” Pepper explained. “People expect us to act perfectly, but they also want us to bare our souls and our hearts.”

Albano has staged over 30 operas at U of T and written many libretti for U of T Opera Student Composer Collective, including Rob Ford: The Opera. He says he encouraged students to go wild.

“When you start breaking the rules, there’s a great feeling of liberation, almost like anything goes,” he said.

And it paid off.

“A lot of the stuff you see successfully working on stage are things the singers thought of themselves,” he said.

Read about Rob Ford: The Opera in The Toronto Star

Prima Zombie: the Diva that just wouldn’t stay Dead, directed by Michael Patrick Albano and conducted by Sandra Horst, will be performed Feb. 5 at 2:30 p.m. at the MacMillan Theatre, 80 Queens Park.

Alexander Graham Bell is calling – in a U of T-developed opera

lavende4 — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 14:10:34 +0000

Alexander Graham Bell is calling – in a U of T-developed opera lavende4 Mon, 04/25/2016 - 10:10

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Rehearsing The Bells of Baddeck: left, Geoffrey Sirett, right, Allison Angelo (photo Warren Gordon Photography)

Jessica Lewis

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Though Cape Breton Island has recently made worldwide headlines for welcoming Americans fleeing Donald Trump, the Nova Scotia island has a long history of attracting Americans, including telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel Hubbard, who made their summer home in Baddeck, Cape Breton in 1885.

And now a �ؿ�ζSM Faculty of Music professor has made the couple’s story of moving to Canada into an opera, The Bells of Baddeck – the Alexander Graham and Mabel Bell Story, thanks to the largest individual SSHRC grant the Faculty has ever received.

Lorna MacDonald, voice studies professor and the Lois Marshall Chair in Voice, created the music-drama, which will run for a second season in Baddeck, Nova Scotia in July. She wrote the libretto, produces the show, and commissioned doctoral candidate and composer Dean Burry to compose the music.

“Alec and Mabel came to Cape Breton to escape the heat of Washington, DC,” says MacDonald. “They had read about Cape Breton in a travel book, and because he was embroiled in lawsuits over the patent for the telephone, they were only too happy to escape to Cape Breton to get away from it all. Of course, little did they know that a summer visit would lead to 38 years!”

Bell is most well known for the telephone, but his innovations are legendary in aviation, teaching the deaf, the National Geographic Society and as MacDonald points out, “he was also an avid pianist.” Much of his work was influenced by Hubbard, who was deaf. The pair met as speech professor and pupil in 1873. Hubbard took charge of the finances in the early Bell Telephone business, and in Cape Breton, she established herself as a pioneer for women and education when she created opportunities for local women making rugs, started the second public library in eastern Canada and sponsored Canada’s first Montessori school.

The Bells and their children started vacationing in Cape Breton in 1885 and spent increasingly more time there until Bell’s death in 1922. The family left a mark on Baddeck, leaving a provincial heritage site called Beinn Bhreagh and a museum, the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, to their legacy. The museum is used as the opera’s theatre.

Thankfully, the Bell family kept great records of their lives – from photographs to letters to the music they loved to play in their home. MacDonald used that text and music in the opera. Burry, who has written numerous operas for the Canadian Opera Company and Canadian Children’s Opera Company, wrote most of the original music.

“The goal was to create something fun and accessible but with a certain level of sophistication,” Burry says. “Many people in the region would be seeing opera for the first time and I wanted it to be a positive experience. It was wonderful to bring these incredibly rich characters to life. It’s always magical to allow an audience to see people like that as more than just entries in a history book.”

As MacDonald developed the opera, she included as many U of T connections as she could. Besides Burry, many of the cast is comprised of Faculty of Music students and alumni. Her former student Geoffrey Sirett (MMus 2011) plays Alexander Graham Bell and Allison Angelo, an alumna of voice studies and opera (MMus 2004, ArtDip 2002), plays Mabel Hubbard.

“I was in Lorna’s head when she was writing the libretto,” Angelo says. “You can’t overstate the importance of connections in the music industry – I feel so lucky to have had first-rate training at U of T. Lorna gave me the opportunity to create a role in a Canadian premiere, which is a rare and precious gift. It was inspiring to try to recreate Mabel’s thirst for knowledge and zest for life.”

