Urban Shocker
Doyenne
John Coulbourn's review of the second cast in the Toronto Sun:
If you've caught the Canadian Opera Company's most recent staging of Madama Butterfly, which opened at the Four Seasons Centre last week, chances are you've been struck by how well the production and the house have been blended.
Were designer Susan Benson and director Brian Macdonald possessed of a bit of prescience back in 1990 when they designed this work that seems to fit so perfectly here?
Or did architect Jack Diamond perhaps have this specific work, with its elegantly muted colours and its spare, almost simple, design foremost in his mind when he put the finishing touches on the elegant new opera hall he designed as the beating heart of the Four Seasons Centre?
The answer, of course, becomes obvious as the opera itself unfolds.
Both production and hall were created with the same single purpose in mind -- to showcase the artistry of the performers on the stage. And when three such stellar minds bend themselves to the same purpose, even though their tasks might be hugely varied, it is no mere accident that their ideas mesh with such impressive results, further fused here by the striking lighting of Michael Whitfield.
And while Tuesday's performance of Puccini's classic tale of love, heartbreak and death in Imperial Japan might have featured the company's second cast -- with 15 performances in its run, the COC has opted to double cast all of the major roles in the work -- there is certainly nothing second rate about any of them.
Individually and collectively, they make the most of a production and a hall that have been designed to showcase them at their very best.
In fact, while one suspects that the magnificent soprano Yannick-Muriel Noah may never be capable of playing the title role as the traditional tragic geisha we've come to expect, her gloriously compelling rendition of angst-driven passive aggressiveness could well set a new feminist standard for this old classic, stopping, as it does, just short of Medean madness.
But, while Noah certainly lights up the place, she's not the only treasure in this talented cast.
As Lt. Pinkerton, the amorous American officer who loves, then leaves, Butterfly in an act of callously amorous imperialism, tenor Bryan Hymel makes an impressive company debut, bringing both a physical and a vocal swagger -- each equally fearless -- to a role that becomes increasingly less flattering the better it is performed.
There is also superb work from baritone Brett Polegato as the American consul Sharpless, who lends not only a powerful voice but a strong sense of humanity and compassion as well to the role of a good man caught in the middle of a mess he didn't create.
In an extensive cast, there's strong work too from mezzo Anita Krause as the serving girl Suzuki, tenor John Kriter as the insinuating marriage broker, soprano Laura Albino as Pinkerton's wife and the opera's second (largely unsinging and unsung) tragic heroine, baritone Peter Barrett as Butterfly's suitor, and from the COC Chorus and the COC Orchestra, under the increasingly assured baton of Derek Bate.
Over the years, Madama Butterfly has become a COC audience favourite -- and small wonder, considering not only the soaring musicality of Puccini's score but the timeless understated elegance of Benson's design and Macdonald's staging as well.
And now that their production seems to be so perfectly fused with the hall in which it is presented, that popularity, one suspects, is going to do nothing but grow.
If you've caught the Canadian Opera Company's most recent staging of Madama Butterfly, which opened at the Four Seasons Centre last week, chances are you've been struck by how well the production and the house have been blended.
Were designer Susan Benson and director Brian Macdonald possessed of a bit of prescience back in 1990 when they designed this work that seems to fit so perfectly here?
Or did architect Jack Diamond perhaps have this specific work, with its elegantly muted colours and its spare, almost simple, design foremost in his mind when he put the finishing touches on the elegant new opera hall he designed as the beating heart of the Four Seasons Centre?
The answer, of course, becomes obvious as the opera itself unfolds.
Both production and hall were created with the same single purpose in mind -- to showcase the artistry of the performers on the stage. And when three such stellar minds bend themselves to the same purpose, even though their tasks might be hugely varied, it is no mere accident that their ideas mesh with such impressive results, further fused here by the striking lighting of Michael Whitfield.
And while Tuesday's performance of Puccini's classic tale of love, heartbreak and death in Imperial Japan might have featured the company's second cast -- with 15 performances in its run, the COC has opted to double cast all of the major roles in the work -- there is certainly nothing second rate about any of them.
Individually and collectively, they make the most of a production and a hall that have been designed to showcase them at their very best.
In fact, while one suspects that the magnificent soprano Yannick-Muriel Noah may never be capable of playing the title role as the traditional tragic geisha we've come to expect, her gloriously compelling rendition of angst-driven passive aggressiveness could well set a new feminist standard for this old classic, stopping, as it does, just short of Medean madness.
But, while Noah certainly lights up the place, she's not the only treasure in this talented cast.
As Lt. Pinkerton, the amorous American officer who loves, then leaves, Butterfly in an act of callously amorous imperialism, tenor Bryan Hymel makes an impressive company debut, bringing both a physical and a vocal swagger -- each equally fearless -- to a role that becomes increasingly less flattering the better it is performed.
There is also superb work from baritone Brett Polegato as the American consul Sharpless, who lends not only a powerful voice but a strong sense of humanity and compassion as well to the role of a good man caught in the middle of a mess he didn't create.
In an extensive cast, there's strong work too from mezzo Anita Krause as the serving girl Suzuki, tenor John Kriter as the insinuating marriage broker, soprano Laura Albino as Pinkerton's wife and the opera's second (largely unsinging and unsung) tragic heroine, baritone Peter Barrett as Butterfly's suitor, and from the COC Chorus and the COC Orchestra, under the increasingly assured baton of Derek Bate.
Over the years, Madama Butterfly has become a COC audience favourite -- and small wonder, considering not only the soaring musicality of Puccini's score but the timeless understated elegance of Benson's design and Macdonald's staging as well.
And now that their production seems to be so perfectly fused with the hall in which it is presented, that popularity, one suspects, is going to do nothing but grow.
