Hh13 | Opera and chamber music intersect at Banff’s Interplay program
ALBERTA — Building on a history of innovation in musical theatre at the Rocky Mountain arts incubator
WORDS BY GIANMARCO SEGATO
When the Banff Centre’s chamber music and opera program, Interplay, welcomes over 50 singers, composers, stage directors, librettists, writers, and musicians this June, they’ll be the latest in a long line of artists who have flocked to the fabled Rocky Mountain arts hub with a musical theatre tradition stretching back to 1949. That year, Italian conductor Ernesto Vinci was hired from Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music to create Banff’s first opera program, attracting 28 students. In 1952, Banff presented the Canadian premiere of what was then an operatic novelty in Canada, Henry Purcell’s now ubiquitous Baroque gem, Dido and Aeneas. During those early years, the repertoire was mainly taken from the standard Western European canon: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (1954), Rossini’s Barber of Seville (1958), and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1968). It wasn’t until 1972 that a Canadian work appeared, Healey Willan’s Deirdre which had seen its CBC premiere in 1947.
Banff’s archive of house programs represents a veritable who’s who of Canadian and international opera talent. Canada’s most successful opera singers cut their teeth at the program: Ben Heppner, Adrianne Pieczonka, Richard Margison, Barbara Hannigan, Alan Monk, and Wendy Nielsen all appeared. Celebrated stage directors such as Colin Graham and Brain Macdonald, legendary Czech stage designer Joseph Svoboda, costume designer Suzanne Mess, as well as conductors Mario Bernardi and David Agler, were all strong presences in the program’s first few decades.
During its 75-year history, Banff’s opera program has gone through a number of changes in focus. The centrality of the standard repertoire in its earlier history reflects the social makeup of the classical music scene in Canada at the time. Ex-pat European musicians were at the helm of most burgeoning opera companies, symphonic orchestras, and university music faculties. The main aim was to somehow establish these institutions, and given their origins, their leaders naturally turned to established repertoire from their home countries.
A distinct shift is apparent in the 1980s with the appearance of 20th century and more contemporary works like Stravinsky’s The Rake's Progress and Canadian composer John Beckwith’s The Shivaree (both in 1982), an all-20th century playbill in 1984 including Bernstein’s West Side Story and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the world premiere of Quentin Doolittle’s Boiler Room Suite in 1989. This drive to focus on more contemporary repertoire culminated in the early 2000s with big, full-scale commissions going to Canadian composer and librettist John Estacio and John Murrell with their Filumena (2003), Frobisher (2007,) and Lillian Alling (2011).
It is this more progressive track of the program’s history that leads directly to 2024’s celebration of opera and chamber music: Interplay. Summer opera training programs are traditionally geared towards producing a polished staging of a canonical masterpiece. Interplay’s goal, on the other hand, is “to capture the emotional essence of chamber work, whether that be in the form of instrumental pieces or new operas.” Unusual for an opera program, participants will be mentored by more established artists from both the instrumental and vocal realms.
On the chamber music side, participant instrumentalists and singers will work with composers to develop and premiere new chamber works. Working sessions will be led by ensembles like South Korea’s Arete Quartet as well as musicians Cristina Gómez Godoy (principal oboist of Staatskapelle Berlin), flautist Paolo Bortolussi who specialises in contemporary repertoire and celebrated French pianist Eric Le Sage. Singers will have the opportunity to work with world-renowned vocalists such as international star soprano Lisette Oropesa, longtime Banff mentor Karen Slack and Canadian mezzo-soprano Marion Newman, newly-announced voice faculty member at the University of Victoria.
In addition to their chamber music collaborations, the singers will participate in two opera productions. Poul Rouders’ 1998 opera, The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Margaret Atwood’s renowned 1985 dystopian novel. At Banff, it will be presented in a new chamber version by composer Daniel Schlosberg, Music Director of New York’s Heartbeat Opera. Rouders’ opera premiered to great acclaim at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Opera in 2000, a staging that subsequently transferred to the English National Opera in 2003 and then to the Canadian Opera Company in 2004. Buoyed by the success of the Hulu television series based on Atwood’s tale, the opera has seen a spate of more recent productions including new stagings at the English National Opera (2022), Royal Danish Opera (2022), and this fall at San Francisco Opera.
The summer’s second opera is Indians on Vacation by Métis/French-Canadian composer Ian Cusson and Alberta librettist Royce Vavrek. Based on Thomas King’s comedic novel, it tells the story of middle-aged couple Mimi and Bird as they face ageing and each other on a spontaneous trip to Prague. Edmonton Opera first workshopped the piece as part of their Wild Rose Opera Project during the depths of the 2021 pandemic. Indians on Vacation was part of a series of four new, short operas composed by four composers with connections to Alberta. Banff voice faculty member Marion Newman sang Mimi in that video presentation and will revisit the role this summer.
This year, emerging and early-career arts writers will be embedded in the program for the first time. They will have the opportunity to write and document new opera creations and potentially have their work published in Canadian arts publications like Cannopy and Opera Canada. Never losing sight that the program also allows its artists to recharge in one of Canada’s most beautiful natural settings, singers can let loose in a more informal setting when they perform at an Opera Pub held at the Royal Canadian Legion #26 Colonel Moore Branch in Banff. As Artistic Director Joel Ivany, Director of Music Megumi Masaki, and Director of Theatre Arts Amiel Gladstone mention in their welcoming remarks, they hope coming to Banff “fosters connections, explores new musical territories and embraces collaborative artistry” for a new generation of versatile and dynamic opera artists.