I asked for it, I understand. I spent two seasons nipping at Opera de Montreal for its turgid sets and now it seems somebody must have been listening. Somebody powerful, with deep pockets and an insatiable hunger for the colour pink.

Let this be a lesson: be careful what you wish for.* Massenet’s Cendrillon filled the house on Saturday, a week after its opening, and credit goes entirely to a hallucinogenic production for making the 111-year-old libretto accessible. The singing was something else.

One possible future for opera has productions cribbing staging and choreography from musicals, and this is a calculated risk. Saturday, there was even a 5:1 scale mashup of Grease and Honey I Shrank the Kids, which, between slapstick and circus tricks, livened the hell out of the night. But Disneyfication suits comedy better than tragedy, and Cendrillon’s sets were no exception.

It is easier to turn an allegro into something lively since there is spare rhythm for movement, an opportunity for women to iron while doing the splits, but during a largo the streamlined pink machine loses traction. Because opera, whether you like it or not, tends to reduce to a person singing very loudly and sometimes astonishingly well on a giant stage. Cendrillon wants to go fast on the highway, and plodding through traffic feels just. Like. That.

The singers did what they could: Julie Boulianne was clarion and sweet as Lucelle and Frédéric Antoun as the Prince sustained their serious arias but nevertheless they had me (and my Nonstandard Opera Companion, horrifyingly sober and at her first opera, which I’m not sure is a good thing) reaching for fast forward. And they were the strongest voices onstage.

Marianne Lambert as the Fairy Grandmother was all right and her coloratura embellishments acceptably magical until Boulianne did the same thing but effortlessly. Gaétan Laperrière as Pandolfo was more even, though the entire cast seemed to take Act I as a warm-up, but he never reached a particularly clear intensity. It is difficult to summon pathos when you’re singing beside a ten-foot tall blender.

Collateral damage aside, Cendrillon is a great introduction to opera as theatre. It lacks the depth and complexity that moves crowds to the classics, and perhaps that’s all right. I’ll take a full house over an empty one. Renaud Doucet and André Barbe’s staging may have got the attention to the singers’ detriment, but perhaps next time there will be space left over. And that’s called progress.

* I wish for a 40 of bourbon, sent as before to “smelly shack under the bridge, Westmount, PQ.”

Cendrillon, June 3 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. For ticket information and other details, go to the Opera de Montréal site.

In opera as in the grocery store there are the strange fruit (ugli, figli, migli). Usually they will sit in your fruit bowl and look comfortably exotic. Sometimes visiting children will play with them. And occasionally they will get eaten, almost always with surprising pleasure. Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra is such a fruit, and Opera de Montréal / San Diego Opera production, particularly its excellent international cast, makes for refreshing eating.

The plot makes my head ache and I won’t repeat it; you can read it in the programme. There was an anxious, pencil-sharpening stillness in the air when the audience opened their exam books, perforated only by the occasional doubtful exhalation. Later, my neighbour turned to me in exasperation and mutely prodded his booklet with an index finger, but I refused to help him cheat.

Sometimes at the OdM, especially with the baritone Alexandre Sylvestre, a minor role will have one of the loveliest voices. Not tonight: the curtain lifted on him in sung conversation with baritone Daniel Sutin, whose supple singing made for a haunting Paolo. Sylvestre’s Pietro was velveteen, and together they set the standard high for the evening.

Not to be upstaged in this manliest of operas, baritone (yes another one) Alberto Gazale’s Simon was powerful, his colouring rich and ranging as the tormented Doge. He got even better as the evening progressed.

And it is a long evening, but the sadistically inclined may enjoy watching others struggle to remember who the characters are halfway through each act. Some took a proactive approach, such as the lady in row N who hauled a searchlight out of her handbag, plugged it into a portable generator, and began to read. It made the Bat-Signal look like an easybake oven. Bass Burak Bilgili paced what shadows remained as Fiesco, a mannequin for the big mean forces of history; he sang richly, bitterly, and with the great singer’s sense of vocal reserve.

A squad of talent onstage but it was tenor Roberto Di Biasio whose triumph as Gabriele brought tears to the eyes of my Standard Opera Companion (“jimmy legs” Model.) It was his evening; his singing was keen and pulsing with life.

