Butler and I were at stalemate over my pneumatic tube subscription. He thinks it’s a waste of money, but he doesn’t know opera companies. Yesterday I had my glorious revenge when the old tube rattled and spat out an invitation. There, I screamed from the lavatory, not everybody went over to email. I went, of course, and though the ticket lady found my canister suspicious she judged it unwise to argue. Four stars for the ticket lady at Pollack Hall.

Opera at McGill’s Schulich Music School is always a pleasure. The size of the hall is relief from the squinting and craning of Willfred-Pelletier, and it suits the young voices better. It might suit a lot of voices actually, if we could get away from the stupid idea that opera must be very big. Even a very big opera, like Don Giovanni, a massive club sandwich of the repertoire, can suit a chamber space.

Mozart composed Don Giovanni in 1787 when the story of the famous lothario’s conquests and punishment was at its height, having already been treated in dozens of forms. Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto mixes silliness and sermonizing, avoiding an entirely narrow Christian interpretation as well as the then dangerous political implications of a freethinking libertine hero.

The story includes another half-dozen major characters, so one difficulty, especially for a student production, is the density of talent required. Though the Don sings the most, and baritone Jonathan Christopher made sashaying but splendid effort, Donna Anna (soprano Carolanne Bouchard), Zerlina (soprano Stephanie Hradsky), Masetto (baritone Lukus Uhlman), had more work than they could sustain.

Soprano Jessica Scarlato had occasional difficulty controlling her cruise ship of a voice but added crucial energy as Donna Elvira, and bass-baritone Peter Walker sauntered away with the evening as Leporello, charming us all with an exceptionally mature, sumptuous voice and an easy manner.

The cast changed completely between the first two and last two performances. I have no idea how you rehearse something like that. Having the McGill Symphony Orchestra onstage was a clever touch that improved the sound, while the sets were atrocious, a finicky, ugly, intrusive business. Budget productions can usually avoid this, but I think Montreal might have the worst opera stage designers in the world. The costumes, on the other hand, indicated significant thought.

Director Patrick Hansen’s production starts from a literal interpretation of ‘monster’, one of the many names the Don is called in the opera. The vampire conceit is not new, the Don was a bloodsucker in tributes and small stagings at least as early as the 19^th century, and it casts the violence and eating in a grim new light. Opera McGill carried it off nicely, but I wish they had taken it further and dared to edit the libretto, removing some of the resulting inconsistencies. Bravery needs to come from small productions as well as big ones if opera is to avoid becoming a statue in the graveyard of ancient arts.

The Schulich Year of Early Music presents Montiverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea March 15-18. For more information, visit www.mcgill.ca/music/events

The evening started with an explanation that the order of the pieces was changed so that the orchestra would only have to shuffle seats once. For Beethoven’s 1st Concerto, they were seated tightly around the piano, with its back to us, in the manner of an 18th century chamber concert, so that we might appreciate the authenticity. But why have a conductor, then? And modern instruments? And shouldn’t the 2,000 seat hall have been torn down and replaced with a ducal palace room? Even yelled as loudly as I could, these questions went unanswered.

Authenticity is a slippery fish. It often covers for other things, like the fancies of a conductor, and sluggish Sir Norrington is a con-duc-tor (of the personality school; he conducted with one hand in his trousers, and when that was too tiresome he sat down). Le roi s’amuse, indeed.

His Beethoven was weary and careful. This second quality suited pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, totally in control and very precise. Together, they played a restrained allegro, made up for it with a sumptuous largo full of caresses (not a word you associate, at first glace, with a pallid Scandinavian and a paunchy Brit), and a rolly-polly rondo, like watching Norrington dance, I imagine.

While he changed postures, a cell phone went off, twice, in row F. Not only was it extraordinarily loud, but the techno ringer sucked in a major way. The second time we silently killed and ate the owner – last thing I saw was a fierce madame with appropriate dentures bite the electronics in half.

The second half of the evening was given over to the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (hardly a towering figure in music, the comparison with Beethoven in the programme notes notwithstanding) who specialized in the production of an anaesthetic effect at long ranges. He had a fabulous career in the army.

