The Marriage of Figaro at the Vancouver Playhouse

The Vancouver Opera has just wrapped up its inaugural festival format--in which it has moved its operations from a full season of stand-alone productions spread out over the course of a calendar year to a two and a half week festival incorporating three works in repertory and a number of parallel concerts, talks, installations, and related events. Richard and I finally got to see one of the main stage productions yesterday afternoon when we attended one of the final performances of The Marriage of Figaro, which was playing at the Vancouver Playhouse.

I have to say that this production, following upon the PuSh Festival's very successful presentation of Third World Bunfight's version of Verdi's Macbeth, has confirmed that the Playhouse is now my preferred venue to see opera in the city. The intimacy of the space makes the music and singing feel at once warmer and fuller, and the action just generally more alive. Additionally, given that Mozart's score (which is closer to chamber opera than the grand 19th-century romantic works of Verdi) calls for the recitative parts of the libretto to be sung to a harpsichord, being that much closer to the orchestra means that every note feels that much more resonant.

Of course proximity also means that the design of your production needs to hold up to thorough visual scrutiny. Happily on that front this version exceeds expectations. Director Rachel Peake has opted for a modern-dress take on the comic plot, but one that allows for a few historical anachronisms. As such, Drew Facey's gorgeous set--which morphs over the course of the opera's four acts from the interior of servant Susanna's chambers to those of her mistress, Countess Almaviva, to the grand hall and finally the exterior gardens of the estate--references 18th-century neoclassicism in its pediments and brocaded walls, but it is also sleekly and unfussily modern, with minimal furnishings and, most arrestingly, a mirrored floor for the interior scenes. The costumes, by hot young Albertan designer Sid Neigum, alternate between finely tailored monochromes for the lovers Susanna and Figaro to riotous patterns for the buffon characters of Cherubino and Barbarina, and from the plainly utilitarian (the quasi-military fatigues worn by the Count) to the overly decorative (the hooped dress worn by the Countess in Act 3). All of this is beautifully lit by lighting designer John Webber.

The performances were also uniformly excellent. The new paradigm in opera these days is for singers, no matter how fine the voice, to also be actors, and Peake draws fine comic texture--and timing--from the entire cast. Because this is opera buffa, most of the characters are broad and recognizable types; nevertheless, for us to be seduced by the sentiment of the arias, not to mention accept the implausibility of the plot, we have to believe the Countess' pain and the see-saw outrage of Figaro and Susanna at each other's apparent infidelity. On this front, the characters' various asides--a key part of the myriad stratagems and deceptions and counterplots set in motion in this opera--are especially well handled, not least in the opening act's catfight between Susanna and Marcellina, the latter seeking Figaro as her own boy-toy, only to have it revealed in Act 3 that she is his long-lost mother!

For me, the women in this production outshone the men in terms of overall vocal quality. Caitlin Wood as Susanna, Leslie Ann Bradley as Countess Almaviva, and the wonderful Mireille Lebel as a willowy and physically elastic Cherubino were special standouts. Among the men I was most captivated by Phillip Addis as Count Almaviva, both in terms of singing and acting. Alex Lawrence was suitably dashing as our put-upon hero, Figaro, but he had some trouble with breath in his lower register (which, to be sure, is pretty low given that Figaro is written as a baritone and not a tenor), and there were a few cracks in the upper register as well. But these are minor quibbles and the entire cast and crew are to be commended for this spirited and refreshed take on a classic from the operatic repertoire.

P

PuSh 2017: Macbeth

For me, one of the most anticipated shows at this year's PuSh Festival was Macbeth, a radical re-interpretation of Verdi's opera of Shakespeare's Scottish play from South Africa's Third World Bunfight. A co-presentation with the Vancouver Opera and the Italian Cultural Centre, director and designer Brett Bailey has set his adaptation of the story of the original House of Cards couple in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with Verdi's score having likewise been radically reworked for just 12 on-stage musicians by the Belgian composer Fabrizio Cassol. Given the DRC's colonial history, I couldn't help commenting on the irony of Cassol's nationality to Richard, although that's not the only transnational jolt of surprise/confusion one receives from this production.

Bailey's Macbeth is not the first work for the stage to set a well-known Western dramatic classic in the DRC. Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined is a loose version of Brecht's Mother Courage that uses the history of the populous Central African country to comment on the ravages of war--particularly, in the case of Nottage, for women. Both Bailey and Nottage see in the DRC's ongoing civil wars, which have been fuelled by the country's rich mineral deposits, extra-territorial commercial interests, the bitter legacy of colonialism, and state corruption and poor infrastructure, an allegory of ambition, greed and personal betrayal. In Bailey's case, his Macbeth (a terrific Owen Metsileng) is initially just a soldier trying to do his job; however, when he and his buddy Banquo (the commanding baritone Otto Maidi) come across three witches in the jungle who prophesy Macbeth's ascent to power, the wheels of fate begin to turn. It's one of Bailey's savvy innovations to have the "witches" in this version of the story coerced into telling what they know about Macbeth by an armed captor, at once suggesting that this is all being manipulated by outside agents attached to the multinational mining corporation Hexagon about which we hear later and pointing to the fact that kidnapping and sexual enslavement, alongside rape and genital mutilation, have been some of the most grievous (and internationally ignored) consequences of the decades-long ethnic conflict in the DRC.

