 | This is my Once or Twice a Fortnight post from May 2nd 2012. |
Related:
Bravo! Calgary Opera marks 40th anniversary
Contemporary Opera
As a lead-in to today’s OTF post and featured opera, I wanted to put this question to you - as it has been in one way or another elsewhere in this forum – what makes an opera work? What is it about this or that opera that makes it resonate with you, that allows it to make a lasting impression?
Sometimes the answer is something personal and nostalgic (like the first opera you heard or saw performed, or the one that got you hooked…) Sometimes, it’s the “escape” factor – opera is, after all, a medium (like film and stage) that provides an opportunity for us to escape the everyday, and sometimes come to realize our everyday problems can be pretty minor compared to some of the challenges opera protagonists have to deal with (albeit in an operatic, romanticized, way).
More often than not for me, it’s about the story. Does the story connect with me or not. Stories can connect because of their historical significance, their relevance to today’s world. Sometimes it’s the characters and how they are developed and portrayed (as sympathetic, or as scoundrels).
The reason why I bring this up is in the context of “contemporary opera”, and why for some reason contemporary opera (like contemporary music, or contemporary anything, really) always seem to get a bum rap when compared to, say, the “standard repertoire”. There’s something about familiarity, I guess, but I think it may be because people are sometimes (what am I saying… often times) put off by what I like to call “modern for the sake of modern”. It’s almost as though for a piece to have contemporary “credibility”, it has to avoid at all costs the motifs and approaches that have made past works successful. It’s not to say that Nixon in China has to sound like Puccini’s Turandot, but rather that if the plot devices and musical tricks used by verismo composers would have made sense to use, then why should Adams have chosen not to use them?
So where am I going with this? I guess itès time to get on with my topic for today.
Let’s start by a bit of background: in 2005, the Province of Alberta celebrated its centennial (having joined, along with Saskatchewan, the then-Dominion of Canada in 1905) and for one rare moment in redneck Alberta history, the Government thought it would do something “cultural” about it that didn’t necessarily involve either oil or cattle. One of these initiatives was the refurbishment of a pair of aging twin-facilities in Edmonton and Calgary (two auditoriums that were built in 1955 for the 50th anniversary of the same event), and threw some subsidies at its cash-strapped cultural institutions to put-on memorable events in the refurbished auditoria, home of the Calgary and Edmonton Operas.
The Calgary Opera (with the Banff Centre and tacit backing of its sister outfit in Edmonton) commissioned an opera (Read: http://filumena.johnestacio.com/about_opera.asp) . It had to be about Alberta. It had to feature Canadian performers. The Calgary Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence at the time, John Estacio, was given the challenge. What he did, with librettist John Murrell, was to set-up a workshop at the Banff Centre with opera singers and other collaborators, and Murrell suggested a particular episode in Alberta history. The episode was about Alberta, and resonated with the workshop participants because it had all the plot devices you need to make an opera work: it had a love triangle. It had betrayal. It had tragedy. It culminates with the gallows.
This was a contemporary (-ish) story, set during the Prohibition era.
To the credit of the collaborating artists at that workshop, they went along with Estacio’s vision to make it verismo-like rather than to make it coldly modern sounding. They banged out some tunes. When the workshop ended, Estacio had a couple of zingers in hand, and just needed to work out the entire score, with Murrell working out the final libretto.
Both the Calgary Philharmonic and the Edmonton Symphony “teased” some of these zingers – one of them “the Bootlegger’s Tarentella” was very well received. They handed the score to Bramwell Tovey, and he directed the World Premiere of the work at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on February 1st 2003, well-ahead of the centennial year.
The True Story behind Filumena
In 1917, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police left Alberta in light of its increased responsibilities for national security during World War I. It was replaced by the newly created Alberta Provincial Police, which existed until 1932, when it was eliminated as a cost-cutting measure during the Great Depression and the subsequent return of the Mounties.
During that 15-year period, the APP was responsible for law enforcement across the province, except for the burgeoning towns of Calgary and Edmonton. In those rural areas, the APP was involved in solving disputes between landowners, and had to enforce a highly unpopular measure, prohibition. Alberta, as the US at the time, was “dry” whereas neighbouring British Columbia was not.
There was a lucrative commerce to be made, and many entrepreneurial individuals had a hand in smuggling liquor across provincial lines. Chief among them was “Emperor Pic”, Emilio Picariello, who had befriended an innkeeper and his wife, Florence Lassandro.
Bootlegging was a “family business” for the Picariellos, and Emilio’s son Steven would make runs through the Crowsnest Pass between BC and Alberta. During one of these runs, he was intercepted by the APP, and Picariello believed he had been killed in the process. The story is sketchy, but it is undeniable that Florence and Emilio were at the APP barracks in Coleman, Alberta when APP Corporal Stephen Lawson was shot and killed in front of this building on September 21, 1922. Both Lassandro and Picariello were tried and convicted of capital murder, and subsequently hanged at the penitentiary at Fort Saskatchewan om May 2nd, 1923.
Florence Lassandro is remembered today as the only woman hanged in Alberta – read more at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/...assandro1.html.