This is a cruel joke if you know something about Williams because his music took a turn for the better after he served in the First World War. But this evening’s selections were both pre-war and consequently untouched by the complications of that experience. Perhaps Bertie Wooster would have been moved, but both the London Symphony and his Wasps overture are foggy hodgepodge, the musical equivalent of Bubble and Squeak in a Heathrow restaurant, or an hour-long advert soundtrack that’s got lost in itself. It was rough going and I won’t do it again, though it was worth it to hear Andsnes’s magical precision live.

Concert presented November 30 and December 1, 2011 at Maison symphonique de Montréal.

Some people talk about putting on a Czech opera like you wear a lead apron to do it, but that isn’t true. It’s perfectly legal. So don’t buy the argument that a production of Dvořák’s Rusalka (containing an aria you’ll find on every best-of opera disc) means the Opera de Montreal took any risks. Not with the programming, anyway.

I am all for hands-on training. Education is the future. And it’s definitely the best way to maintain Montreal’s commanding lead in staged self-abuse. But perhaps it was premature to give the staging over to the Loyola High School Audiovisual Club?

Obviously some generous adults put their names on the credits, but they couldn’t possibly be responsible for the adolescent diddling we were subjected to on Saturday, as Word 2000’s finest clipart videos were projected onto a foam landscape older than Vodnik the water troll (bass Robert Pomakov). Worse, the potential was there for an interesting irony between the retro renderings and onstage tragedy, but a clumsy set and lazy directing made it impossible.

So the singers, as usual, had to save the production. And Jezibaba (mezzo Liliana Nikiteanu) took care of it, crackling with weird energy as the witch who turns Rusalka into a mute human. She channeled John Lithgow circa Buckaroo Banzai in an unprecedented way, her voice clutching at the ends of phrases and squeezing the creepy out. Pomakov also extracted surprising novelty from his tired Vodnik, sad and confused as a hippie whose daughter comes home with a cop on her arm.

Rusalka (soprano Kelly Kaduce) had a more complicated role. She isn’t Disney’s headstrong mermaid. There’s something Greek to her instead; a 19th century sin for loving the wrong species (read: social class) perhaps? Balancing predestined tragedy with self-assurance demands good acting and Kaduce handled herself coolly but well; still, it was more fun to watch Nikiteanu twitch and Pomakov limp.

Kaduce has a clear and supple voice, but it was not warm enough for her “Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém,” in the first act. She sang better and better; by the third she was struggling only to have chemistry with the plank-prince (tenor Khachatur Badalyan). I mean, when you are singing about gazing into the eyes of your love, it’s easier on the audience if you look at her.

Mezzos Aidan Ferguson and Emma Parkinson, with soprano Chantale Nurse, sparkled as a trio of flirting wood nymphs, despite their constant harassment by ballerinas. A demonstration by the Polish heavy armaments industry (soprano Ewa Biegas as the Foreign Princess) further interrupted the performance, but after she left and the dead were carted off, I found that I appreciated the other singers significantly more.

John Keenan’s conducting debut was underwhelming, but not everyone is ready for the nuances of Wilfred-Pelletier. I hope he will try again.

Rusalka continues to offend our visual sensibilities November 15, 17, and 19. Tickets at the OdM website.

Photo by: Yves Renaud

Critical stares of Russian matrons sweep the Maison Symphonique lobby like Distant Early Warning radar stations, but their targets are their neighbours’ outfits and so I pass unharmed and invisible. I am not wearing any gold or miniskirt. Arriving at my seat, I discover the under-chair heaters have been replaced by samovars.

Yes, a spot of tea is lovely during a concert but we carelessly scald our feet, and there is nowhere to put any pastries. Which come from where, anyway? But Gergiev has just raised his arms – no baton, not even a toothpick for this air sculptor, and as he prods the Mariinsky orchestra into the allegro of Tchaikovskii’s first symphony, the last woman enters the hall with a plastic-bag-carrying buzzcut kid in tow.

