opera-high

april is 6 months away

I just found out that I was bought tickets to see Netrebko in Manon at the MET in April :) Great seats, the Covent Garden production and meeting Anna..

Definitely on my bucketlist. Just sayin’.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to go in a new direction here - I’m going to start reviewing shows that I see. I’ve always been interested in writing and I see too many shows so why not do something semi-productive?

Don’t expect a review too soon :P

MET 2011-2012 Season

Dal operas pack a punch

Comedy, tragedy are polished, focused and vocally very strong
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN (The Halifax Chronicle Herald) Sat, Feb 5 - 4:55 AM

COMEDY ON THE BRIDGE

By BOHUSLAV MARTINU (1937, 1951)

Despite missing the opening 10 minutes of Comedy On The Bridge at the Dunn Theatre on Thursday night, I felt I had missed none of the production’s punch.

The vivacity, alertness and agility of the acting; the vocal trim and elegance of the singing by the student members of the Opera Workshop production made this little, sardonic, mid-20th century farce a major hoot.

Czech composer Bohuslav Marinu’s 1937 one-actor, revised in 1951, is a satire on the helplessness of men and women to extract themselves from the deadliest of home-made pickles, the stickiest of all self-created jams, the supremely romantic adventure we call war.

A baker and his wife, a sailor and his saucy doxy are trapped on a bridge between two armies taking a breather. The couples quarrel violently among themselves.

They rush back and forth, feverishly screaming their personal righteousnesses. They look for a way out, but are compelled by opposing sentries at each end of the bridge to stay put or risk a bullet in the belly.

A schoolmaster arrives. All appeal to him to settle their quarrels. But he pays them scant heed. He is a lost in his own dilemma, a riddle asking how a deer, which is trapped on all sides, escapes.

Occasionally, cannon-fire and rifle-shot break out on both sides of the bridge but all the refugees can do is duck. The schoolmaster is so obsessed he doesn’t seem to care or even hear what’s going on.

He solves the riddle at the end. But it solves nothing on or off the bridge. The fighting continues.

The staging, by guest director Brent Krysa, is brilliant in conception and execution. But it is the powerful, engaged energy of the youthful cast that makes it hum like a series of revved up dynamos on the loose. The voices, prepared by voice professors Marcia Swanston and Greg Servant are robust and remarkably full.

Adam Burnette fuels the fires with urgent tempos that push the pace. Dean Bradshaw accompanies on piano. John Bonvie on percussion scares the eyebrows off everybody with bass drum cannon shots and snare-drum rifle fire. Trumpeter Tim Weed signals ceasefires edged in brass.

DIDO AND AENEAS

By HENRY PURCELL (1689)

Krysa’s invention goes even further in his staging of this baroque masterwork in a girl’s dormitory. Twelve sturdy wooden beds, built by Torin Buzek and other theatre department students from scrap lumber and painted flat black, fill the stage.

At first you wonder how the large cast of six solo singers drawn from an ensemble of eleven women and twelve men will be able to move around the cluttered stage.

The solution is both simple and elegant. The chorus of men and women simply pick up the beds and move them into new formations, filling the stage with choreography not unlike that of high school marching bands.

In one creative stroke, it animates the stage with an absorbing dynamic and addresses the need for both space and action. Krysa calls the relatively static structure of Purcell’s Dido “almost an oratorio.” It is anything but in his direction of this year’s Opera Workshop production.

The device introduces a flow to go with the musical interludes performed by Lynn Wahlstrom on grand piano, Benjamin Marmen on cello and conductor Burnette playing recitatives and directing from an upright piano.

Almost unlimited possibilities for staging scenes and arias are suddenly available to the stage director. Krysa makes wonderful, creative use of them.

The women of the ensemble are high school girls from Carthaginian High; the boys are jocks from The Trojan School. The hijinks are full of the charged tension of elevated teenage hormones.

All this would work even if the singing was mediocre. But it is not. There is a robustness and precision to the choruses and the solos of Katrina Westin as Dido, Owen McCausland as Aeneas and Jillian Bonner as the envious Belinda.

Belinda’s role is twisted toward the dark side by Krysa. He does not see her as the faithful companion who comforts Dido when Aeneas abandons her and sets sail for Italy to complete his destiny as the founder of Rome.

In Krysa’s version, Belinda intrigues to bring Dido down with a view to replacing her as the Top Girl.

Westin sings with believable passion and queenly indignation and much beauty of tone. Bonner sings forcefully and angrily, while McCausland develops considerable power and heroic tenor tone as Aeneas.

This cast will appear again tonight at 7:30. On Sunday afternoon at 2:30, Megan Quick sings Dido, Lauren Estey sings Belinda and Geordie Brown is Aeneas.

These two opera productions would do credit to a young professional company. They are polished, focused and vocally very strong.

Thursday night Servant, who prepared the musical side of Comedy on the Bridge, announced that Westin was selected as this year’s winner of the Erik Perth Award in voice for a student in the third or fourth year of study.

Swanston prepared the musical side of Dido and Aeneas.

( stephen.pedersen74@gmail.com)

Stephen Pedersen is a freelance arts writer who lives in Halifax.

Article copied via: http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1225981.html

Photo credits: Nick Pearce

Left-Right: Matthew Beasant (Enemy Sentry) and Taylor Long (Johnny) in Comedy on the Bridge.

Left-Right: Stephanie Fillmann (Witch #1), Katrina Westin (Dido), Kat Smith (Witch #2) and Jillian Bonner (Belinda) in Dido and Aeneas