The Opera Version
(Official Synopsis: http://filumena.johnestacio.com/synopsis.asp)
Filumena is the story of an Italian immigrant teenager, Florence (Filumena) Lassandro, who was bethroved to a much older man. Florence and her husband operate a hotel near the Southern Alberta town of Lethbridge, which happens to be strategically close to the US border and at the foot of the Crowsnest Pass, which reaches through the Rockies into neighboring British-Columbia.
Oh, and I forgot, Florence’s husband is in cahoots with Emilio Picariello, an Italian “entrepreneur” who manages to move whiskey into then-dry Alberta.
Emilio elicits Florence (who much prefers her Italian given-name Filumena) in a ruse to move liquor across the BC-Alberta border. The ruse involves her making day trips into BC on sunny afternoons with Emilio’s educated son, Steve. Young and charming, they pose as a romantic couple out for a Sunday drive.
You see where this is going… And so does Florence’s husband.
He betrays his wife and business associate, and during a solo run by Steve, he is shot by the APP. Fearing the worst, Emilio and Florence visit the APP constable involved in the raid, and shoot him dead. Soon enough, law enforcement catches up with Emilio and Florence, and they are tried and convicted of murdering a Police Officer, a Capital Offence in Canada at that time.
The Reception
In spite of the critical success of the opera, it did stir up controversy because the romanticized retelling of events presents Filumena as a victim of circumstance rather than as a cold-blooded and calculated murderer. Officer Lawson’s surviving family went on record as the loudest critics of the re-telling.
The opera, for me anyway, works quite well, and I think it stands up nicely against most contemporary operas. Following the success of Filumena, Estacio and Murrell collaborated on a second opera, Frobisher, which (I confess) wasn’t quite as good.
Maybe one of our “partner companies” will discover this opera and – who knows – give it a new staging.
The Performance
As far as I know, there have only been a few large productions of this opera - the Edmonton Opera cast and stage production were broadcast on CBC Television’s Opening Night anthology series March 9, 2006, and I happen to have recorded that performance on VHS. The below link is the downloaded audio from that VHS recording. I think the digital transfer is pretty good… Here’s an excerpt:
The same aria can be found on Laura Whelanès website: http://www.lwhalen.com/audiovideo.htm)
John ESCATCIO (*1966)
Filumena (2001-03)
Opera in two acts and 5 scenes
(Libretto: John Murrell)
CAST (Main Characters)
Filumena, Laura Whalen
Emilio, Gaétan Laperrière
Steve, David Pomeroy
Edmonton Opera Chorus
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
Robert Dean, conducting
Performance available on the Internet Archive at: http://archive.org/details/Filumena-Opera.
Bravo! Calgary Opera marks 40th anniversary
Contemporary Opera
As a lead-in to today’s OTF post and featured opera, I wanted to put this question to you - as it has been in one way or another elsewhere in this forum – what makes an opera work? What is it about this or that opera that makes it resonate with you, that allows it to make a lasting impression?
Sometimes the answer is something personal and nostalgic (like the first opera you heard or saw performed, or the one that got you hooked…) Sometimes, it’s the “escape” factor – opera is, after all, a medium (like film and stage) that provides an opportunity for us to escape the everyday, and sometimes come to realize our everyday problems can be pretty minor compared to some of the challenges opera protagonists have to deal with (albeit in an operatic, romanticized, way).
More often than not for me, it’s about the story. Does the story connect with me or not. Stories can connect because of their historical significance, their relevance to today’s world. Sometimes it’s the characters and how they are developed and portrayed (as sympathetic, or as scoundrels).
The reason why I bring this up is in the context of “contemporary opera”, and why for some reason contemporary opera (like contemporary music, or contemporary anything, really) always seem to get a bum rap when compared to, say, the “standard repertoire”. There’s something about familiarity, I guess, but I think it may be because people are sometimes (what am I saying… often times) put off by what I like to call “modern for the sake of modern”. It’s almost as though for a piece to have contemporary “credibility”, it has to avoid at all costs the motifs and approaches that have made past works successful. It’s not to say that Nixon in China has to sound like Puccini’s Turandot, but rather that if the plot devices and musical tricks used by verismo composers would have made sense to use, then why should Adams have chosen not to use them?
So where am I going with this? I guess itès time to get on with my topic for today.
Let’s start by a bit of background: in 2005, the Province of Alberta celebrated its centennial (having joined, along with Saskatchewan, the then-Dominion of Canada in 1905) and for one rare moment in redneck Alberta history, the Government thought it would do something “cultural” about it that didn’t necessarily involve either oil or cattle. One of these initiatives was the refurbishment of a pair of aging twin-facilities in Edmonton and Calgary (two auditoriums that were built in 1955 for the 50th anniversary of the same event), and threw some subsidies at its cash-strapped cultural institutions to put-on memorable events in the refurbished auditoria, home of the Calgary and Edmonton Operas.
