Probably one of the highlights of tonights panel was, after a great introduction by Stephan Bonfield and fantastic insight from the director, conductor and one of the singers, doctoral candidate Brianna Wells wrapped it all up, speaking really passionately about the piece from a scholars perspective, but also on this really relatable level (people who can geek out about opera while keeping it engaging are all right in our books!) Other great bits of information, insight and trivia include: • The rich Almaviva disguises himself as the poor student Lindoro, because he wants Rosina to love him for himself, not for his money. Lin, as in linen, and doro, (of gold). Almaviva disguises himself as a guy with pants/pockets of gold. • You know Figaros beginning aria (you know you know it, its the Bugs Bunny one). Director Allison Grant was listening to a friend sing it on the radio when she was also driving on Torontos 401 highway — next thing she knew, she was driving 150 km/h. Its the kind of music that just gets your heart going. • Conductor Robert Dean wanted to see Tosca at age eight. His parents wisely took him to The Barber of Seville instead; its now an opera that has resonated with him at different parts of his life and career. • The Barber of Seville overture was actually recycled from another opera. Need more proof? The poor second oboe has to come in for the night, play the overture, and then doesnt play in the rest of The Barber of Seville score. • Singer Phillip Addis (Figaro) had some really interesting tangents tonight. He studied tuba before switching to voice, and hes only performed in one other Rossini opera (Italian Girl in Algers), so he made some interesting comparisons between the two Rossini characters hes sung. • Part of Brianna Wells PhD research explanation: Im interesting in finding opera where we dont expect opera to be. ... Opera lives in between. For example, between music and drama, and between opera lovers and people who really, really, really dislike it. When preparing for this panel, she also went out and read all three of the original Beaumarchais plays! • She also introduced the audience to Opera Cage Matches on YouTube (which kind of sound amazing). Now that we have the Internet, people can have these conversations (about their favourite singers and who sang it bettter) into perpetuity. • Possibly the quote of the night from Allison Grant, on the Act 1 finale: The entire stage explodes. Thats what we do in our show. (But, if you ask our tech director, the Jube prefers that we leave the place all in one piece at the end!)
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 03:32:45 +0000
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