{"id":113892,"date":"2025-04-28T10:54:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T14:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=113892"},"modified":"2025-04-29T10:10:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T14:10:06","slug":"scrutiny-world-premiere-soundstreams-garden-vanished-pleasures-operatically-resurrects-artist-derek-jarmans-queer-experimental-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/04\/28\/scrutiny-world-premiere-soundstreams-garden-vanished-pleasures-operatically-resurrects-artist-derek-jarmans-queer-experimental-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | The World Premiere of SoundStreams\u2019 Garden of Vanished Pleasures Operatically Resurrects Artist Derek Jarman\u2019s Queer & Experimental Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L:
L: Countertenor Daniel Cabena in Soundstreams\u2019 opera The Garden of Vanished Pleasures (Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann); R: Vocalists Daniel Cabena, Hillary Tufford, Mireille Asselin, and Danika Loren in Soundstreams\u2019 opera The Garden of Vanished Pleasures (Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soundstreams: The Garden of Vanished Pleasures. Tim Albery, director; Hyejin Kwon, music director & piano; Mireille Asselin, soprano; Danika Lor\u00e8n, soprano; Hillary Tufford, mezzo-soprano; Daniel Cabena, counter-tenor; Brenna Hardy-Kavanagh, viola; Amahl Arulanandam, cello. April 25, 2025, Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre, Canadian Stage, Toronto.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When a work of art is inspired or influenced by the work and life of another artist, a prospective spectator \u2014 unfamiliar with its history, its context \u2014 might hesitate to enter.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t the case with Soundstreams\u2019 Garden of Vanished Pleasures, an opera directed by Tim Albery, with music by Cecilia Livingston and Donna McKevitt and featuring texts from various artists, chief among them the late artist-activist Derek Jarman.<\/p>\n

In 1986, at age 47, after being diagnosed with HIV, Jarman moved to Prospect Cottage, in Dungeness, where he ravenously tended to and created within its garden, about which he wrote a journal published as Modern Nature and made the 1990 film The Garden starring Tilda Swinton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to share this emptiness with you,\u201d Jarman announces at the outset of the whacky film, \u201cnot fill the silence with false notes or put tracks through the void. I want to share this wilderness of failure. The others have build you a highway fast lanes in both directions. I offer you a journey without direction, uncertainty and no sweet conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

I began to wonder if this opera might possibly re-create Jarman\u2019s empty yet wild essence, to transform it, make it lush.<\/p>\n

The Production<\/h3>\n

When you enter the theatre, the show is already under way: on the left sits music director and pianist Hyejin Kwon<\/strong>, and on the right: violist Brenna Hardy-Kavanagh<\/strong> and cellist Amahl Arulanandam<\/strong> warming up their strings. In the centre of the stage is a bed covered in white sheets, four white metal chairs, a cluster of stones and a metal basin with water in it. A screen is laid over the back of the stage, where, during the show\u2019s 90 uninterrupted minutes and over 20 arias, projections of colours, images and title cards aid you through its various transitions.<\/p>\n

It takes a moment of process all these elements before your gaze might find its way to the top corner of the stage, where Daniel Cabena<\/strong> \u2014 an enigmatic countertenor whose range contains a multitude of delights \u2014 has tucked himself into the shadows, quietly stirring. Then, one by one, soprano Danika Lor\u00e8n<\/strong>, mezzo-soprano Hillary Tufford<\/strong>, and soprano Mireille Asselin<\/strong> emerge onto stage wearing dark blue uniforms suitable for gardening but also, later, in a sequence set in a hospital, for nursing too, since both professions require the conditions of care and attention.<\/p>\n

As they sang, each of their voices revealed their strengths. In \u2018Kalypso\u2019, Lor\u00e8n brought a welcome baroqueness. Whereas Tufford, in reciting the poem \u2018Yellow\u2019, and most notably in the song \u2018Snow,\u2019 radiated with a shrill strength reminiscent of the robin she sings of. But it was Asselin \u2014 who stepped to the fore in \u2018Parting,\u2019 shined bright in \u2018Two Dreams,\u2019 and affectingly sounded the final note in \u2018I Walk This Garden\u2019 \u2014 who elevated the pitch of the show: not only for her vocal performance, but for the ferocity of her physical performance, which embodied her personas from their diva demeanour to their tragic torment. \u201cSpeck of dust,\u201d she empathically sang, her attention drifting away and returning to repeat itself again and again; but from her mouth the phrase resonated anew each time.<\/p>\n

Like his voice, Cabena \u2014 tall, lanky and long-haired \u2014 sumptuously plays an androgynous figure at the centre of the show, \u201ca ghost, a Mister-See-through,\u201d who draws us to the smallest of gestures: wrapping a shawl; removing a hair tie; looking in a mirror; drinking red wine; smearing on red lipstick; or satirically emphasizing the diction of words like \u201ccock\u201d (\u2018What If?\u2019) and \u201cliquidated\u201d (\u2018The System\u2019) so the audience hears the implications, must bear the weight of his utterance.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Sebastiane,\u2019 an ode to the martyred saint and queer icon, Cabena\u2019s crystalline voice reached its height and, remarkably, sustained itself the entire duration, managing to conjure up a religious scene, the shadow his profile projected on the reddish-brown brick walls on either side of him. It was as if hearing an angel sing, as though we were delivered unto a state of divinity.<\/p>\n

\"Vocalists
Vocalists Hillary Tufford, Daniel Cabena,Danika Loren, and Mireille Asselin\u00a0 in Soundstreams\u2019 opera The Garden of Vanished Pleasures (Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Garden<\/h3>\n

The title of the opera derives from the end of Jarman\u2019s The Garden, \u201cWe die so silently. My gillyflower, roses, violets blue. Sweet garden of vanished pleasures, please come back next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was interested to see how the show \u2014 which one might describe with adjectives like experimental, poetic, abstract, and I\u2019d add: mystic, queer, biting \u2014 might illuminate the phrase. Near the end, when Asselin sings the line, the other three performers are lying on the ground. Sleeping, I thought; then, having seen the images of protests on screen a little bit earlier, I recalled the die-ins\/sleep-ins that ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) performed in the late 80s, and the flowers that Jarman spoke could now be viewed as a metaphor for a lost generation.<\/p>\n

The garden is a symbol \u2014 personal and political \u2014 where one can cultivate that which lives, dies and, by gravity and grace, re-generate itself; to make sense of the disorder that life can often put in our path, a form to bring back beauty into this wide wounded world.<\/p>\n

For a show with so many elements \u2014 three musicians, four performers, the projection and a changing set \u2014 knowing where to look can, at times, be overwhelming; but I suspected that this was, like Jarman\u2019s film, Albery\u2019s intention, which was confirmed with \u2018Two Dreams\u2019 and \u2018Mercy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Suddenly, in these sequences, on the left, Kwon\u2019s glittering piano enlivens, but, on the right, so do Hardy-Kavanagh and Arulanandam\u2019s descending, discordant then harmoniously plucked strings. In the centre are the performers, entering into the dialogue between the poles with their voices no longer so distinct but weaving themselves into and out of each other. There is no one place to focus our attention, so instead we are invited to oscillate between these three points, in addition to projections behind them, briefly turning the experience into an electric, satisfying activity that embeds us into its well-tended, fertile soil lined with large stones.<\/p>\n

In the end, in refracting the life of an artist to operatic proportions, Garden of Vanished Pleasures layers an intricate audio-visual experience marked by absence, but wild at heart.<\/p>\n

By Nirris Nagendrarajah for Ludwig-Van<\/strong><\/p>\n

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