The first symphony was the most difficult for Tchaikovskii to write; he believed that it was an immature orchestral work but perhaps his best. Hearing it played with the sixth confirms this judgement, particularly when it is performed by musicians with the irreproachable romantic credentials of Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, in Montréal on one of their interminable tours.

Gergiev is on his tiptoes and we are off with a gallop, maybe on a sleigh, and wondering if he can sustain this feeling of arriving, always arriving? No. The second movement, rewritten on the insistence of Tchaikovskii’s strict elders at the Moscow Conservatory, is warm and familial like a cottage in the woods. Only the horn shudders remind us of the student’s squashed ideas that will soon blaze into full brass hysterics.

The scherzo makes the tiny white-haired grandma in front of me cry. She recomposes herself and flicks her scarf onto the shoulder of her neighbour, a frustrated-looking specimen who spends the remainder searching for a polite way to shrug it off. I don’t know how that story ended because I was distracted by the finale, which Gergiev milked with gusto; he enjoys the rubato – a flexibility with tempo that is common in Romantic works, and uses it to great effect, also holding fermatas very long, head bowed as if investigating the sonic properties of the new hall.

Tchaikovskii’s immaturity emerges in the endless bombast of the finale, but he never really got tired of that, so can it still be called immature? Cymbals bash while the timpanist pushes tuba and brass to suicide. When they do take breathers – a union rule – the confused audience bursts into applause early. Then suddenly there she is, the angel of intermission: a whisky.

Proceed to a fifteen-minute investigation of current East European fashion trends.

The sixth symphony was written thirty-three years after the first and premiered a week before Tchaikovskii’s death. It is a mountain of anticipation and hypertrophied melodies, beginning with the slow death and frozen echo of the opening, to be repeated by flute and oboe, which become a conversation between strings and woodwinds. Sixty voices become two or three.

The second movement expresses the slumbers of a ten year old gone to bed after reading Snow White, and the third returns with a more martial theme that builds to an explosion of brass and percussion of the kind mentioned earlier: less knife-edge, more of a murder scene.

The forth begins with what seems like a conciliatory adagio, but returns to grief with an overwhelming bitterness. It is in my opinion the most surprising and affecting movement of the symphony. I think one of the most hopeless moments in music occurs when the timpani sound their death rattle and the gong palls. Remorse floods the hall.

Gergiev and his musicians are long gone, but the concert will be broadcast on Espace musique “at a later date” on Soirées classiques, and online (http://radio-canada.ca/musique).

It was crowded like any opening night, full to the rafters with an assortment of Montreal’s best and worst dressed elders, all of whom had to part for me and my wheelbarrow. Butler complained about “pushing me about in public,” but what was he going to do, find another job?

Opéra de Montréal’s new production of Le nozze di Figaro is also interested in labour and the contrasting worlds of masters and servants, most apparent in director Tom Diamond’s two-faced set and its references to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the guillotine.

Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera was seen as indelicate, but the really biting political satire had been cut and so, unlike the Beaumarchais story, it was never banned. Instead of a parasitic aristocracy, the target of the opera’s mockery became faithless wives and jealous husbands – the fall of the Bastille, mind you, was only three years away.

Details of the plot would rob potential audiences of their surprise at one of the silliest and thinnest twists in opera, “Riconosci in questo amplesso,” but, in short, this comic opera concerns itself with the valet Figaro and his betrothed Susanna’s difficulties marrying due to the proclivities of their employer the Count.

Paul Nadler extorted a lively and dramatic performance from the orchestra and kept up with a very strong cast. They were probably the greatest concentration of real actors onstage at OdM in years, with sparkling Hélène Guilmette leading the way as Susanna. Very much in love with her, Figaro was sung by the bass-baritone Robert Gleadow in his OdM debut. He seemed to lose control of his arms at times, but charmed everybody with his indefatigable air and fine cake of a voice. Baritone Phillip Addis was an excellent petulant Count, and bass-baritone Alexandre Sylvestre a sheepish but wholesome-sounding Bartolo.