Di Biasio and soprano Hiromi Omuga, 2008’s Madama Butterfly, moved stiffly and could have used a massage to limber up. Dressing rooms are left unheated with the understanding that stars will provide their own hot air (in Greenland they heat 64% of homes this way, which is why you never see singers from Greenland) but perhaps these two are modest enough for electric heaters?

Omuga was an uneven Amelia though always master of her voice; delicate at first, she was a stiff virgin in Act 1 and tended to lose consonants to the smooth run of song. She coloured better as an angry kidnap victim and protective daughter.

This production continues the local tradition of effective and totally unoriginal staging. Pieces moved, rotated, slid, together and apart without much effect in a slow motion kind of Tetris. A case of vodka to the stagehand who leads the revolution.

Visiting conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson pushed, when she could, and immeasurably helped the elephantine plot remain interesting; I would love to hear her leading the MSO.

Simon Boccanegra, March 17th, 20th, 22nd and 25th at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. For ticket information and other details, go to the Opera de Montréal site.

Lev Bratishenko is a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He went a bit blind at this showing.

André Gagnon’s opera Nelligan premiered in 1990 at the Grand Theatre de Québec with a pop cast. On Saturday, the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal reprised it, twenty years on, at the Monument National. A more ambitious production than anything the Opéra de Montréal has dared at Place des Arts, it is full of talented young singers and features local tenor stalwart Marc Hervieux as insurance.

The experience was electric and confusing, like breakfast with Tesla: evidence that opera is alive and a sign that something is the matter with it. Nelligan is a romantic embalming whose libretto (by Michel Tremblay) could have been written in 1899, the year the poet had his breakdown. It makes a poor argument for the relevance of the art. A contemporary opera is more than updated music; it is a rethinking of the form.

The revival should have been an opportunity for much-needed renewal, a reading to bring out contradictions that don’t fit into the myth of artistic martyrdom. This Émile is just one of “two poor wet cats on the way to the slaughterhouse,” as Tremblay puts it.

Myths usually serve some purpose. Though Nelligan’s ideology is unclear, it leans to moralistic determinism: Émile must ‘die’ because he is a great poet. His mother must ‘die’ in giving him up. His father must ‘die’ a slave to his Irishness. Minor characters like Father Seers and Françoise resonate somebody else’s ideas, and only promising performances by baritone Pierre Rancourt and mezzo-soprano Catherine Daniel gave them any life.

Old Nelligan did not seem much work for Hervieux, who often stood and watched the cast time travel, a cinematic trick that struggled through the river of syrup oozing from the pit. Two pianos lounged next to a cello salvaged from the Titanic and made beautiful music, though at times I admit I found it difficult. As I meditated on Tremblay’s words, the melodies seemed like leaden ingots flying molten from the keys on sapphire wings, striking my heart with golden daggers of sound, poisoning me, until I wondered whether so much feeling wasn’t fattening. I had invited my doctor (it is the only time I can get an appointment), and she assured me that I would be fine because I am a true critic.

The evening had two stars: Dominique Côté was energetic and bold as Young Nelligan, and Caroline Bleau was lucid and warm as his mother. Bleau managed to break through the sentimental fog and arrive at song we could trust, which was the night’s greatest achievement.

You could write an essay on lullaby forms in Nelligan, but I don’t recommend it. Try to think instead about the challenge of this opera, which attempts to distill a brief and laden life together with decades of its cultural importance. A life that asked about the role of art in the modern world; whether one can belong to two cultures; and will French survive in the face of continental English?

These are relevant questions – so let’s have some relevant opera about them.

Nelligan, Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal at Monument National, 1182 St-Laurent. Tonight, March 10th, and 11th at 20h00, March 13th at 14h. Tickets 514 842-2112.

Lev Bratishenko is a researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He is in very good health.

My quarrelsome companion and I argued during the intermission of Michael Mackenzie’s Geometry in Venice. She claimed I was only interested in comparing the play with Henry James’ novella, on which it is based, and that this was ‘boring’. I claimed she was drunk. Of course, I was completely correct.

