Crazy opera weekend in Vancouver, where the Vancouver Opera Festival, this year with a "White Nights" theme, and at the same time, the yearly Yarn Crawl and a Dance Festival (ETA: For International Dance Day) were happening.
It started with the Met in HD "Cendrillon": what beautiful music, and the freaking mezzo trifecta of DiDonato, Coote, and Blythe. I hadn't seen this since NYCO did it in the '80's, with Faith Esham's Lucette -- the perfect Susannah with the company as well -- and Erie Mills as the Fairy Godmother. What a lovely score.
Then off to New Westminster to Vegan Yarns, where I met the woman behind the company and learned she has a background in theatre and costumes. As it turned out, my only yarn crawl stop, but since the studio isn't generally open during the year, and only open the Saturday of the yarn crawl, I was really glad to meet her and to see the yarns in color. But I digress.
As part of the White Nights Festival, there are a series of chamber concerts at CBC Studio 700. I went to the opener, "A Musical Tribute to Anna Akhmatova: Russian Poet." Elena Razlog, who was the Russian coach for "Eugene Onegin" and this concert, gave background info about Akmatova's life and works, and before each set, recited two of the poems vividly and musically.
The first part was Prokofiev's 1917 setting of four 1916 love poems. The last, which is translated as "The grey-eyed king" was especially beautiful. The last part, "Chetki" was, according to pianist Tina Chang, written by Arthur Lourie as Akmatova wrote the poems. While all of the singers and accompanists were expert, my favorite combination of music and performance was the middle part, John Tavener's 1993 settings of poems written about famous writers and poets -- Dante (1936) Pushkin and Lermontov (1927), and Pasternak (1936) -- plus a couplet (1931) and "The Muse" (1924) and "Death." (1942). Robyn Driedger-Klassen was the soprano, and her approach, vocalism, and absorption in this contemporary score reminded me of Barbara Flannigan's; Flannigan, a great favorite of mine, is more well known, but I'm not sure should be. Rebecca Wenham accompanied her on cello, and it was a perfect meld of voice and instrument.
In the evening, it was "The Overcoat," a new opera by James Rolfe, which premiered in Toronto last month. It's based on the short story by Gogol with an English libretto by Director Morris Panych. I didn't know what to expect: the closest way I can describe it dramatically is as a cross between "Sweeney Todd" and "The Nose," with a hint of Brecht and Weill. Mirroring the pulses of the music, the direction was kinetically driving with ingenious touches. It's playing in the Vancouver Playhouse, which has 668 seats, so it's a lot more intimate than most opera houses, and the production was tight as a drum between acting, singing, orchestra, and movement.
There were many standouts, especially Andrea Ludwig's Landlady and the Mad Chorus of Caitlin Wood, Magali Simar-Gales, and Erica Iris Huang, but Geoffrey Sirett's Akakiy was a tour-de-force as strong as I remember Len Cariou in "Sweeney Todd." This is a must see over the next week.
Yesterday started with a Flamenco performance in the lobby of the wonderful central branch of Vancouver Public library by Al Mozaico Flamenco, where I used to study. One piece I was especially glad to see was a Spanish classical dance piece to Boccarini, which was performed in the late sixties by Oscar Nieto, who taught it to his student, 15-year-old Kirill Deljanin, and yesterday was his first performance of the piece. What an amazing first effort it was, and especially so since it was in the round in daylight with random noise all around. The program was varied and generally focused on the lighter palos and performed with bata, castanets, fan, and manton. As I watched people I had first seen dance a decades ago, I realized the Fountain of Youth was right there, within reach: every woman looked even more beautiful than she had ten years ago.
Then food -- not enough time to crawl to the next yarn store and get back in time -- and the opener of "Eugene Onegin." I'm not a fan of the most of the projections of Onegin scattered throughout -- aside from the handsome factor of baritone Konstantin Shushakov, and showing him writing his letter to Tatyana to the opening notes of Act III, which was fine -- because I don't think the audience needs to think of Onegin as a sap, and Shushakov gave a much more nuanced reading on stage. I've seen the "I'm so above it all" approach to the first two acts, but Shushakov gave the character a back-and-forth underlying tension throughout: a dissatisfaction more than simple snobbery and a displaced energy that would incite him to fabricate drama and trouble between Lenski and Olga in Act II. And it wasn't just vocal tension: it was there in his body, sometimes brewing and later a coiled spring that propelled him through the last act. Add that to his clear, fine baritone, and it was a really compelling interpretation.
Alexei Dolgov's Lenski is familiar to people who saw the last Met Live in HD "Eugene Onegin," so it was unsurprising that his singing and acting was superb, and he didn't try to tone down Lenski's impulsiveness and immaturity to make him more likable. He, too, had a discernable energy, as did the splendid Carolyn Sproule who sang and acted Olga. One of my favorite directorial decisions was in Act II: Olga had an upstage entrance in a pale dress behind a big crowd, and as she worked her way through the crowd and greeted guests and friends, you could feel her first, and then be drawn to her without anything particularly dramatic happening. Similarly, Lenski's initial sulks were done at the edge of the crowd stage right, not, as typically happens, downstage in one of the corners. No great gestures or scenery chewing: you could just feel him.
Svetlana Aksenova sang Tatyana, and it was a more nuanced performance of the title role that I've seen in a long time. Often Act III, scene 2 is one big roil, and most of the "Will she, won't she?" is conveyed by the sopranos physical movements, but she had a dramatic range in this scene that made her decision look like it was coming from much more than angel vs. devil: she responded differently to each of his pleas and arguments, making the point where finally makes her decision that much more dramatic, especially since there are so few operas in which characters put their cards on the table and have a real conversation about it.
Goderzi Janelidze sang Prince Gremin, and his voice is HUGE. He nearly stole the show. The chorus, led by Kinza Tyrrell, who accompanied the Prokofiev songs in the Akmatova recital, and the orchestra, conducted by Jonathan Darlington, sounded brilliant. There are two more performances left on May 3 and May 5, both at 7:30pm, a much more reasonable time to sing
Is your son continuing to enjoy it as much as you are?