John Fanning on The Pencil Salesman

Interview

June 25-July 3 the Westben Arts Festival Theatre presents the world premiere of Brian Finley's new opera, The Pencil Salesman. Canadian baritone John Fanning will sing the role of Boris, the inventor of the Personal Touch Typewriter, who develops a cynical relationship with the world's technological advancements. We chat with Fanning about playing a "Luddite", about working on a brand new opera, and about how technology dictates our own human interactions.

Violetta, haute couture, & sharing the opera stage with fashion

News

Combining fashion design and opera is like any use of cross-disciplinary art - it's about finding balance. Valentino wouldn't be a great choice for the costumes of Hänsel und Gretel, say, and perhaps Coppola wouldn't have been wise to choose a brand new work as her first foray into directing opera. Likewise, there's little room for homage to hip-hop in Dialoges des Carmélites, or to try adding the Can-Can in Wozzeck.

Royal Academy Opera's L'incoronazione di Poppea

Review

Most importantly, not a note can go by without meaning. Monteverdi is generous with hints; he's a master of word-painting, illuminating words like "sorrow" and "fly" with musical gestures that are almost too obvious to miss. Something like Poppea almost echoes that bit by George Carlin on the blues: paraphrased, he says, "it's not enough to know what notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played."

Robert Ames: Deep Minimalism & LCO

Interview

"I keep notes all the time of pieces that I want to do, and dreaming up programmes. There's an absolutely humongous list of composers, and specific pieces of music, different artists I'd work with, people in theatre, people in dance, electronic artists, certain films that I'm interested in that we'd love to do live scores for."

Morbid musings: art & death

Editorial

Does it mean that all art is rooted in the morbid? A desperate attempt to sweep the dust of life under a beautifully crafted rug? A shout into the constant turnover of individual humans sharing their time on Earth, asking "does anyone care that I'm here?"

In review: Sex Workers' Opera

Review

In the context of the show, these stories were dragged from the abstract, and into the specific. Stereotypes like The Average John (always with a mustache), the CEO who likes to be slapped around, and the "moral person" who broadcasts loudly his own preferences in his judgement of which forms of sex work toe the line of "appropriate", and which are downright lewd and dangerous.

5 important roles who don't get an aria

Editorial

There's no leading lady without a maid, right? No star tenor without his best friend? Not all operatic roles get their moment in the spotlight: just ask any comprimario. But there's even a grey area, between title role and character tenor, where there are important characters hanging out onstage saying important lines, but they're not granted a full-blown aria by the composer.

In review: Madam Butterfly at ENO

Review

A silent, stunning tableau, featuring dancer Ayano Honda in silhouette against a wash of saturated red, began the story; it gave way to a stage full of puppeteers, who spent the evening moving sets, providing ambient lighting, and playing a flock of birds. They smoothed the lines between the story's characters and the "unseen" bodies onstage, who also included three puppeteers bringing Cio-Cio San's son, Sorrow, to heartbreaking life.

Freedom of press & journalistic integrity

Editorial

In a story that was apparently about freedom of press, it's frustrating to read Lebrecht's posting of incomplete stories, full of opinions and phrases like "suppressed review," "protest," and "sniffing glue," all of which are clearly biased against the Canadian Opera Company. We're really glad to see how the COC was quick to be transparent, and to clarify the errors and omissions by Lebrecht.

One more reason we don't envy singers

Editorial

The story of Bartoli's Bernstein, plus Netrebko's evaded Norma, combine in an example of one big plight of opera singers today: they're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't. Bartoli did; she took a role that seemed an odd choice, and plenty of unfavourable reviews of McKinley's West Side Story seemed to have an undercurrent of "I told you so". She should have shown more self-awareness, more respect for the demands of Bernstein's score, right?