Later, her slurred invectives gave me an idea: I was only able to focus on the play – a good play and a great example of literary adaptation – because the Segal Centre’s production was so fine.

It was an elegant evening lacking any narcissistic gestures in direction. The stage was cleverly and calmly treated, the Moreens’ rooms a Cartesian space that extended to the limits of their finances. Elliott Larson was a little gentleman as the precocious Morgan, very poised and adult. Graham Cuthbertson played his tutor Pemberton with an infectious idealism, and Allegra Fulton was magnificent as Mrs. Moreen. Aidan Devine beat out a brash and babbling Mr. Moreen, which is unfortunately how he is written, while Susanna Fournier was explosive as his daughter Amy, and Damien Atkins was clammy and unpleasantly polite as Henry James. They were an ideal cast, and they were treated very well by the ingenious, active lighting of Luc Prairie, and Antoine Bédard’s original score.

After the curtain and the mandatory Canadian attempt at a standing ovation, I left my companion with a litre of water and spoke with playwright Michael Mackenzie. I wanted to know why he had inserted Henry James into Henry James’ novella. He told me that he felt “James was unfair to the family, and I wanted to get revenge on him.” James does come out badly in the play; he is fey and vaguely obnoxious, dismissed by Morgan and damned by Mrs. Moreen, and his lines are all quotations from The Pupil and its preface.

Geometry suggests that the great novelist of society was a social vampire not unlike the Moreens. Did he record their suffering, or the suffering of a similar family, and do nothing about it? The Pupil as told by Pemberton gives a strong sense of his intense relationship to Morgan but leaves the rest of the family sketchy; Mackenzie develops them (except for the achingly lovely first scene of act two), particularly Mrs. Moreen and her desperate-to-marry daughter Amy, sidelined by her brother’s frail genius. Though it is mostly to their advantage (and definitely to ours), there are some questionable inventions, such Mrs. Moreen’s calculating use of sex to keep Pemberton. In the novella Pemberton stays solely because he loves Morgan.

Writing the Moreen family as mannequins with manners, people who kept up appearances by always leaving the room, gave them the potential for redemption in the mind of a forgiving reader. In his stage adaptation, Mackenzie has them plainly explain their situation and let down the façade. This works well to criticize Henry James, but it has other consequences; unaware, the Moreens might be eccentric, but self-conscious, they are just scoundrels. In this way, Geometry in Venice takes revenge on more than its target.

Geometry in Venice continues at the Segal Centre until February 14. Box office: 514-739-7944. For more information, go to the Segal Centre site.

Photo Credit: Randy Cole.

Tosca! The name has teeth for good reason. Puccini’s opera averages a death every 37 minutes. It includes 19th century Italian politics, the homicidal lusting of a Roman police chief, a jealous girlfriend, and a superfluity of hypocrites. This is distilled opera of few peers in the repertoire, and is often a final examination for companies on their way up. Opera de Montréal chose it for their first performance ever and reprised it for this past weekend’s 30th anniversary.

My Standard Opera Companion (sleepy edition) and I found row P to be full of other writers. This is a risky seating arrangement because critics are by nature competitive, and this has consequences: during Cavaradossi’s “O dolci mani,” we coughed and snorted and an older gentleman passed out trying to out-convey his disappointment.

The tenor David Pomeroy was the cause of our phlegm. He stands so well I am sure that he is a stand up guy but, as Cavaradossi the impassioned painter, lover of Tosca, and political rebel, he was a disaster. He parked and he barked, lazily trying to beat the audience into pleasure with his spatula of a voice.

Pomeroy didn’t shape his phrases, he belted them. Colouring? He belted. Emotion? He belted louder. He couldn’t even bother to look at the target of his singing, rotating his howitzer towards the audience instead. Perhaps he was not allowed to sing at people that close, but that does not explain why he mimicked an albatross with his arms. I was glad that several people shot him.

