Opera 5, one of several intriguing upstart Toronto companies aiming to make something new of an old artform, starts the season with its first show on an old-fashioned proscenium stage, at the Arts & Letters Club.
At the second of three performances, on Wednesday night, the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired trio of short operas aesthetically complemented the heavy carved-wood trusses of the club’s auditorium. Thursday’s final performance dovetails nicely with Hallowe’en, especially given the staging.
Aria Umezawa, one of the company’s co-founders, has assembled three short operas based on stories by Poe, and used the same cast and costumes — largely presented as escapees from a zombie movie — to weave the singers through the dark wood of Poe’s twisted imagination.
That staging, on the high school auditorium-sized stage heaped with empty wine bottles and various other pieces of detritus meant to evoke decadence and decay, seriously doesn’t work. It has a haphazard, amateur-theatrical feel that detracted from some otherwise fine singing.
The highlight of the evening was the premiere production of The Masque of Red Death, set to a Kurt Weill-meets-Tin Pan Alley score by young Toronto composer Cecilia Livingston. Accompanied by an eight-piece orchestra led by Constantine Caravassilis, the music bounced and bubbled and slithered along beguilingly, sounding very much as if from another place and time.
This work included some nice ensemble singing, which gave the six-person chorus something other to do than bump into each other ghoulishly on the treacherous stage.
The evening also featured some very fine singing (and acting) by two baritones we should take careful note of: Torontonian Adrian Kramer and American David Tinervia.
Mezzo Lucia Cesaroni was also a treat to listen to, but her diction, especially in the French-language setting of The Fall of the House of Usher by Claude Debussy, was terrible.
Another star throughout the evening, which began with the late American composer Daniel Pinkham’s Cask of Amontillado, was pianist Maika’i Nash who was an excellent music director as well as a 10-fingered piano orchestra during the Pinkham and Debussy operas.
Yes, there is some fine singing to hear, and, yes, this opera programme fits nicely with this week’s Hallowe’en celebrations, and Opera 5 has some interesting ideas, but the young company is also still busily climbing the opera world’s steep learning curve.
You can find out more about the company and its productions here.
John Terauds