Oct. 27, 2003. 07:14AM
Local operas produce special occasion
JOHN TERAUDS
TORONTO STAR
Opera In Concert's ever interesting cabinet of curiosities yielded
two Canadian treasures yesterday afternoon in honour of the company's 30th
season.
A nearly full house at the St. Lawrence Centre's Jane Mallett
Theatre was treated to beautifully shaped readings of the late Harry Somers' The
Fool and John Beckwith's Night Blooming Cereus, two one-act works
that were not only each composer's first opera, but also mark the time when
Canadian contemporary classical music first found its own voice.
The audience included many people who had somehow been a part of
these operas' original productions, while the stage resonated with excellent
singing and playing by the country's latest crop of younger musicians. This mix
made this one-afternoon affair all the more powerful and poignant.
Opera In Concert's musical director John Hess deserves special
mention for superbly reducing the difficult chamber orchestra scores into a
brightly textured accompaniment.
The Fool,
the most difficult work for both performers and listeners, is a two-scene
allegory about the tension between the love of freedom and respect for peace, order
and good government where the 12-tone score cleverly mirrors the tug-of-war
between a royal court and its resident jester.
Written in 1953 and premiered at the Eaton Auditorium (now the
Carlu) in November, 1956, The Fool is about a king, queen and lady-in-waiting
trying to keep their jester from jumping off the castle battlements.
Mezzo Lynne McMurtry was the vocal star of the afternoon as the
queen (and again later in Beckwith's main role). She was ably backed up by
soprano Rachel Cleland-Ainsworth as her lady and bass-baritone Tom Fleming as
the king (although his voice is too heavy with vibrato). Tenor Benoit Boutet
created a dynamic jester.
The musical highlights of The Fool — a smart fugal
chorus leading up to the end and a baroque-style lament after the fateful jump
— made this opera sound as fresh as the day it was first performed.
Much more down-to-earth in both content and musical language was Night
Blooming Cereus. The title comes from the sub-tropical cactus plant that
blooms spectacularly once a year — or once a century in this story,
beautifully written by poet James Reaney.
This work was a CBC commission first broadcast in 1958. Its first
stage production was at University of Toronto's Hart House in 1960.
Set in the small town of Shakespeare, Ont. at the beginning of the
20th century, the story is a meditation on undying hope. Poor, old Mrs. Brown
longs for the eventual return of a lost daughter; an orphan wishes for parents;
a shop clerk would rather be a blacksmith. They collect their wishes as Mrs.
Brown's cereus is about to open.
It's an affecting, straightforward tale, beautifully rendered in a
multi-hued tonal score. Much of the stage time belongs to Mrs. Brown, superbly
sung by McMurtry, whose velvet-toned mezzo captured the right mood, and who
somehow made her difficult vocal part seem effortless. One can only hope to see
much more of this wonderful young singer on our stages.
Kudos also to soprano Teri Dunn for an affecting rendition of
granddaughter Alice, who reveals herself at the opera's climax.
The supporting cast — Renée Winick, Melinda Delorme,
Chantelle Grant, Matthew Zadow, Cleland-Ainsworth and Fleming — also did
a fine job, culminating in a great chorus finale.
Kudos to
Canada's opera heritage
By ROBERT HARRIS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - Page R4
Opera in Concert
Two Canadian Operas
At Jane Mallett
Theatre
In Toronto on Sunday
Fifty
years may seem a tiny moment in the history of musical cultures which stretch
back centuries, if not millennia. But in our country, at least its English
component, 50 years is just about the entire life span of its serious artistic
tradition. We are young as an imaginative nation, but, on the evidence
presented by Opera in Concert on Sunday afternoon, it is time to stop thinking
of ourselves as neophytes in the world of serious art. Two one-act operas from
the dawn of our homemade musical culture stand up today as fine, even moving
works of art.
Kudos
to Opera in Concert, and especially musical director John Hess, for having the
courage in 2003 to remount Harry Somers's The Fool, first produced in
1956, and John Beckwith's Night Blooming Cereus, first produced in 1959,
each the first operatic effort by these fine Canadian composers. Who knows what
controversy attended these works on their first appearance in a Canadian
fifties just perking up to trends in European musical life which were by then
decades old. But in our postmodern 21st century, where we are less concerned
with stylistic and artistic dogma, we are happy to listen to and accept the
faux 12-tone dissonances of a Harry Somers as well as the frank tonal world of
a John Beckwith with equal enthusiasm, especially when they are interpreted by
singers with as much talent and commitment as those performing on Sunday
afternoon.
Harry
Somers's The Fool is a philosophical one-acter, with a libretto by
Michael Fram which contemplates the tension between freedom and tyranny as well
as liberty and discipline in a story about a court Fool who wishes to prove his
independence by throwing himself off the castle battlements to prove he can
fly.
With
a wordy libretto that might prove fascinating to an introductory philosophy
class, Somers managed to create a serious, at times powerful musical
experience, experimenting with a mainly dissonant language that sidled up
towards tonality from time to time (for its most effective bits) and which used
many of the traditional techniques of old-time opera. The cast of four was
universally good, especially the Fool of Benoît Boutet and Lynne McMurtry's
Queen.
McMurtry
turned from good to ravishing in Beckwith's Night Blooming Cereus,
which had the added benefit of a lovely libretto by playwright James Reaney. A
simple-minded tale about an old woman awaiting the once-in-a-century blooming
of her special plant and pining for her lost daughter at the same time, Night
Blooming Cereus turned into an intensely moving experience in the
hands of Beckwith's "old-fashioned" musical language, Reaney's words
and the wonderful Opera in Concert cast.
As
Mrs. Brown, Lynne McMurtry was close to perfect, at one point holding our
attention in her complete control for what must have been 15 minutes of
uninterrupted solo performing. Supported by fine performances from Teri Dunn,
Renne Winick and Melinda Delorme, among others, and anchored by John Hess's
fine piano accompaniment, Night Blooming Cereus turned into one of the
most effective operatic performances seen in Toronto for some time. I was not
the only one, I noticed, staggering into the late Toronto afternoon, wiping
away a tear.
We
need to reinterpret our past, and recognize the excellence of what we may not
have valued so clearly when it first appeared. These are two works, at least,
that are part of the heritage of all of us. Let's start by moving Sunday's
production into a recording studio and preserving these two superb performances
for more than the five or six hundred lucky people who managed to hear them on
the weekend. It's a CD I would be proud to add to my collection. And one that
every Canadian should hear.