Otherwise the evening was magnificent. Nicola Beller Carbone was a girlish and occasionally undisciplined Floria Tosca, and she carried the part effortlessly even though her soprano lacked the attack one might expect from the diva. Her “Vissi d’arte” was beautifully crafted and almost weightless. Of course her scenes with Pomeroy were dismal, but in fairness that is asking someone to convincingly love a garden rake. Opposite baritone Greer Grimsley’s fantastic Scarpia, Carbone’s ample talents bloomed.

Grimsley was the evening’s standout as the villain. He played a verismo Scarpia and not the cut-out that one expects to hear, singing with subtlety and reserving his menace for good effect. Grimsley’s lecherous and venal chief of police was more horrible for seeming human. Creepy and a little sad, he was not really a demon but a man with too much power and pressed for time. His tone was firm and clear, a voice for giving orders.

The chorus and supporting parts were well sung, with Alexandre Sylvestre muddling his beautiful voice with buffoonery as the Sacristan and Stephen Hegedus a gawky but even Angelotti. Tosca reminded us that we are lucky to have had the OdM for this long, and the evening offered plenty of evidence the company has enough talent to thrive.

Paul Nadler lead the Orchestre Métropolitain with finesse, though occasionally a little quietly for my taste. The production reprises Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s literal, elaborate, and unsurprising 1972 set for the San Francisco Opera. I would take issue with Act Three’s ludicrous parapet but it is available to reserve privately for grand suicides and awkward sentry duty, and we are lunching there next week.

Tosca, Opera de Montréal at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, on tomorrow, February 3, and again February 6, 8, 11 and 13. For ticket information and other details, go to the Opera de Montréal site.

Photo Credit: Yves Renaud

Bach is big. Musically, yeah? He’s gigantic that way. We don’t know exactly how big Bach the dude was, but the Montreal Bach Festival is definitely much smaller. Of course, it’s still something to be reckoned with (it is important to be clear when dealing with Germanic temperaments.)

But first, an important aside: I hate previews because I’m a pessimist. I recognize this is my personal problem, but when a nice PR rep sends me a CD, I can’t just enjoy the free music. I must imagine ways for it to go wrong live. Spectacularly wrong, like Ron Emmerich guest conducts: cruise ships borne on tidal waves level the church while the violinist screams about her damp Stradivarius. And the last pack of wolves in Montreal descends on l’Église de l’immaculée-Conception, wet and confused. This is what goes on when I contemplate preview recordings, and still I ask for them.

So, even though it’s riskier than a CD, I recommend this year’s edition of the Montreal Bach Festival, it’s third, which runs through December 5th and includes 16 performances. A few events stand out even though the lineup is generally excellent. And, if it is absolutely necessary to feed the wet wolves, I demand these musicians be written at the bottom of the list:

The young Belgian organist Els Biesemans, who (I’m told deservedly) won the Bach prize at last year’s Canadian International Organ Festival, will play from the Clavierübung III. Her talents should be more than sufficient for the lyrical, intricate and symbolically-laden pieces it contains. The concert will take place at the hopefully wolf-free l’Église de l’immaculée-Conception tonight.

McGill professors Matt Haimovitz, Jonathan Crow, and Douglas McNabney will play the extraordinary Goldberg Variations arrangement for String Trio tomorrow. The organizers have ingeniously paired each one of the nine variations with a wine. That sounds nice. And since the musicians will probably stand thirstily in the corner, you can enjoy them, too; if that’s your kind of pleasure.

A kinder pairing would be to attend both the Haimovitz concert and that of the reclusive Russian pianist Evgeni Koroliov. He will perform the original Goldberg Variations on December 4th in his Montreal debut. That would be hard to believe for any other artist of his stature, but he rarely performs in North America. I have never heard him live, though has been on my list since I listened to his seminal 1990 recording “Art of the Fugue”. His playing is transformative; it is casually careful and full of love. It’s not for kicks that he’s compared with Glenn Gould, though he doesn’t mutter while playing.

So: Bach not wolves, and for more information and tickets, visit the Montreal Bach Festival site. The festival runs through December 5th at various locations.

You can’t have opera without ridiculous plot devices, and the older the opera the worse they get. But modern audiences are used to comprehensible plots and characters that aren’t allegories, so we turn our attention to the singing or fall asleep (Mister Parterre W38). Opéra de Montréal presents The Magic Flute, and the singing is very fine.