Mezzo Aidan Ferguson, Guilmette, and soprano Julie Boulianne – radiant as the man-child Cherubino – suffered by sharing their range with Nicole Cabell, the well-reputed American soprano who sang the Countess. She did not have the most time onstage and she was not the strongest actress there, but her presence was overwhelming. She has an astonishingly pure tone that emerges like a pinprick to another world of sound. In the third act, her “Dove sono i bei momenti” froze time and stopped hearts. Ambulances of physicists were called in.

I don’t know how many could be saved.

Figaro continues to avoid the real problem of our vampiric financial overlords Sept 20, 22 and 24 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. For tickets and more info, go to: http://www.operademontreal.com/

The gilt-edged envelope smelled of perfume and was obviously caviar-stained. A monumental footman waited for a reply with a silver tray in one hand and a gun in the other. More opera tickets, I thought. Hooray.

The invitation was for an evening of arias presented by a new opera group, Opera Piccola, at Theatre Outremont. I had high hopes. My standard opera companion set the mood by coming late directly from the gym, with extra spandex for me, so we matched, but the evening was still disappointing.

I might have been naïvely optimistic. When I heard about a new opera company, I imagined they would be young, poor and unafraid. A company that would enlarge the scene in Montreal; instead, the four talented stalwarts on the lovely stage tasted like flat pop from Opera de Montreal’s fridge. The only novelty of the evening was the more intimate setting.

That is not enough. But Opera Piccola is explicitly not devoted to sustaining the future of opera, something it seems to take for granted, but to “education and accessibility”. Fine. The small space is certainly accessible, and there is undeniable power in opera at close range, an almost physical awareness of trained organs.

Wide-eyed soprano Mariateresa Magisano carried a solid sound that coloured nicely in “Donde lieta,” but never connected with the other humans onstage. She came alive once, sharply, with “On My Lips Every Kiss is Like Wine.” It was her only solo, so perhaps the other singers distracted her.

Baritone Alexander Dobson-son-of-Danny-Kay was an energetic dancer, naturally, and a sporting singer. Though his Don Giovanni was anemic, he opened up with the lighter material of the second half and zinged as the Pirate King.

Montreal workhorse tenor Luc Robert and his triangular figure were a stable addition to the evening, like an inherited dining room table. His “Rossignol de mes amours” was sweet, and its easy buffoonery suited his relaxed voice and slouchy manner.

Soprano Julie Boullianne withdrew at the last minute because of sickness, so CBC Radio host Julie Nasrallah stepped in. She was husky, occasionally vivid, and always a charming and bright presence, but perhaps not quite “one Julie for another”, as she was introduced.

There was minimal but effective staging, restrained lighting, and a skeleton crew of musicians. It suggested a high quality student production, but jarred with the Establishment onstage. When Nasrallah sang the habanara from Carmen, I recalled a crackling performance by the young Emma Parkinson at Jean-Talon market in 2010, and I wondered, where’s she singing tonight?

I went to a weird place recently. There were a couple of hundred others there, all with healthy annuity incomes, and we were inappropriately dressed in tailcoats and spats and things. The row ahead of me passed a pair of army field binoculars around. I heard the most serious-looking one, their leader I think, mutter after Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture that “the red bastards think they can wait us out?” But then he fell asleep and I took his wallet.

None of this business prevented Yannick Nézet-Séguin from conducting a lively Orchestre Metropolitain in the spectacularly inappropriate Centre Pierre-Charbonneau, a gymnasium whose association for a Soirée Russe would have to be a 1950s immigrant-processing centre, hastily set up.

Part of Orgue et Couleurs’ 47th annual Concerts Populaires (an astonishing and commendable duration), the evening featured Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony in addition to his Overture, and Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, whose relaxed manner combined eagerly with the conductor’s energy and enthusiasm, joined Nézet-Séguin for the latter; the effect was of two friends effortlessly solving a Russian musical puzzle, perhaps after a game of basketball.

The Tchaikovskys were the background, two daydreamy works of intermittent drama that were treated well by an excited Nézet-Séguin and the OM, who seem nimbler than the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal. Though this tends to be the Conductor Factor, I wonder if it is also a question of the musicians’ age?

