Opera

Don’t miss Stickboy, a contemporary opera written by Neil Weisensel and Shane Koyczan playing at the Vancouver Playhouse Oct 23 – Nov 7.

 

I don’t know if you’ve seen the posters around town with phrases like “Nobody likes you.” scribbled in white on a vast black background. It's an evocative campaign. This opera got under my skin. As it was supposed to. I hope it gets under yours. My response was anything but objective:

 

As the lights dimmed my inner defiant child hunkered low...

Photo by Tim Matheson

Vancouver Opera’s current production of Puccini’s Tosca is passionate, well-executed and highly atmospheric. The cast and technical team have created a truly moving piece. I often find myself at the opera trying to forget my acting training to focus instead on the music, costumes and set, but Tosca drew me in completely. It was the most enjoyable evening I have spent at the Vancouver Opera yet.

At 6:30pm (I’m not sure if this is exclusive to opening night) Vancouver Opera does this great thing: a preview talk to provide historical context for the plot and production history not necessarily included...

Photo by Tim Matheson

 

Tea: A Mirror of Soul is an exotic, symbolic, operatic exploration of the role of tea in Eastern culture. This unique piece is playing at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for four nights only: May 4, 7, 9 and 11.

 

Mirrors are about perception. Is a reflection truth or its opposite? I found this opera full of contrast and juxtapositions, perhaps a more accurate reflection of the muddled and conflicted human spirit than I had expected to see.

 

The piece opens with a bare stage, a zen garden...

ChenYe Yuan (Seikyo) Ning Liang (Lu), photo by Time Matheson

I’ve been struggling to make full sentences of this review, the performance was so image-heavy. So I thought I’d start out with some images:

Rolling sky, luscious mountains, fog and mist and forests green,
lovers through the landscape running,
clowns and antics in their dream.

Now that I have that out of my system...

Vancouver Opera’s Magic Flute is a vivid spectacle. Images projected on a layered scrim swirl and crescendo with the overture, stirring up my emotions then stilling down into a forest or quiet ocean backdrop. The set is truly beautiful and...

Joshua Hopkins as Papageno, photo by Tim Matheson

Before the performance began, Ana Sokolovic came up on stage to say a few words. Some of those words included “please don't follow along in your program”. Not that she needed to worry. The program is in English, the opera is in Serbian, I would never know which words were which.

Beautiful colours of Svadba/Wedding

Nixon in China

The Canadian Opera Company’s production of Death in Venice tiptoes so near perfection, it’s like a prayer of gratitude to the muses. In this case, inspiration came from life. Both the novella’s author, Thomas Mann, and the opera’s composer, Benjamin Britten, had life experiences that fed into the story of an artist’s demise. With world-renowned actor and director Yoshi Oida at the helm of this production, the story is at its most poignant, a masterpiece of beauty and destruction.

Death in Venice reveals the winding journey of novelist Gustav von Aschenbach from prominent success to humiliation, despair and a...

Alan Oke, front, in the Canadian Opera Company production of Death in Venice

JH: The difficult thing about writing reviews of operatic productions mounted by a world-class company like the Canadian Opera Company is that when it comes to the 'technical' aspects such as vocal and musical performances, there is often much to praise and little to complain about. Or in other words, a lack of stinkers can sometimes make for a dull and frothy article - which is not necessarily a negative, as the purpose of a review by no means to be 'interesting' or pithy but rather informative and hopefully insightful.

Thankfully, the COC has also proven to be a...

Rosario La Spina (back) and Sondra Radvanovsky (front) in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Aida. Photo by Michael Cooper

Most of us know the bare bones of the tale of Madama Butterfly: American Naval Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton takes a Nagasaki bride, one Miss-soon-to-be-Madama Butterfly (also known as Cio-Cio-San). Their Japanese marriage becomes the centre of the fifteen-year-old ex-geisha's existence, while to Pinkerton it is merely an exotic interlude, a kind of delirious mock-up of the real thing, which can only exist in the West – someday in the future-West, when he has finished sewing his wild oats. Pinkerton eventually abandons Butterfly, returning to Nagasaki three years later with a “real” American wife,...

Madama Butterfly: Visual Buzz

The venerable PLANK Panel return with their take on the Canadian Opera Company's recent production of Gaetano Donizetti's Maria Stuarda

Justin: It may be strange to start a opera review with a note about a work’s libretto - one of the unmodifiable elements of any Canadian Opera Company production - but it is still a key part of the artistic experience and as such a legitimate topic of discussion. The thing that strikes me most about Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is the drastically unfamiliar treatment Queen Elizabeth I receives in this work. Compared to the moderate and headstrong...

Simone Osborne as Anna Kennedy and Serena Farnocchia as Maria Stuarda. Photo credit: Michael Cooper

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