The Calgary Opera (with the Banff Centre and tacit backing of its sister outfit in Edmonton) commissioned an opera (Read: http://filumena.johnestacio.com/about_opera.asp) . It had to be about Alberta. It had to feature Canadian performers. The Calgary Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence at the time, John Estacio, was given the challenge. What he did, with librettist John Murrell, was to set-up a workshop at the Banff Centre with opera singers and other collaborators, and Murrell suggested a particular episode in Alberta history. The episode was about Alberta, and resonated with the workshop participants because it had all the plot devices you need to make an opera work: it had a love triangle. It had betrayal. It had tragedy. It culminates with the gallows.
This was a contemporary (-ish) story, set during the Prohibition era.
To the credit of the collaborating artists at that workshop, they went along with Estacio’s vision to make it verismo-like rather than to make it coldly modern sounding. They banged out some tunes. When the workshop ended, Estacio had a couple of zingers in hand, and just needed to work out the entire score, with Murrell working out the final libretto.
Both the Calgary Philharmonic and the Edmonton Symphony “teased” some of these zingers – one of them “the Bootlegger’s Tarentella” was very well received. They handed the score to Bramwell Tovey, and he directed the World Premiere of the work at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium on February 1st 2003, well-ahead of the centennial year.
The True Story behind Filumena
In 1917, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police left Alberta in light of its increased responsibilities for national security during World War I. It was replaced by the newly created Alberta Provincial Police, which existed until 1932, when it was eliminated as a cost-cutting measure during the Great Depression and the subsequent return of the Mounties.
During that 15-year period, the APP was responsible for law enforcement across the province, except for the burgeoning towns of Calgary and Edmonton. In those rural areas, the APP was involved in solving disputes between landowners, and had to enforce a highly unpopular measure, prohibition. Alberta, as the US at the time, was “dry” whereas neighbouring British Columbia was not.
There was a lucrative commerce to be made, and many entrepreneurial individuals had a hand in smuggling liquor across provincial lines. Chief among them was “Emperor Pic”, Emilio Picariello, who had befriended an innkeeper and his wife, Florence Lassandro.
Bootlegging was a “family business” for the Picariellos, and Emilio’s son Steven would make runs through the Crowsnest Pass between BC and Alberta. During one of these runs, he was intercepted by the APP, and Picariello believed he had been killed in the process. The story is sketchy, but it is undeniable that Florence and Emilio were at the APP barracks in Coleman, Alberta when APP Corporal Stephen Lawson was shot and killed in front of this building on September 21, 1922. Both Lassandro and Picariello were tried and convicted of capital murder, and subsequently hanged at the penitentiary at Fort Saskatchewan om May 2nd, 1923.
Florence Lassandro is remembered today as the only woman hanged in Alberta – read more at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/...assandro1.html.
The Opera Version
(Official Synopsis: http://filumena.johnestacio.com/synopsis.asp)
Filumena is the story of an Italian immigrant teenager, Florence (Filumena) Lassandro, who was bethroved to a much older man. Florence and her husband operate a hotel near the Southern Alberta town of Lethbridge, which happens to be strategically close to the US border and at the foot of the Crowsnest Pass, which reaches through the Rockies into neighboring British-Columbia.
Oh, and I forgot, Florence’s husband is in cahoots with Emilio Picariello, an Italian “entrepreneur” who manages to move whiskey into then-dry Alberta.
Emilio elicits Florence (who much prefers her Italian given-name Filumena) in a ruse to move liquor across the BC-Alberta border. The ruse involves her making day trips into BC on sunny afternoons with Emilio’s educated son, Steve. Young and charming, they pose as a romantic couple out for a Sunday drive.
You see where this is going… And so does Florence’s husband.
He betrays his wife and business associate, and during a solo run by Steve, he is shot by the APP. Fearing the worst, Emilio and Florence visit the APP constable involved in the raid, and shoot him dead. Soon enough, law enforcement catches up with Emilio and Florence, and they are tried and convicted of murdering a Police Officer, a Capital Offence in Canada at that time.
The Reception
In spite of the critical success of the opera, it did stir up controversy because the romanticized retelling of events presents Filumena as a victim of circumstance rather than as a cold-blooded and calculated murderer. Officer Lawson’s surviving family went on record as the loudest critics of the re-telling.
The opera, for me anyway, works quite well, and I think it stands up nicely against most contemporary operas. Following the success of Filumena, Estacio and Murrell collaborated on a second opera, Frobisher, which (I confess) wasn’t quite as good.
Maybe one of our “partner companies” will discover this opera and – who knows – give it a new staging.
The Performance
As far as I know, there have only been a few large productions of this opera - the Edmonton Opera cast and stage production were broadcast on CBC Television’s Opening Night anthology series March 9, 2006, and I happen to have recorded that performance on VHS. The below link is the downloaded audio from that VHS recording. I think the digital transfer is pretty good… Here’s an excerpt:
The same aria can be found on Laura Whelanès website: http://www.lwhalen.com/audiovideo.htm)
John ESCATCIO (*1966)
Filumena (2001-03)
Opera in two acts and 5 scenes
(Libretto: John Murrell)
CAST (Main Characters)
Filumena, Laura Whalen
Emilio, Gaétan Laperrière
Steve, David Pomeroy
Edmonton Opera Chorus
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
Robert Dean, conducting
Performance available on the Internet Archive at: http://archive.org/details/Filumena-Opera.
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