The concert repeats outdoors this Sunday for free at the Théâtre de Verdure in Parc LaFontaine. Nézet-Séguin and Sylvestre are both internationally in demand so I’d go before they move somewhere with nicer gyms.

Stage design appears in the criminal code under “manslaughter – unusual,” which is a possible label for the season premiere of Opéra de Montréal’s La Bohème, a “lavish new production” that treats its talented cast with the thoughtfulness and dignity of a garden rake to the face, and succeeds largely in spite of itself. Only the singers and musicians deserve any applause.

The stage, a 1500sq-ft garret, is cluttered and empty, which takes a rare incompetence; simple acts become exaggerated and lovers yell to each other from the corners of a Great and Stupid Void. There is nothing to it, no aha moment when the imbecilic extravagance clicks and means something – except once when a wall of windows floats away and leaves the stage silhouetted against a suddenly naked and lovely colour. Your eyes relax and you wonder what the fuck was that wall for?

Nothing. It was a caprice like the rest of the set, a stain where the direction pissed and forced the artists to stand, a crime the more galling because it would be difficult to do such violence to a better or more pleasant cast.

Soprano Marianne Fiset is silken as the consumptive Mimi, her sound full and shapely and kind as a Madonna. Though she has weak chemistry with tenor Antoine Bélanger, a well-coloured but underwhelming Rodolfo, they both bloom in other company – like baritone Étienne Dupuis, who always adds a dash of vital energy and was an audience favourite as Marcello. He sings jauntily and gets on with soprano Lara Ciekiewicz, a standout of this season’s Gala and a crisp and cutting Musetta. Baritone Pierre Rancourt and bass-baritone Alexandre Sylvestre (who can dance!) beautifully round out an outstanding group, all Canadians with the exception of baritone Roy Del Valle (Alcindoro/Benoît). It’s rare that jingo casting works out, but when it does the feeling is pleasant.

Giuseppe Pietraroia conducted with precision and attention, maybe a little slowly, though it may have only felt slow while we waited for singers to arrive at their destinations. The turgid and poisonous effect of the staging can’t be stressed enough: in this year’s Opera McGill (budget & terrific) production of Bohème, the Café Momus scene was delightful; bustling but not chaotic, exciting and magical, it connected the principal characters to the Quartier Latin where they become parts of a larger theatre of the city. Saturday’s “professional” attempt was confused and boring, a wasted mass of choral talent that connected nobody to nothing, not even the designer to a fist.

Not that he acted alone. Director Alain Gauthier and his accomplice, designer Olivier Landreville (of MusiMax), have been court-ordered to attend theatre classes at Cegép du Vieux Montreal, an injustice to the students but a necessary measure of prevention. I hope it will be enough. Stephen Harper announced a bill to arm audiences, but he was booed out of the hall.

La Bohème continues at Place Des Arts, May 25th, 28th, 30th, June 2nd and 4th.

Photo Credit: Yves Renaud

Goth teenagers loiter around the Grand Vizier’s shopping complex under the aqueduct, then a loopy teen wearing a dozen nighties dances in and gets them killing for her. They do it because she’s so hot. And she’s a princess. It’s good, right? Get this, her dad wants to get with her, she strips for him and then makes out with another guy’s severed head.

Upon hearing the pitch for an adaptation of Salome, the Viennese composer Richard Strauss threw a bag of gold coins on the table. Work began immediately.

A week ago I sat in judgment before the result, OdM’s new coproduction (they are all coproductions) of Strauss’s Salomé. This version of the tale comes through Oscar Wilde, which explains in part its ambiguities and comic tendencies. The latter were played out to the audience’s delight in this production, but Salomé is a strange opera; one act about incest and murder and religion. As tragicomedy it is a salty cake.

Salome is the most demanding role onstage; it requires the full triple threat as well as the gumption to get naked. Soprano Nicola Beller Carbone acted magnificently, danced well, and sang plainly in a part she plays regularly to acclaim. Her Salome was petulant and demonic, a workshopped vagina dentatis who grows the last syllables of John’s name.