Mozart’s penultimate operatic work, The Magic Flute combined elements of serious and comic forms while this was still relatively rare. Its serious aspect, an allusion to Freemasonry, has not aged well. Prince Tamino and birdcatcher Papageno find their true loves (conveniently named Pamina and Papagena and selected by higher, paternal powers) through gravely intoned but fuzzy tests, mostly by stumbling on from the wings singing, “Where am I now?” The Magic Flute requires unusual indulgence from a modern audience. Happily, it rewards us with some of Mozart’s finest arias.

The best known is “Der Hölle Rache” sung by The Queen of the Night, which gave the usually wonderful Aline Kutan a rough time. In compensation we had Aaron St. Clair Nicholson sing Papageno with colour and vim. Papageno’s comic relief keeps The Magic Flute from being an infomercial for a misogynistic cult, and St. Clair Nicholson acted the part as easily and as naturally as he sang it.

Karina Gauvin was the other standout as Pamina, Tamino’s destined lover. Gauvin has an extraordinary voice and she does not sing with it as much as coax music out. As part of his ridiculous “trials” in Act II, Tamino swears not to speak to women including Pamina, who is heartbroken when he ignores her and decides to kill herself. Gauvin gave Pamina’s anguished aria “Ach, ich fühl’s” an elegant and aching beauty. It’s the sort of simple aria that talent occasionally makes sublime, unlike the Queen of the Night’s ornate song of vengeance and its catastrophically high F. Singers are applauded just for getting through it.

John Tessier was a handy Tamino and sang earnestly, though he and Gauvin made an unromantic couple, and Reinhard Hagen gave the big reliable Sarastro he’s been playing for years. The Orchestre Metropolitan was lively, and smartly led by Alain Trudel, who normally plays trombone.

The sets are identical to the ones designer David Hockney made for the Met in 1991. Houses around the world recycle and I suppose it’s good for the environment, but this one looked dated and showed much that could be better left suggested. This production comes from the San Francisco Opera, which probably has something to do with it. Are we being shown American hand-me-downs when there are local designers happy to take up the challenge?

The Magic Flute continues this season’s theme of competence and excellent singing, boding well for Tosca in January. Hearing Gauvin and St. Clair Nicholson alone is worth it.

The Magic Flute continues at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier November 14, 16, 19 and 21. For information and tickets, go to the Opéra de Montréal site.

The opening night of an opera season is an anxious bit of business. Chandeliers can fall, stage directors can quit, and it takes a few concerts to forget such things (well, not the stage directors.) So we sit in the darkened hall and cross our fingers, for their sakes.

Happily there was nothing to wince about when Opéra de Montréal opened their season this past weekend with a pairing of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. It was interesting, brisk, and smartly done. Management obviously read last year’s reviews.

The two operas make a clever formal pair. Pagliacci begins with a prologue read to the audience and Schicchi ends with a plea for indulgence. Moreover, the plots of both involve a play-within-a-play. Presented onstage in succession the two become a tasty soup about acting and life. I don’t think it’s better put than when Schicchi disguises himself as the dead Bouso to rewrite a will, and his cousin Zita asks: Is it Gianni who plays Buoso, or Buoso who plays Gianni? If it’s all pretend, what’s the difference?

Pagliacci is about a troupe of comic actors whose real lives aren’t funny. It ends tragically, which is what the prologue has to say. Schicchi is a comedy about death and inheritance. The epilogue informs us that the main character is sent to hell for it, which is a funny way to end a comedy. And both are short. Very short, by operatic standards, so the evening cantered by on the back of a tight MSO lead by James Meena.

The baritone Gregory Dahl was wonderful; his subtle acting and lush voice the more impressive for doing the most work (he sings Tonnio in Pagliacci and Schicchi in Schicchi). Marie-Josée Lord (Nedda) seemed about to lose control of her talent at times, which is a nice thing to hear in a young soprano; and Étienne Dupuis (Silvio) sang with such tenderness and clarity that I think he deserved a bigger part. Schicchi sounded generally stronger than Pagliacci, and Marianne Fiset was a bright bird when she sang Lauretta’s aria “O mio babbino caro”.

