>>REVIEW
FROBISHER
By John Estacio and John Murrell
Calgary Opera and The Banff Centre
Let me preface my thoughts on Frobisher, the latest operatic brainchild of librettist John Murrell and composer John Estacio, by confessing that, unlike the pair responsible for the creation of the award-winning Filumena, I have no experience in opera. While the opera is certainly theatrical, with all the recognizable elements of plot, theme and characters, its scale and volume are entirely different.
By God, did you know they sing absolutely every line of dialogue? It’s true.
As an introduction to opera, the latest co-production between the Calgary Opera and The Banff Centre is certainly a beginning laden with expectation. Murrell and Estacio’s last collaboration in 2003 was an award-winning behemoth, and with the total number of uniquely Canadian operas at around 80, the contribution of a new piece is intrinsically important. But where Filumena was modelled after Italian tragic opera, Frobisher’s optimism leads its audience to entirely new territory.
Beginning as a married pair of filmmakers, Anna (soprano Laura Whalen) and Michael (tenor Marc Hervieux) scout locations in Canada’s North, Frobisher’s titular obsession is Martin Frobisher (baritone John Fanning), explorer-for-hire of the British empire. Financed by Queen Elizabeth I (mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Turnbull), Frobisher was tasked with finding a northwest passage through the New World, but failed no less than three times.
For Michael, this persistence represents a kind of foolish nobility, the pursuit of immortality rather than the mean pursuit of material wealth. Embodying this drive himself in his desire to create an epic motion picture based on Frobisher’s life, Michael wanders into a snowstorm never to be seen again. Left with the legacy of her husband’s unfinished film, Anna continues to mourn before ultimately seeking the advice of her filmmaker mother, Jessica (mezzo-soprano Kimberly Barber) and the financial backing to create the film – attacking the problem with Frobisher’s own dogged determination.
Thematically, the idea of enshrining a privateer who ultimately failed to find the northern passage as a mythical figure is fascinating, even on its face. Beyond Frobisher’s specific allusions to a mythical green land where man could find his second Eden, the very idea of a Canadian icon transcending the basic biographic details of his life into some kind of Can-con pantheon is unique. In a country where struggling for a national identity remains as close as we have come to actually finding one, a shared mythical archetype is as foreign as a single national language.
Of course, this kind of adventurous optimism also carries with it the necessary burdens of grounding its hope, on which Frobisher often seems ambivalent. On one hand, the cronies of movie magnate Stephen Wagman (bass David Bedard) chime: "Too much art is just not smart/Forget the brain, aim for the heart," hammering home the production’s clear emphasis on the pursuit of the artistic over the mundane. And yet, after Anna has rallied her strength with the assistance of an idealized Frobisher, appealed to Wagman and ultimately reconciled her losing Michael, her final solo offers precisely the kind of heart-aimed "follow your dreams" message we might find in the final cut of a genuine Hollywood film.
And yet, as an opera neophyte, I can’t help but feel the palpable power of the machine itself, which seems almost powerful enough to crush any middling thematic issues. The soaring cacophony of every line, decadent sets and generalized period costumes (Sue LePage), and the overwhelming volume of the orchestra (conducted by Jean-Marie Zeitouni.) all combine to fill the renovated Jubilee Auditorium with an overt physical presence that theatre simply does not approach. As an introduction to the opera, Frobisher carries with it the weight of its promise to create a fresh Canadian perspective and the sheer dominance of its production values. Whether grand optimism is enough to sate local audiences will be apparent when Frobisher re-opens in August at the Banff Centre. |
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