{"id":53071,"date":"2018-04-20T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T21:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=53071"},"modified":"2018-04-25T14:09:57","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T18:09:57","slug":"scrutiny-the-return-of-ulysses-a-big-departure-for-opera-atelier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/04\/20\/scrutiny-the-return-of-ulysses-a-big-departure-for-opera-atelier\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | The Return of Ulysses Marks A Major Departure For Opera Atelier"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kevin
Kevin Skelton (Jupiter, above) and Meghan Lindsay (Minerva). (Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses: Opera Atelier. Directed by Marshall Pynkoski. Tafelmusik Orchestra conducted by David Fallis. Through Apr. 28 at the Elgin Theatre.\u00a0operaatelier.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Opera Atelier\u2019s production of Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria<\/em> (The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland) by the resurgent star of early music drama Claudio Monteverdi is easily one of the most dramatically unusual works that Opera Atelier has mounted in recent years.\u00a0 Certainly one of the most popular entertainments in the newly-minted public opera city of Venice, the work\u2019s themes of virtue, fortune and godly intervention clearly appealed to Venetians at the dawn of the public opera house era.<\/p>\n

Italians likely cared not a whit for the basis of the story or even its multiple adaptations and changes made to the epic by librettist Giacomo Badoaro and ultimately by Monteverdi himself.\u00a0 It is much, much more likely they wanted a story about virtue and fidelity (Penelope) in the face of cruel fate, and an equally steadfast, divinely-shipwrecked title character battling for a final time his supernatural enemy Neptune, who is still angered at the blinding of his son Cyclops by the arrogant Ulysses.<\/p>\n

We hear nothing of Ulysses\u2019 adventures from Monteverdi or even much of his epic story, his cunning character, let alone one reference in Act III to his semi-divine nature (he is the grandson of Mercury,\u00a0the messenger god).\u00a0 Rather he is portrayed as a victim of the gods\u2019 capricious, all-too-human bickering among themselves over Helen\u2019s abduction by Paris of Troy, an \u00fcber-conflict that enveloped much of the Mediterranean for a decade in what came to be called the Trojan War.\u00a0 Though the gods may have started it (see the Judgement of Paris), humans decidedly were left to finish the dirty job. In this light, I far prefer Cavalli\u2019s narrative\/musical masterpiece La Didone, written only a few years after Ulisse.<\/p>\n

\"The
The company of Ulysses. (Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So we begin ten years after the fall of Troy, more or less with the last of the war\u2019s loose ends to play out, namely Ulysses washing up on shore after a vengeful Neptune, played by a commandingly antagonistic Stephen Hegedus, shipwrecks the Phaeacian boat as punishment for their conveyance of Ulysses to Ithica.<\/p>\n

In reality, the opera really revolves around Penelope\u2019s principled and unflagging faithfulness to her husband, long presumed dead, in the face of slimeball entreaties from utterly salacious and unprincipled suitors.\u00a0 Her unstinting refusal to acquiesce to the craven courtiers and other usurious hangers-on who want her land, titles and kingdom was likely yet another audience pleaser in its day.\u00a0 While Italians wanted true love withstanding all in the face of impossible odds, they preferred sanitized versions of their classical myths with just the right amounts of love, scandal and gore \u2014 not too much, never too little. The suitors get their just desserts in the end.<\/p>\n

In effect, Italian nobility and opera-goers weren’t too hung up on history and never let it get in the way of a good emergent story.\u00a0 Much like the Greeks two thousand years before them, they cared about a simple premise that would make them cry at all the right points, especially at the end.\u00a0 The archetype of Penelope waiting at her loom (not shown in this production) furnished those virtues in abundance and served more as a dramatic excuse than adherence to literature.\u00a0 Instead of being called The Return of Ulysses<\/em>, the opera ought to have been called The Virtue of Penelope.<\/p>\n

In every way, Mireille Lebel was the Penelope Monteverdi would have wanted.\u00a0 Delicate, firm of resolve, unflagging in her belief that she will not be fooled into believing Ulysses was still alive, even when he stands before her at the end of the opera, she is nevertheless sagacious in her courtly demeanour especially when she hands the bow to a disguised Ulysses, under command from Minerva to play the part of beggar.\u00a0 Penelope wisely proclaims that even a man in rags can possess strength too \u2014 one of many fine acting moments from Lebel.\u00a0 And her singing from first note to last made me believe she was an eternally sorrowful Penelope, deceived a hundred times by imitators and charlatans that her husband was still alive.<\/p>\n

\"Left
Left to right: Carla Huhtanen (Fortuna), Douglas Williams (Time), Isaiah Bell (Human Frailty), and Meghan Lindsay (Cupid). Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And here is where the difficulties begin.\u00a0 If you go to Ulisse to see Homer, you’ll be sadly disappointed.\u00a0 However, if you go to see a classic morality tale with exquisite music, daring harmonies, unerringly fine singing and resplendent dance of the finest performative calibre, then you’re in for a good, if slightly long night at the Elgin Theatre where you’ll come away with more than your money\u2019s worth of early opera entertainment.<\/p>\n

One of the most entertaining roles to watch is Douglas Williams\u2019 he-man Antinoo, who does everything to invade Penelope\u2019s life with nauseating repulsiveness.\u00a0 He was disgusting and beautiful at the same time, a wonderful musical-dramatic achievement, especially when he fails to string the bow and realizes that it can only be done with the semi-divine strength of Ulysses.<\/p>\n

