Remounts, or "What did they do the last time?"

Op-ed

A remount is a weird thing for the artists involved. The sets, costumes, stagings, and (hopefully) the music stay the same, but the casting is rarely identical between productions. This means the newcomers have to insert themselves into the movements of another. This may seem like Acting 101, but the catch comes when the new singer is looking for some motivation for their movements, motivation that’s stronger than “that’s what they did the last time”.

Tales from the Score: Zerbinetta

Humour

If there’s one thing that makes me love a composer, it’s word painting. What’s word painting? It’s when you write a musical line for the singer that sounds like the word they’re saying. Example: “Oh no, I am fall-ing down” on six descending syllables. Zerbinetta’s aria from Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos is one of the densest moments of word painting that I can think of. Here are some fun bits:

Bad Editions and the Limits of the Notes

Editorial

When I was thinking about pursuing a Doctorate degree in Collaborative Piano, I had a germ of an idea for a thesis project: to create a piano-vocal score of a standard opera (Le nozze di Figaro, or La traviata, for example) that would be designed for pianists who didn’t necessarily have a strong operatic background. These scores would be edited so that a pianist could play everything they see, and it wouldn’t sound stupid (which is what happens if you play every note you see in, say, a Bärenreiter edition of anything).

Kieren MacMillan: "We're too precious with opera."

Interview

I met composer Kieren MacMillan on a panel for Catherine Kustanczy’s CIUT 89.5FM radio show, Hydra, and I thought he was a man of great ideas. Among other genres, Kieren writes music theatre and music drama/opera; I was curious about the differences in the workshopping process for each. Kieren speaks on the development of new opera from his own experience as a composer, and tells us about what stories are best set to music.

Opera Bite: Gabrielle Herbst

Editorial

I stumbled upon a beautifully articulated answer to one of our industry’s biggest questions, in Carena Liptak’s interview for Noisey with Gabrielle Herbst. Gabrielle is a singer and composer; she’s a member of the band GABI, and her first opera, Bodiless, had its premiere last year at New York’s Roulette. The question posted was simple: “How do you deal with making an archaic form accessible?”

Missing the point: the Met's 2015/16 season

Op-ed

It’s old news by now, but the Metropolitan Opera has announced its season line-up for 2015/2016. I waited a bit before writing about the season, because I couldn’t seem to shake distinct feelings of exasperation. I figured that someone with more journalistic experience than myself would soon weigh in, shedding some light on what I thought were glaringly obvious problems with the Met’s 15/16 season.

Toronto City Opera: Don Giovanni

Review

Wednesday night, I went to see Don Giovanni at Toronto City Opera; I don’t know much about the company, and I was most surprised to learn that they’re in their 48th season. Forty eighth! TCO’s mission is to “grow the art of opera. It will facilitate this by training young and/or inexperienced singers through an intense regimen of coaching in musicianship, stagecraft and performance.” I’m a big fan of companies who create performance opportunities for young singers.

Asking Google About Opera

Humour

I saw this image from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra floating around the Internet, showing us all what the Googling public asks about the different orchestral instruments. I thought it was funny enough, so I compiled some of the broader Google searches related to the opera singers and their voice types.

In review: The Whisper Opera

Review

On Saturday I had the chance to see David Lang‘s The Whisper Opera, presented by Soundstreams at The Theatre Centre; with a sold-out run, I was lucky to catch this in Toronto. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time, made better by the few expectations I had beforehand. The Pulitzer Prize winning composer (the little matchgirl passion) asks, “what if a piece were so quiet, and intimate, and so personal to the performers, that you needed to be right next to them or you would hear almost nothing?” The Whisper Opera is aptly named; it’s certainly a piece that achieves Lang’s aim to write “pieces that try to highlight things that can only happen live.”

Aviva Fortunata, finalist, 2015 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition

Interview

The BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition has announced its 20 finalists from around the world; Calgary-born soprano Aviva Fortunata is one of them. She’s a member of the COC Ensemble Studio, and just finished singing the role of Helmwige in Atom Egoyan’s Die Walküre. Aviva is the sole Canadian among the finalists, and in June she’ll head to Cardiff, Wales, to compete in the final competition round, which will be broadcast live online.