Others have opera workshops, cruise line gigs, and smaller outfits such as Calgary’s Cowtown Opera to boast about in their fledgling careers. Some of the young singers in this production have substantial bios, with engagements at houses in Houston, New York, Toronto, Frankfurt, as well as western Canada’s larger companies.
Parada used every nook and cranny in the seedy cabaret, having singers enter from a sound booth and the customer exits, incorporating the bar and a wall phone into her fluidly directed show. In this bare-bones production, Mimì dies on three orange plastic chairs in a hospital waiting room, rather than under the usual blankets. The setting of this Bohème was 1979 New York, where, in her director’s note, Parada says she lived in a squalid part of the city during the AIDS epidemic. The table where Rodolfo typed in Act I was as close to my table as the kitchen sink would be to the dining space in a tight apartment.Īdam Fisher (Rodolfo), Lukas Johan (Marcello) and Roland Burks (Colline) in Mercury Opera’s La Bohème.
No binoculars required here to see the singers’ engagement with the sad story of material destitution and personal solidarity. Sitting sometimes within a foot or two of a character singing this operatic favourite in full voice gave new meaning to the word verismo. 9), lacked in orchestration and spatial and theatrical amenities, it more than made up for in its unique emotional penetration. The six-piece ensemble was led by Adam Szmidt, with considerable help from pianist Spencer Kryzanowki, who more than ably anchored the band for this small-scale Puccini. Once again, Chez Pierre was the venue for her latest production, the perennially staged La Bohème, musically underpinned by a small supporting cast of professional and amateur musicians tucked away in a dark corner to the left of the main performance area. Last year, Mercury Opera staged La traviata in a legendary downtown strip joint, Chez Pierre’s Cabaret, and clearly the small, dimly lit peeler bar has wormed its way into company founder Darcia Parada’s entrepreneurial and artistic imagination. It once produced Puccini’s Il tabarro on a docked riverboat. Edmonton’s Mercury Opera prides itself on being a maverick enterprise, taking grand opera into alleys and subway corridors, arid barrens and inner-city parks.
0 kommentar(er)