Bass-baritone Robert Hayward was more vocally impressive as Jokanaan (John the Baptist). His stature and bellows suited the role, heavy with significance, and his Jokanaan brimmed with an anger that I have not heard in the recordings I researched.

Guard captain Narraboth (the supple tenor Roger Honeywell, whose remarkable yearning was probably not just good acting, I think he craved a bigger role) loves Salome to distraction and his pointless suicide is a gem. The corpse is ignored by a dozen people onstage before Herod slips on the blood and asks: “But who is this? I did not order this man killed.”

Herod was sung jovially by tenor John MacMaster in a manner that brought to mind Friar Tuck of Men in Tights, though Tuck never heard the beating wings of the angel of death (or perhaps he did, and thus the beer thing?). Though this comedy was entirely enjoyable, it did not suit a figure that is essentially tragic. Opposite him, and a little off, was mezzo-soprano Judith Forst as Herodias.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin extracted the opera’s musical bursts from the Orchestre Métropolitain quickly and with verve. It was the most enjoyable Strauss I’ve ever heard, though that isn’t saying much. It doesn’t need repeating that Nézet-Séguin should visit more often.

Salomé continues March 31st.

In the golden days of opera, critics wore two pistols and audiences ritually burned the weakest cast member and ate them. Or forced the director to eat them, depending on whether they were delicious. It was around this time that an important critical methodology was discovered: Drink a tincture of ships’ caulking in ether and go watch a performance. Did you feel anything?

The bartender only had a bottle of asbestos solvent, but what the hell, art is a damned fine mistress even if she cuts you sometimes. (My Standard Opera Companion never, ever does.) So three hours later, I am swimming in a lovely blue-green tidal pool I’d found in my mind and considering the performance of Massenet’s Werther that I had just seen.

Typically, I excoriate the cast (perfectly okay), the direction (the 1930s were a tragic time, super), the set design (vintage contemporary), or conducting (superb). But on this day I will turn to a dead man, composer Jules Massenet — he who once told the critic Vincent d’Indy that “I only compose such trifles for the public.”

Werther is based on Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Not considered the poet’s best work, but it established his early fame. The simple premise of a sensitive young poet’s impossible love for a married woman and its high interior drama make for captivating reading but deadly theatre. The libretto takes insufficient liberties. It relies on time compression and bigger roles for characters like Werther’s love object Charlotte and her sister Sophie, which do not overcome the psychological inertia of the text. And Massenet’s score is the anaemic sister who sweeps the whole soulful mess into the rubbish bin.

The first act was like watching tripe boiling. The second could only seem better, and the third and fourth had three tragic moments that got laughs instead. After all that emotional simmering, I would not even call this opera lukewarm. Perhaps there were moments of beauty, whether lyrical as in Werther’s tremendous “Pourquoi me réveiller?” or musical as the more elegant of Massenet’s musical droppings, but they were bites of flavour in a tepid and lardy sea.

If you enjoy such activities as getting lost in hedgerows or dropping an oar the first time you are rowing a boat and following ten thousand tiny circles back to shore, then this is the opera for you.

Werther continues its spiral into depression and suicide at Place des Arts, January 29, 31, and February 9. Opera de Montreal.

Leopard print and gold stilettos welcomed us to Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, or as it is known in family jargon, daddy’s angry place. The hall looked the same but the opera crowd was thick for a Sunday matinee and more pomaded than usual. Offstage and on, ambition was in the air.

Three hours later we stumbled out drenched in champagne, flicked the opera groupies off, and assessed: fourteen singers had performed twenty-three arias in three hours, with a long introspective pause for the audience. A convincing case was made for the depth of local talent, and two of the evening’s three stars (Julie Boulianne, Lara Cieckiewicz, and Etienne Dupius) were members of the Atelier lyrique, strong evidence for its future importance.

The future of the local audience, however, was cast into question. Our colleagues-in-seats were a fabulous spectrum of grey; now, this is hardly unusual for the opera, a musical form with enough high cultural affectations to keep out even brave youth, it bodes ill for the fundraiser of the year.

