PYRAMUS AND THISBE by Barbara Monk Feldman, LAMENTO DARIANNA and IL COMBATTIMENTO DI TANCREDI E CLORINDA by Claudio Monteverdi (Canadian Opera Company). At the Four Seasons Centre (145 Queen West). Runs to November 7. $50-$435, some discounts and rush seats. 416-363-8231, coc.ca. Rating: NNNN
Pyramus And Thisbe brings together 400 years of opera in a visually and dramatically exciting evening that explores lovers torn apart as well as the importance of the poet.
The first two of the three pieces are by Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento DArianna, in which the eponymous classical Greek figure bemoans her abandonment by Theseus, and Il Combattimento Di Tancredi E Clorinda, a Crusades yarn in which a Christian fights and kills the armoured, unrecognized Saracen woman he loves.
In the third, Barbara Monk Feldman blends a variety of texts to explore, in a non-linear, abstract fashion, a tragic love story that echoes that of Romeo and Juliet.
In director Christopher Aldens ingenious staging, the three tales flow one into the next. The music, richly played by the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra under Johannes Debus, grows from a small continuo accompaniment to a full-sized ensemble, Sandra Horst shaping the final sections excellent chorus.
Beautifully acted and sung by Krisztina Szabo as the three women, Phillip Addis as their lovers and Owen McCausland as the tales narrator, the one-act production moves from single voice to three voices to 19 characters.
But Aldens work has the three principals onstage throughout, Addis initially as the male figure whos wronged Szabo, and McCausland as a figure who sits distraught and possibly drunk on the opposite side of the stage. Coming to life for the second section to sing most of the text, McCausland is Testo, the narrator of the story (choreographed by Tim Claydon as battle and sexual encounter) but also its deviser, the poet who creates the tale and keeps it alive through the ages.
In one striking moment, he lifts his chair and turns it around, the back slats becoming the strings of a lyre. Testo is transformed suggestively into the musician Orpheus not by chance, a version of that myths central image, Orpheus leading Eurydice from the underworld, appears at the evenings end.
Id argue, in fact, that McCauslands is the central character of the evening. Sleeping through most of the Arianna episode, he could conceivably be dreaming/creating the story as he slumbers. He takes over as storyteller in the second section, his words giving action to the other two. And while hes silent in the contemporary opera, he flows through its abstract movements, first tearing the lovers apart as he does the scarf and then suggestively uniting them at the finale.
Theres much more to admire here, including Paul Steinbergs painting-like, sliding set, lit superbly by JAX Messenger so that shadows create the main characters doubles, much as the eight couples of the chorus visually echo Pyramus and Thisbe. Terese Waddens costumes are more contemporary than period a scarf thats central to the action in all three stories becomes, in the narrators hands, both a prop and a striking means of storytelling.
The Tancred and Clorinda narrative is the most excitingly staged. At one point, Szabo moves from the floor her Clorindas just been mortally wounded by Tancred to stand on a chair in front of a huge patch of red wall. Our visual perspective changes: we are looking down on her as she lies bleeding to death, the wall a sea of her blood. Later, when Clorinda converts to Christianity, she moves into a crucifixion pose in a parallel gesture of conversion, Testo anoints himself with his own liquor bottle.
Feldmans composition features shifting, melodic fragments, muted as is the backdrop in this portion of the show. Its bits of meditative, introspective text are drawn from Ovid, Faulkner, Rilke and others. Melancholic and elegiac, the composition examines the moment of floating suspended between life and death the suggestion, though, is that love links both states.
The picture of a lion, an animal central to Ovids Pyramus and Thisbe tale, could suggest the dangers their forbidden love faces, but its an unnecessary element in this telling. More relevant to the production is the recurring image of the scarf in the Roman legend, the frightened Thisbe drops a veil that the lion rends, which prompts Pyramuss suicide when he discovers it.
Dont miss this thoughtful, at times enigmatic evening of operatic theatre.