It helped, as usual, if I looked less than I listened. Like a beaten dog that deludes itself to its master’s real kindness, I keep wearing my glasses to the OdM long after I’m incapable of optimism regarding its stage design. It was with a familiar horror that I read director Alain Gauthier’s note in the program informing us that though we were too stupid to appreciate the many similarities between the two operas, he had, bless him, made the effort to “make these observations visually apparent.” Those who still failed to make the connection were, I am told, mugged and sent to a re-education program.

The rest of the season looks rather blue-chip: The Magic Flute, Tosca, and Cinderella. Simon Boccanegra could be considered outré, depending on whom you ask, but I’m looking forward to them all. Surprises last year like Lucia di Lammermoor showed what the OdM is capable of, and Pagliacci/Schicchi confirms that impression. This is a company going up.

Pagliacci and Gianni Schicchi play tonight and again Oct. 3, 5 and 8 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. For information and tickets, go to the Opéra de Montréal site.

For the next two weeks Montréal sits atop international opera like Humpty Dumpty on his wall. Opera de Montréal’s Lucia di Lammermoor is the best show of the season, a triumph whose success will bring attention to the company. Unfortunately, the production does not match the strength of the cast, and I doubt I’m the only one wondering if the OdM can handle world-class talent.

Lammermoor is Romeo and Juliet if the Capulet daughter had been tricked into marrying Paris, butchered him in the evening and then wandered into a production of Hamlet to try her hand at Ophelia. It is capital tragedy, devoid of subtlety as only operatic melodrama can manage. All emotion must be described as “burning”. It’s enough to make you throw ointment.

A demanding soprano showpiece of geometric bel canto ornamentation and high-altitude exploration, Lammermoor has a glamorous history. Singers like Joan Sutherland (whose career it launched) and Maria Callas set the standard for Lucia, who Anna Netrebko also sang earlier this year to acclaim at the Met. Although I hadn’t heard Eglise Gutiérrez before, the Cuban-American soprano has garnered a spectacular list of awards and honours since graduating from the Philadelphian Academy of Vocal Arts in 2004, making her Carnegie Hall debut that same year.

No surprise then that, despite my late arrival, Row T quickly forgot their crushed toes once Gutiérrez began to sing. She seemed possessed, a portal for sound from somewhere else. She approached technical perfection without losing the edge to take Lucia from girlish to insane (or slighting her acting, which was restrained and effective) and she warmed up instantly, unlike Stephen Costello (her true love Edgardo) whose voice only opened in the second act. He was better anguished than ardent and not quite enough beside the music pouring from Gutiérrez. Frankly, the entire cast sang excellently and yet they sounded like understudies next to her.

Better direction might have helped them hold their own. Baritone Alain Coulombe needed a kick with the interesting part of Raimondo (the chaplain who convinces Lucia that Edgardo is unfaithful, condemning her to murder and madness, while remaining a symbol of official morality). And Jorge Lagunes sang Enrico, Lucia’s villainous brother, with nuance but a bizarre range of jerky, distracting motions. He needed to sit down (he needed to be told to sit down). Oversights like these are most painful when they mar a great performance.

The Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal was so ably prodded by guest conductor Steven White that I found myself wondering what the OSM would sound like under a similarly vigorous baton. The stage design and blocking inspired rather less optimistic thoughts, on the other hand. The sets should have stayed in Dallas with their designer. I wonder why the OdM does not take advantage of its medium size to be a little experimental? Instead we sat before the total output of the local fibreglass industry in a dated and predictable design.

Gutiérrez has already attracted attention in New York and all the places and venues that count in the world of opera. No doubt she will be in the first ranks of sopranos this decade, which means we may not be able to afford her again. Interested in a talent kidnapping? Write me “C/O the greasy barge in Lachine canal”. Include $10 for whisky.

Lucia di Lammermoor, Opera de Montréal at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, May 27, 30, and June 1, 4, at 20h, tickets www.operademontreal.com.

