ORLANDO/LUNAIRE devised by conductor Ashiq Aziz and director Patrick Eakin Young, with Scott Belluz and Carla Huhtanen. Presented by the Classical Music Consort/Opera Erratica in a shed behind 128 Sterling. Opens Sunday (August 22) and runs to August 28, 8 pm (no show August 24). $35, under 30 and seniors $20. 1-800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com. See listing.
Think opera is about big sets, fancy theatres and, at least once during the evening, a fat lady singing something you can’t understand?
Director Patrick Eakin Young wants to change your idea of the art form – using drag and commedia dell’arte elements.
He and conductor Ashiq Aziz have concocted an intriguing evening that blends Handel’s Italian-language baroque opera Orlando with Arnold Schoenberg’s 20th century atonal German cabaret/song cycle, Pierrot Lunaire.
“Ashiq and I want to wipe the slate clean, break all the preconceptions people have about opera,” says Young outside the post-industrial-area shed where he’s staging Orlando/Lunaire. “We want to break down the barriers some people have in terms of even trying to listen to opera audiences should come and experience the production solely in terms of the music and the story.
“This will be an exciting event no matter what we call it.”
He admits that he himself wasn’t attracted to opera until he started directing it, but now he thrives on working with singers and classical music texts.
Underground/Opera, the collaboration between the conductor (Classical Music Consort) and the director (Opera Erratica), began a few years ago with a Fringe production of Handel’s Acis And Galatea, in which Young’s projection design was as striking as the soloists’ singing and Aziz’s conducting. Last year they staged Purcell’s Dido And Aeneas.
For Orlando/Lunaire, the pair bring together works in two styles that don’t usually fit together. Orlando is the tale of a knight who goes mad when Angelica, the woman he loves, doesn’t return his affection. Pierrot Lunaire has no story per se, but provides a setting for the familiar black-and-white-dressed commedia figure who sighs helplessly for Colombina.
“But there’s a third figure in each story, someone loved by the woman,” says the director. “In Orlando, it’s Medoro in the Pierrot sequence, it’s Harlequin. Both stories are love triangles, and you get to see each through the lens of the other. But their musical styles are so different that putting them together creates the kind of disjunction that I think makes for exciting art.”
The lines are intentionally blurred, too, by the fact that Young’s performers are soprano Carla Huhtanen and countertenor Scott Belluz.
“Having those two high voices was a selling point for me. The two share the roles of all the characters, male and female, and their similar vocal range allows for another kind of gender-bending.
“I love the idea of gender play and the ambiguity of gender that this production suggests,” adds the director, who is drawn to drag culture and voguing. “It fits with the idea that a person can transform himself or herself by performing another role. After all, isn’t that what theatre is about?”
In a “theatre” with no wings – it’s a shed, lit largely by bare light bulbs – Belluz and Huhtanen change character and costumes (created by Toronto designer Heidi Ackerman) onstage, in full view of the audience.
A strong element of Underground/Opera productions has been Young’s projections. This time he’s using text more than pictures, in part to translate Pierrot’s German. But expect the projections to be more than mere translation how the words look on a scrim will be as important as what they say.
“Orlando/Lunaire is aimed at crossover audiences. People who go to an Arcade Fire concert or those who attend Opera Atelier or Tafelmusik are sure to discover something new and stimulating.
“It’s the encounter that matters. Even if not everything is to your taste, the evening is sure to change you.”
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