Bailey also hits a high note, quite literally, with his casting of the magnificent mezzo-soprano Nobulumko Mngxekeza as Lady Macbeth. With her red gloves and pumps, her skin-tight leopard-print dresses, her righteous indignation, and her cajoling of her husband to "be a man" and get on with killing General Duncan, she is a fearsome version of Taraji Henson's Cookie Lyon, from TV's Empire (another Shakespeare adaptation). The lower range of Mngxekeza's voice is especially captivating; it insinuates its way into your own body and the shiver that accompanies it viscerally telegraphs that this is not a woman to be crossed. At the same time, Mngxekeza displays amazing vulnerability during her aria about the blood that nevertheless remains on her hands. Watching and hearing all of this in the intimate setting of the Vancouver Playhouse was an added treat.

There is so much else to admire about this production, including the virtuosic playing by members of the VO Orchestra, and especially the genius conducting by Premil Petrovic, who has been with the production since its premiere in Cape Town in 2014. Bailey's staging also moves fluidly, in its physical score, between scenes of simple Broadway-style choreography, overt pantomime, and a heartbreaking dumb show of grief to accompany the description of the massacre of Macduff's family and village that doubles as an after-image of too many real-life scenes from the DRC, and the continent of Africa as whole. Finally, there are the photographic, text-based, video and animated projections by Roger Williams. Most of these illustrate and supplement the performance in an integral way (for example, the bits of text that fill in parts of Shakespeare's story that have had to be compressed, or that provide additional context for the transposition of that story to the DRC); however, half a dozen of the slides relate to an additional narrative frame that Bailey has appended to his staging that left me a bit mystified.

I refer to the fact that we are told at the outset that the performers on stage are part of a company from the DRC that inherited the found story we are about to hear and that, subsequently, we get illustrated slides filling us in on the fictitious stories of their displacement, orphaning, conscription as child soldiers, and so on. I question the need for such theatrical subterfuge. Why present a South African cast as playing Congolese refugees playing transposed members of warring Scottish clans? Does that somehow make the story more authentic? Or does it assuage certain directorial anxieties about a white South African having the right to tell a story about the DRC in the first place? At the very least, the decision struck me as potentially (and I'm assuming unintentionally) reinforcing two problematic thoughts in the largely Western audiences to which the piece has toured: that all black performers are interchangeable; and that this is the story not just of the DRC, but of all of Africa.

P

West Coast Mammals

Above is the rather lopsided origami paper airplane that I made with the help of Melissa Tsang yesterday at the Instant Coffee workshop at the Western Front that the West Coast Mammals attended.

WCM is the Vancouver/Surrey culture vulture offshoot of Darren O'Donnell and the Toronto-based Mammalian Diving Reflex's ongoing collaborations with the students of Bridgeview Elementary in Surrey on different projects that have appeared at past PuSh festivals (see my previous post on this year's Eat the Street). Led by Donna Soares, Melissa, and Amy Fung, the idea is to keep engaging interested students in arts and culture in the Lower Mainland by taking them to different monthly events. In February it was Winterruption on Granville Island, which I was unable to attend.

But I was free yesterday, and after meeting at the Commercial Skytrain stop at 11 am, Donna, Melissa, Tanille Geib (like me, a new WCM member) and I hauled it out to Scott Road to meet up with Ramen, Carmen, and Jordan. It was a small turnout (Spring Break starts tomorrow after all), but the interest and enthusiasm were high, stoked initially by a visit to the rehearsal space and administrative offices of the Vancouver Opera, where Melissa oversees the company's Opera in Schools division. In addition to getting a tour of the props and costumes departments, we also sat in on the first 45 minutes of the sitzprobe for the company's upcoming production of The Barber of Seville. Sitzprobe, the kids and I learned from Melissa, is the German term for the first "seated" rehearsal when the orchestra and the singers (who up until then would have been preparing separately) get together to go through the opera together. It was fascinating to get this glimpse behind the scenes, and to see the remarks made by the conductor. Best of all, we stayed long enough to hear the lead baritone sing the famous "Figaro" aria that I of course remembered from Bugs Bunny, but that the kids recognized from Spongebob.

After that it was off to the Front for some paper-folding and joke-telling, then nachos on Main Street. A whole lot of fun, and I look forward to the next event.

P.

Nixon in China in Vancouver

Set models for the Vancouver Opera production of John Adams' Nixon in China

Okay, I think I can officially say that opera is one performance genre that is just not for me. Last night at the Queen E, sitting through the third act of what I have no doubt is a highly commendable production of John Adams' Nixon in China, I just wanted the whole thing to be over and done with. The performances were very strong (with Robert Orth an especially uncanny Richard Nixon), everyone was in fine voice (Tracy Dahl as Madame Mao especially), the sets (see above) were suitably abstract and monumentalist, the libretto by Alice Goodman was moving and witty by turns, Wen Wei Wang's second act ballet (with a star turn by Fei Guo) was pleasingly diverting, and Adams' famously minimalist music was surprisingly catchy.

But it just went on and on. Why couldn't it all have been reduced to one act of 90 minutes? The third act's self-reflexive ruminations (on both Nixon's trip and Adams' opera) by the six principals seemed especially superfluous, like composer and librettist had run out of ideas for spectacular coups-de-théâtre (ping-pong anyone?). And I couldn't really understand why Henry Kissinger was part of the action, given how under-used he seemed to be (apart from a bizarre role in Act 2's play-within-the-play).

I think part of my difficulty with opera are the expectations of the audience that routinely accompany productions such as this. Acclaimed as one of the 20th century's most important additions to the operatic canon, and receiving its Canadian premiere here in Vancouver (some 23 years after its debut in Houston), Nixon in China is a work we have been told at every turn (in the media and by pundits near and far) that we must and will enjoy. This idea that opera is good for us, that it will ameliorate us as cultural/cultured beings, and that it's appropriate that we should suffer in order to enjoy it, is what really gets up my nose.

I can appreciate its individual component parts, but as a Gesamtkunstwerk opera leaves me cold.

P.