MacDonald, who grew up in Cape Breton, has been enchanted with the successful entrepreneurial couple since she was a child. Opera Canada called its first season, “a tour de force production.”

“I think it was successful because it reached so many directions: they affected the sciences, arts and our entire culture,” she says. “Their love story is as interesting and operatic as any other.”

The Bells of Baddeck runs from July 2 to August 2 at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. Vacationing to Nova Scotia this summer? Get your tickets now: http://www.bellsofbaddeck.com/tickets/

U of T undergrad places first in Canadian Opera Company competition

sgupta — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:04:07 +0000

U of T undergrad places first in Canadian Opera Company competition sgupta Fri, 11/06/2015 - 09:04

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Emily D’Angelo took first prize and the audience choice award at the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio Competition (photo of the competition finals by Michael Cooper)

Jessica Lewis

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For the second year in a row, winner comes from Faculty of Music

Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, a fourth-year undergraduate in the Faculty of Music’s voice studies program, has won the prestigious first prize and the audience choice award at the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio Competition, Centre Stage.

D’Angelo was chosen from 120 applicants and then a final round of eight singers from across Canada. Two other finalists are Faculty of Music alumni – baritone Zachary Read and soprano Eliza Johnson.

D’Angelo accepted her awards at the final competition on November 3 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Karine Boucher and Charles Sy hosted the event; the latter won last year’s first prize and audience choice award as well.

“To work with the world-class music staff at the Canadian Opera Company was a great honour, and it was a pleasure to meet and learn from the other extremely talented finalists,” says D’Angelo. “The competition was an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life. The incredible energy of the audience demonstrated what a supportive community we have in Toronto, and was a very moving example of the overwhelming power of music.”

The first prize, a $5,000 reward, is supported by the chair of the Canadian Opera Company’s Board of Directors. The audience choice prize is worth $1,500.

“Since its inception in 2011, Centre Stage has become one of the most important annual events for the Canadian Opera Company and is quickly gaining a reputation as one of this country’s foremost vocal competitions,” says Alexander Neef, the general director for the Canadian Opera Company. “The reason why is clear after witnessing the performances by these talented singers from across Canada. There is an amazing operatic pedigree being cultivated in this country and Centre Stage is a celebration of that talent and the potential they have to enrich Canada’s artistic future.”

This is just the latest in an ever-expanding list of accolades for D’Angelo. This year, she has already won an Encouragement Award from the Gerda Lissner Foundation Lieder/ArtSong Competition and the Jim and Charlotte Norcop Prize in Song from the Faculty of Music and was selected as a finalist for both the Mary Trueman Art Song Competition in New York City and the OREL Foundation Rediscovered Voices Competition in Los Angeles.

D’Angelo has been taught by soprano Elizabeth McDonald, a sessional lecturer at the Faculty of Music, since she was 16 – from high school to university.

“This is a young woman who has worked harder than anybody I know,” says McDonald. “She’s been persistent, is driven and has sought out opportunities beyond what has ever been suggested. She goes from opportunity to opportunity to strength to strength. And ultimately, she realizes that her performance isn’t really about her, it’s about being part of the collective of musicians on stage and the audience in the hall, which is admirable.”

D’Angelo has previously played the roles of Sesto in Giulio Cesare at the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, Nerone in L'incoronazione di Poppea, Annio in La clemenza di Tito at the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy, Berta in The Barber of Seville at Opera York and Cherubino in scenes from The Marriage of Figaro in a U of T Opera production. D’Angelo has participated in young artists programs at the Ravinia Festival, SongFest at Colburn and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She made her solo debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2011.

D’Angelo will sing at the Norcop Prize in Song recital with pianist Sonya Sim at Walter Hall in March 2016. This summer, she will join the Gerdine Young Artist program at Opera Theatre Saint Louis to play the role of the mystic/blind woman in the world premiere of Shalimar the Clown, and cover the role of composer in Ariadne auf Naxos.

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