The Montreal Symphony Orchestra is many things under Kent Nagano, but its repertoire is never less than varied. Tuesday’s concert was an enjoyable example of the rewards and pitfalls of his taste. It started promisingly, wallowed for an hour and then flew up, up and into the eaves to do wonderful things.

Charles Ives’ Central Park in the Dark (1906) was just that. A short and atmospheric work, it sang like a poem that ends just as you begin to smile. Ives arranged the orchestra as an organ, the instruments moving in groups under the fingers of some giant. A racket breaks out (were there morning joggers in 1906?) and then it’s over and the fog moves in again.

This amuse-oreille was followed by Schumann’s euphoric Symphony No.2 in C major (1845-46), the classical equivalent of chasing caviar with a Big Mac. Schumann’s symphonies are stolidly pleasant, like tranquilized dogs; evidently products of the manic side of his manic-depressive personality. Not that there’s anything wrong with happy music, just that it’s often no good when written by a sad person. It sounds false because it is.

It didn’t help things that the brass section was suffering from bad mojo. The trumpets were all over the place in particular, like quarrelling sled dogs harnessed together. Their entrances were sloppy in both the Schumann and the Brahms; though the Symphony No.2 suffered most since it frequently used a short fanfare motif. When there are only two notes you must nail them both. People will notice. Things will be written.

My notes for the Schumann were as follows: First movement. “Pastoral.” Second movement. “Grazing at the candy store.” Third. “Slow waltz?” Fourth. “The naked emperor triumphs.” Later I was pleased to learn from the program notes that the Symphony No.2 was written for King Oscar I of Norway and Sweden.

After fortifying myself during the intermission, I was ready for Gil Shaham, the reason I had come to this concert in the first place. I’d heard about him as a rising violinist (he’s 38) to watch, and I was curious what sort of player would be well-known for replacing virtuosi at the last minute. What, I wondered, is he unambitious?

Shaham played Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major (1878) which, while a virtuoso standard, is known for its modesty with the soloist and the tightness between his line and the orchestra’s. Nagano conducted the first movement a little fast, but this allowed a lovely breathy contrast in the slow second. The spaciness of the conducting let Shaham shine, since his gorgeous coppery tone (playing a Stradivarius doesn’t hurt) seems to prefer a slower tempo. Of course, he handled the fast cadenzas of the first and third movements admirably, but not with the effortless spice of, say, Vengerov.

There was an infectious jolliness to Shaham on stage, probably because he moved so much. (Nagano backed into the corner of his podium by the end, as far as possible from the staggering violinist. I think he was afraid.) His arching back and buckling knees reinforced the exuberant effect.

Overall, Shaham’s exquisite tone suited Brahm’s lean composition beautifully (especially after the Schumann roughage), and made for a captivating performance. The clarity of his tone is astonishing, and hard to overstate. Microphones like it, as he’s got over twenty discs with Deutsche Grammophon alone, and he founded his own label, Canary Classics, in 2004. So perhaps he is not so unambitious after all. In any case, he’s the sort of interesting artist I hope to hear more often next season. This one’s almost over. What to do now?

VERDI’S MACBETH is a difficult early work. The premiere last week of Opéra de Montreal’s new production, a collaboration with Opera Australia, was an undignified birth. Tired and disoriented, the performance rarely glimmered with promise and never rose to the ambition of director René Richard Cyr, who proved a distracted helmsman.

Macbeth is a demanding opera. Francesco Maria Piave’s libretto compresses the title character’s ambition and recklessness while letting loose his conscience. Considerable acting ability is required to ride Macbeth’s compulsive leaps from apprehension to murder and back to guilt, and only the character of Lady Macbeth emerges consistently, one of the most memorable villains in opera.

There is fierce irony in the opera not found in the play, as when Macbeth and wife join the chorus in condemning the murderers of Duncan, or when the murderous and childless Lady Macbeth sings the toast “Give birth to pleasure, and death to sorrow.” Michele Capalbo sparkled when she sang the part, but was otherwise disappointing and unforgivably bereft of menace. Verdi wrote that Lady Macbeth should sing in a “rough, hollow, stifled” voice, but he could not have intended such a literal reading of the instructions.