Christopher Enns gives us a sympathetic Telemaco, and Aaron Sheehan is a sweet Eumete (no longer the swineherd Eumaeus in the original Homeric epic).\u00a0 He is also the perfect steward in Act II and general nice-guy go-between, nimble of voice and secure in his characterization.\u00a0 He holds the stage conspicuously well and we all want to see him in more roles soon.\u00a0 Isaiah Bell is a craven Eurimaco, led by the lustful Melanto played convincingly by Carla Huhtanen.\u00a0 Meghan Lindsay sang a powerful goddess Minerva.<\/p>\n

Kudos goes to lighting designer Michelle Ramsay\u2019s perfectly measured lightning chaos when the suitors are slain, an ideal complement to the Artists of the Atelier Ballet leaping appropriately to their pierced deaths, courtesy of the usual consummate choreography provided by Jeanette Lajeunesse Zingg.\u00a0 And speaking of dance (and I love to), I enjoyed the concluding moresca and the two-step passamezzo moderno near the beginning of Act II for the women, with authentic castanets and bells, a sign of Spain\u2019s cultural invasion of the Italian courts during that time. The men performed a dazzling compound duple Saltarello to follow.\u00a0 The more dance, the better.<\/p>\n

\"Company
Company of The Return of Ulysses. (Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Monteverdi\u2019s retelling of Homer runs mostly, if not entirely, on the composer\u2019s considerably adventurous score. It appears that Monteverdi took control of the libretto, apparently to flex some creative license as to when and how he could write musically sensuous duets, multiple rising chromatic lines to isolate emotional moments of considerable intensity and to switch moods and affects on a dime.\u00a0 These techniques were mostly a holdover from his turn-of-the-century madrigal-writing days and his consummate mastery of them worked well.\u00a0 Monteverdi\u2019s Ulisse was at times conservative but very often highly forward-looking too, and that demanded sensitive musical readings which the entire cast and orchestra delivered with aplomb.<\/p>\n

But, in spite of the production\u2019s many gems and director Marshall Pynkoski\u2019s tautly hewn labours that stuck conspicuously closely to the score and the modified libretto\u2019s intentions, the broader narrative problems with Monteverdi\u2019s work don’t really evaporate.<\/p>\n

The bow-stringing scene was one such example.\u00a0 Considered the first apex of the opera\u2019s dramatic arc, the scene is hard to pull off.\u00a0 Here, Ulysses seemed positively unheroic, not due to Pynkoski\u2019s direction, but due to the dialogues aside and ariosos he is assigned.\u00a0 A mere pawn of Minerva\u2019s power, and least of all a mighty warrior and skilled sailor, this Ulysses owes his homecoming to divine intervention and is less an agent of his own action and more beneficiary of a dea ex machina pulling his strings \u2014 certainly not what the epic poem intended. The scene falls dramatically flat in contrast to what it could be:\u00a0 the return of a hero who ought to bring the \u201coh no\u201d moment that confronts the crass courtiers with their own mortality \u2014 surely vengeance is at hand, but where is the musical power of that quintessentially dramatic moment?\u00a0 And let’s not even mention that this \u201chero\u201d is meant to shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads to win the favour of Penelope.\u00a0 Love, in this context, surely is meant to be far more noble.<\/p>\n

Vocally, however, Monteverdi assigns Ulysses a powerful diversity of emotions to navigate throughout the entire opera.\u00a0 Kre\u0161imir \u0160picer has the ideal timbre and the requisite vocal security to match at all registers of the extreme ranges we find in Monteverdian heroic roles.\u00a0 \u0160picer rainbowed a lovely midrange, purveyed an emotional lower baritone and a ringing tenor in his upper extension.\u00a0His is a natural voice for the role, and he understood its emotional nuances well \u2014 a master of early operatic, melodic art.<\/p>\n

\"Company
Company of The Return of Ulysses. (Photo: Bruce Zinger)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The opera\u2019s second apex is Penelope\u2019s recognition of her husband.\u00a0 At long last, she realizes who he is in the face of overwhelming evidence, but only when he describes a detail of her private bedroom that she would recognize as something only her husband could know.\u00a0 It is a lovely moment, musically exquisite even as a suitable end to the opera, a prototype to the Nero\/Poppea duet that would close Monteverdi\u2019s last work a few years later.<\/p>\n

Yet none of it is dramatically satisfying somehow to rescue it from anti-climax.\u00a0 It is merely \u2026. sweet sounding.\u00a0 I strongly identify with the opera\u2019s music, and I find Pynkoski\u2019s directorial solutions eminently practical and appealing to a contemporary audience, but the work\u2019s naturally embedded mythopoetic impact is lacking and often void.\u00a0 I’m going again on Saturday, but mainly for the music, David Fallis\u2019s unerring conducting plus gorgeous lute\/harp\/harpsichord continuo, the dancing and the fine singing.<\/p>\n

In the end, opera can very often be about just those things, and there is no doubt that Ulisse, for all its dramatic issues, works modestly well as a simple story about love, disguise, and fidelity.<\/p>\n

And in this way Opera Atelier has strung a stiff bow indeed and overcome the odds to accurately hit its mark.<\/p>\n

Update: April 23, 9:20 a.m. A previous version incorrectly stated\u00a0Douglas Williams was playing <\/em>Eurimaco, when he was playing the role of Antinoo.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Instead of being called The Return of Ulysses, the opera ought to have been called The Virtue of Penelope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":53077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14761,43,52,63],"tags":[2494,18735],"yst_prominent_words":[13085,13112,18902,18738,9070,18736,11682,18727,6835,9082,18730,6886,8476,18729,13110,13109,18728,18196,9064,18197],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/04\/180417_04706.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-dNZ","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53071"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53561,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53071\/revisions\/53561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53071"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=53071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}