The Gala was a politburo meeting, and the giant photo of mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Lavigne hanging Mao-like above the stage was unhelpful in this respect. Had she not given a lovely and modest acceptance speech for her induction into the Canadian Opera Hall of Fame, our conclusion would have been that we were attending a memorial service to the Dear Leader.

No sets and limited space with the orchestra onstage meant a focus on the singers, so stiff actors like Alexandre Sylvestre could just stand there (and sing wonderfully), while the typically atrocious staging and direction were not able to interfere. Almost.

It happened after the final ovation, on the heels of Julie Boulianne’s (who should consider this sentence a brief but entirely serious marriage proposal) beautifully restrained rendition of “Non piu mesta,” and Marie-Josée Lord’s and Antoine Bélanger’s showstopping “Libiamo”: fake snow dribbled from the rafters as everybody sang “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”

It was a rabbit punch to my swollen spirits, and as we left the snow-globe, my Standard Opera Companion (Viciously Italian Edition) pulled the champagne cork out with her teeth and muttered, “This is unacceptable.”

Is this the ambition that will sustain Montreal opera?

Christ Church Cathedral glows with competence as the choir enters. The pews gleam with it, and I happily come out of the rain to receive a healthful serving of Our Cultural Solids. The concert is part of the 2010 Montreal Bach Festival, a healthy-sounding machine for the production of lovely evenings, which each year fills some churches with the music they were intended for.

As churchgoers race towards statistical irrelevancy, the majority experience these spaces mostly in historical or artistic contexts, and not as chambers of mysterious power (except over hats). When seasoned with liturgical music, however, even a dingy wooden chapel can smell Roman. The space of the church grew and filled like an old organ bellows with the first notes of “Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden”, the opening cantata sung by VivaVoce.

A local chamber choir known for their pure sound, VivaVoce sang a selection of early Bach cantatas with efficient elegance. Though our pleasure did not increase proportionately to the number of instruments added, particularly some slippery violins, a measure of the purity and bleedin’ holiness of the opening piece lingered throughout the evening, particularly in the smugly wonderful singing of tenor Bernard Cayouette.

Also on display were the didactic efforts of VivaVoce’s artistic director Peter Schubert whose charming and occasionally patronizing introductions are a nervous tick of high culture trapped in a culture of justification.

The Bach Festival runs November 26 to December 8.

Continued hassling of the Montreal opera establishment has lead to bizarre and extreme countermeasures: I have been invited into the belly of the beast, its tenderest backstage bits, where motors and maidens meet, and where I am liveblogging a performance of Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux.
19:40
I have made it inside. It is dark and well-organized. The orchestra is warming up and sound pipes in from all directions but you can see nothing, like being in the eye of storm.

19:53
Pierre Massoud, Production Coordinator for the OdM, takes us up to the fifth floor and shows us the giant motors that control the set. It appears that everything is to descend from an ornate ceiling.

20:07
Overture finishes, perhaps a little hurried.

20:14
Sarah (mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Batton) has finished praying. I don’t think I’m going to be able to comment on the singing much, I’m hearing everything perpendicular. Is that why they put me back here?

20:18
Watching the ceiling is like watching a hunting spider—when will it move and with what deadly potency?

20:21
Elizabeth I (soprano Dimitra Theodossiou) is enchanting, honeyed, but catches some ragged notes at maximum volume.

20:58
We are taken around the other side to stage left, close enough to gather spittle and watch Roberto and Sara being unconvincing on the bed, though Dolgov’s voice has something, a spice to it. The dozen amazing motors raise and lower wallpapers from Urban Outfitters.

21:00
First intermission. The massages begin.

21:16
Second act from a loge inside the hall so no internet access, but perhaps the sets will make more sense.

21:59
Back to the room where men wander in tights singing to themselves. The second act ended very well, a tight and frightening condemnation of Roberto’s treason. Theodossiou menacing, the first syllable of “Va; la morte sul capo ti pende” cuts like a knife. Nottingham (baritone James Westman) sings well enough but seems to think he’s in a comedy.

22:04
Third act begins. A man saunters offstage, does a dance, and grabs a handful of candy. We seem to be in a “safe space.”