John Fanning was more solid as Macbeth, though his colourful shadings sometimes lacked power. His pathetic Thane would have been a good foil to a psychopathic Lady if there been any chemistry between the two. As it was they mostly ignored each other, sparking briefly during their bloody duet to vengeance at the end of the third act.

But disconnection was endemic on the stage. If at times it seemed the entire company sang alone, particularly when assembled together, none suffered more than Brian McIntosh’s Banquo. Haggard and monolithic, a lodestone for a lack of direction, he sang through wool and moved like an ox.

Apart from Capalbo and Alexandre Sylvestre (whose velvet tone was a tonic – too bad his part was so minor) the cast wandered past each other. Was this an intentional contrast to the motions of the witches, who mimed chaos in many pointless ways? The choice to reduce Macbeth’s ghostly vision of Banquo’s line to five kings displayed the listlessness that pervaded the performance. The score provides time for more, for some motion, and instead we got Fanning counting bars—a pause into which the evening’s momentum crawled, sighed resignedly, and died.

Other aspects of the production were steadier but never inspired. Stephen Lord led the orchestra with subtlety, occasionally holding back when he could have counterbalanced the movement missing onstage, and the single set by Claude Goyette was gloomy but ineffectively used. Roger Honeywell as Macduff delivered his only aria “Ah la paterna mano,” with anguish and the night’s longed-for power. His efforts crystallized an impression of the production as full of misguided potential. It can only improve with each performance.

Lev Bratishenko is a curatorial assistant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. His drawings can be seen at www.dilettante.ca.

KENT NAGANO HAS BEEN Musical Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for over a year—time enough to ask, where has he taken us? In terms of programming, last week’s concert could stand for many of that year: super-standards mixed with shorter works, and the occasional grenade. Nagano certainly understands the necessity of throwing pineapples; with this lob, he succeeded spectacularly.

The program was full, and this reviewer had to be open-minded to enjoy the first half. The evening began with a solo work by Debussy, Syrinx, sung simply and wonderfully on the flute by Timothy Hutchins and followed, unfortunately, by the composer’s Nocturnes. The first, Nuages, was brief and muddled as an adolescent, oboe and flute struggling against bass rumblings. Had the second been shorter, I might have liked the first one less. Fêtes wandered bizarrely from passages Gershwin would plagiarize to a completely weird martial theme with harps. The effect was confusing, and Nagano seemed to lose the orchestra during some transitions in this, as the liner notes put it, “study in grey.”

Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite decapitated the first half of the performance with vigour. Though it was as enjoyable as an electric shock, I could not imagine a less suitable piece for Nagano’s relaxed style—it was probably originally programmed as the bridge to Tan Dun’s Orchestral Theater 1: Xun, which would have come next in the program but was removed. It is futile to try and evoke an orchestral piece by Bartok. Sentences are always long. Words cower. 

On the other hand, from the physiological point of view, it was fascinating. During most of human history, very loud noises indicated hungry jungle cats, and this induced an immediately useful state of concentration in people. Yet Bartok, with only a few dozen musicians, managed to overcome millennia of conditioning and leave the audience deaf to danger. The intermission was welcome—and it brought a remarkable change as onstage came a wispy, stiff-necked boy.

This Austrian cherub; this man-child (he’s actually 36) with elbows pinned at his sides and the air of a beaten puppy; this totally unromantic guy was Till Fellner, and he is the pianist for whom Beethoven wrote his Piano Concerto No. 4 in 1808. 

The Fourth is a reflective work with little of Beethoven’s regular bombast sauce. It is meditative and draws its energy from the pianist, who begins unpretentiously and ends up carrying the whole operation by the end. Fellner floated through the concerto in a trance, his right hand ethereal and perfect. He played through the first and second movements like God’s own clockwork, not sweating or smiling. It was exquisite. 

In Till Fellner, a pianist of incredible restraint and otherworldly precision, Nagano found a match to his California conducting style. Their harmony was a pleasure to witness; the concert, a triumph. 

PHOTO: Till Fellner by Ben Ealovega. This performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 was recorded by EMC Records for release in 2009.

Lev Bratishenko is a curatorial assistant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and a graduate of Yale. His drawings can be seen at www.dilettante.ca