| This past week the Smithsonian was highlighting "the country of Alberta" with live interactive broadcasts between Washington and parts of the province, including the Banff Centre.
This delayed the Saturday 1 pm start of the Taste of the Festival’s presentation of excerpts from Frobisher, the second collaboration of librettist John Murrell and composer John Estacio. Reportedly, Estacio was "chained to his synthesizer, buried under piles of music" finishing off the music for the full-length opera slated to premiere in January 2007. Co-commissioned by The Banff Centre and Calgary Opera, the imaginative piece combines the hypothesis that Martin Frobisher’s third trip to the far north searched for a tropical paradise beyond the North Pole with the love story of two Alberta filmmakers documenting Frobisher’s story.
Following the story from Murrell, who stage director Kelly Robinson describes as "the world’s greatest opera geek," Robinson outlined, for the more than 200 opera lovers, the extraordinary workshop process to give all members of the creative team the tools to create the opera with a unifying voice. To avoid the disparity between the story told in words and that in music, actors were invited to interpret Murrell’s words, a step for refining the libretto and to aid Estacio in understanding the story before composing. This method resulted in telling the story of Filumena with one voice and is now the established method for the creative team on Frobisher.
The results were sampled in the duet between Jessica (Quebec’s Marjorie Poirier), a filmmaker and widow who comforts her recently widowed daughter Anna (Vancouver’s Lindsay Sutherland Boal) who dreams of both her filmmaker husband Michael (James McLennan) and the explorer Frobisher (Gene Wu). Poirier’s rich voice conveyed practical advice to her daughter, while Boal’s voice soared with sadness and dismay. Wu, an inaugural member of the Calgary Opera Emerging Artists program and past participant in two Calgary Opera productions, enhanced his reputation while infusing Frobisher’s defiant aria refuting the acceptance of defeat of his dream with both personality and a majestic baritone. The enunciations of the intricate story were crisp and clean, revealing the singers’ intimacy with the work-in-progress.
Murrell outlined the elaborate staging that he envisions with pirate ships and Frobisher himself appearing larger-than-life, emerging out of the Northern Lights. He teased, "They haven’t told me to stop yet."
Next on the menu was Art Walk, a tour of the public art around the grounds of the Centre. A self-guided tour is available for those who like to walk and view at their own pace.
Mid-afternoon in the dance studio, a sneak preview of the July 20 to 23 performance was the attraction. More specifically, we came to peek at the creation of Simone Orlando, the 2006 Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award winner.
Orlando is basing her work on Schubert's Winterreise. From this heartbreaking saga, Orlando is using 11 of the 22 songs, with 13 dancers providing interpretation. Half of the cast will be in period costume and the rest in contemporary garments. Against a backdrop of enlarged paintings in performance, the dancers will use both the traditional ballet and more contemporary dance vocabulary. Indications in the three songs presented on Saturday are that these movements are meant to extract emotion and meaning from the text. Not all dancers showed the stage presence to meet these demands.
Sitting in a dance studio within inches of the dancers is a rare opportunity to compare dancing techniques and partnering approaches. The majority incorporated passion and proficiency. Overall, the bodies of the dancers are fuller, suppler, less inhibited. The young dancers seem on-track to give well-balanced, confident performances in the traditional Balanchine and the perennial Macdonald pieces.
World premiere performances were next on the bill, starting with the spectacular Brassfire, created and led by Jens Lindemann. In debuting a new composition by Alan Gilliland, Lindemann and his enthusiastic, accomplished 11-member group set the standard high for the concert. Variety and virtuosity dominated in the music and the lighting design, an integral part of the visual fascination of the concert. From a mournful Rodrigo concerto to a demanding tribute to Asia, a salute to the big band era and ending with a raucous rendition of Riverdance, Brassfire exploited the scope of brass.
Down in the packed Club was Natural Magic by singer/songwriter Patricia O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan and her trio’s solid performances breezed through an hour-long set of the seasons. The songs’ theme was nature and O’Callaghan collected melodies that highlighted her diverse style and acting abilities. Her own love song was reminiscent of an ethnic dance, giving it a saucy universality that resonated with the audience.
Both premieres are slated to tour. |
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