22:25
A disconcerting couple of minutes as the chorus mills, twirls its long skirts, and makes poses from The Matrix while condemned Roberto cries from the tower of London right behind.

22:32
Resounding applause for Theodossiou.

22:45
Resounding applause for Theodossiou.

22:49
The opera critics slip into the night like rats.

My double-tall opera companion mortified me by texting during Opéra de Montréal’s season opener Rigoletto. But then I looked at what she had written and it was okay. She had ordered rye delivery.

She understood, barely into the first act, the character of the night to come: a talented cast was to be sacrificed. A general loosening would be required to enjoy the lions’ work.

I suppose one could defend the sadistic casting, aimless direction and leaden design as a brilliant comment on the tragic injustice of Verdi’s opera. But that’s turning Junior’s snotty dribblings into a Pollack, and I don’t love Junior that much.

Our child is allergic to great talent, apparently, because baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore (Rigoletto) and soprano Sarah Coburn (Gilda) were magnificent. They shone amidst an inspired cast, a talented assemblage with one exception.

Tenor David Pomeroy (the Duke of Mantua) has a nervous habit of glancing at the audience, aware that we might leave any moment. It is understandable given his abilities.

Next to that, Michaels-Moore was mascarpone earmuffs, a moving balm of easy phrasing and beautiful restraint. His voice is a cake. He should be mayor and sing in the street every night.

As for his suicidally innocent daughter Gilda (the lesson here is, I think, not to lock your daughters up but introduce them to men gradually), Coburn was astonishing, almost too voluptuous for a teenage virgin. Her “care nome” was an education in sensuality and an elegant piece of acting. But a singer is not an aria, and it was her luminous and sensitive performance, particularly opposite Michaels-Moore, that squeezed magic out of the evening. Her acclaim in this role is well deserved.

Tyrone Paterson, usually of Opera Lyra Ottawa, conducted his Opéra de Montréal debut with insufficient energy. The overture plodded out of the gates and led to a stifled first act, particularly unfortunate as it drained Alexandre Sylvestre’s (Monterone) righteous fury of any menace, though Paterson found his stride in the second and third.

The assassin’s inn at La Ronde represented this production’s example of the expected direction and design errors, like the bizarre decision to have Rigoletto and Gilda sing to each other through bars inside their home (Rigoletto holding the key), but this is all symptomatic of a wearisome lack of creativity and care.

Rigoletto, October 7 and 9 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. For ticket information and other details, go to the Opéra de Montréal site.

The young lady (Emma Parkinson) handed me my change and began to sing the Habanera from Carmen, awfully well for a produce retailer. Then a fellow in a cape (Etienne Dupuis) across the aisle gave an unnervingly professional rendition of “Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre”, completing the lyrical geometry begun by a La Traviata duet (Pascale Beaudin and Riccardo Iannello) a few minutes earlier. And then it was over, the singers folding back into the scenery, and I haggled for carrots.

I’d arrived at Marché Jean-Talon an hour before with my lobster carrier – who visits me when I need her but I never have to ask – after receiving a threatening invitation about an opera event. I was told to come but not to talk about it. I guess they wanted to avoid a riot. And like a tourist I foolishly expected a musical event in Montreal to start on time.

So we walked around, the lobsters scraping pathetically at their prison, and scared children with our “listening faces”. No opera; just a few smaller acts, but I think probably unaffiliated. We had a nice huarache at the taco stand, but it did not soothe my growing paranoia at being the victim of a music publicist and fishmonger conspiracy (according to CIBC, my two biggest expenses so it’s reasonable they would find each other.)

Whatever the reasons, forty minutes later they sang and it was wonderful, skin-crawlingly terrific, and just a little sad to feel the energy of a performer so close and know it was the last time. Like saying goodbye to a lover.

It sure didn’t make me excited to return to Place des Arts, renovated or not, and back to the phlegm-y seats in Critics’ Row. But the solution came on the walk home: turn Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier into a market during the day. Concerts usually take place in the evenings, when the market is closed anyway, and there would always be rotten tomatoes on hand.

Check out the event on YouTube.

Belting it out in the produce stall

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