{"id":56477,"date":"2018-10-24T22:39:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T02:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=56477"},"modified":"2018-10-24T22:51:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T02:51:06","slug":"feature-the-making-of-eugene-onegin-is-almost-as-operatic-as-the-work-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/10\/24\/feature-the-making-of-eugene-onegin-is-almost-as-operatic-as-the-work-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE | The Making Of Eugene Onegin Is Almost As Operatic As The Work Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Eugene
(Photo: Michael Cooper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A<\/span>lexander Neef<\/a> figures he knows how to open a Canadian Opera Company season: Use the big bang theory. Do something major right off the top and then, if you can, go big with something else.<\/p>\n

This year the COC director did both. And so far it seems to have worked \u2014 to a degree. Expectations for the 2018-2019 season were revved up months back for the world premiere of Hadrian<\/a>,<\/em> Rufus Wainwright\u2019s second opera (after Prima Donna<\/em>), the first libretto from playwright Daniel MacIvor and the promise of \u201ca bacchanalian banquet.\u201d\u00a0What resulted was deemed to be \u201cfairly accomplished\u201d in the words of one critic<\/a> which, to me, is praising with faint damnation and signalling a big bore.<\/p>\n

Before that though came the opening of Tchaikovsky\u2019s E<\/em><\/a>ugene Onegin,\u00a0<\/em>which seemed to me to be a much bigger deal, in fact, one of the biggest in recent COC history. It\u2019s nothing less than the local debut of one of the most heralded productions in recent history, one now owned by the COC and produced by the Toronto go-to duo of director Robert Carsen and designer Michael Levine.<\/p>\n

To give this a pop cultural twist, this Onegin<\/em> is opera\u2019s 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>.\u00a0(It continues Oct. 26, 30 and Nov. 3.)<\/p>\n

\"Eugene
Joyce El-Khoury as Tatyana and Gordon Bintner as Eugene Onegin (Photo: Michael Cooper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBeautiful to see,\u201d enthused New York Magazine critic Peter G. Davis during its second production at the New York\u2019s Metropolitan opera in 2007. \u201cOpera does not get more romantic than this.\u201d Actually, opera doesn\u2019t get any more Michael Levine than this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis happens a lot with Michael,\u201d says Neef. \u201cPeople walk out of one of his shows not knowing what hit them. It\u2019s like getting opera for the first time. People are blown away that this actually exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bit of background: While emerging as a world-leading set designer, Michael Levine has been able to play God with the supernal ability to fashion unimagined new universes and to resuscitate little known old opera plots. All of this heavenly hyperbole is mine (and opera\u2019s too, of course). It\u2019s never Levine\u2019s. For one thing, he believes in collaboration. For another, he sees set design as a means of \u201csearching for solutions\u201d lurking deep within the inner logic of a work. Divine guidance has little to do with it.<\/p>\n

“[Michael Levine’s] sets are a living, breathing organism.\u201d \u2014 Alexander Neef<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The solutions have been jaw-dropping over the course of nearly 40 years and many hundreds of productions. They started with his career-launching sets for George Bernard Shaw\u2019s Heartbreak House<\/em> at the Shaw Festival in 1985 where he animated a book-filled room so that its walls seemingly crept up and down. (I imagine Shaw himself would have green-lighted such wonderful scenographic legerdemain. In Caesar and Cleopatra,<\/em> Shaw\u2019s Caesar applauded book burning.)<\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s acutely calibrated sense of mischief surfaced early on, too. His set for Clare Boothe Luce\u2019s The Women,<\/em> a 1987 Royal Alexandra Theatre production, was filled with what appeared to be fashionable store boxes and cabinet drawers spilling over with red dresses and other \u201cpadded and soft\u201d objects.<\/p>\n

If Levine accomplishes little else in life, he will already have turned scenography\u2019s role from passive to active. His sets, occasionally with multiple moving parts, establish \u201cthe geometry of the eventual play,\u201d as formative British director Peter Brook describes the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Michael puts on stage gives a home to the piece,\u201d Neef goes on. \u201cHis sets are a living, breathing organism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dealing with stagecraft at Levine\u2019s level of creativity is no small achievement.<\/p>\n

Just ask Atom Egoyan.<\/p>\n

The occasion was the COC\u2019s 2015 production of Wagner\u2019s Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em>, directed by Egoyan and supported by Levine\u2019s abstract Wagernian-apocalyptic\/futuristic look. Opera was relatively new to Egoyan but dealing with hyper-creativity was not after some 30 years on the avant-garde fringe of the movie business. Nevertheless, working alongside Michael Levine opened the film-maker\u2019s eyes. \u201cI was aware of the need to step up my game,\u201d Egoyan says. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to be in his presence when he\u2019s in full creative mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have this beautiful story to tell and music that tells itself. You just have to assist it. It was a joyful moment when we realized that.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Michael Levine<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The making of Onegin <\/em>is almost as operatic as the work itself. Levine\u2019s original design was scuttled by Metropolitan Opera honchos shortly before the opening of its debut 1997 season in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was beside myself,\u201d Levine says, late in the evening on a phone call from Berlin to Paris a while back. \u201cThey wanted to paint some of the ideas I had sculpted. They wanted to change the design on us. It started to feel old-fashioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shocked at having to ditch so much carefully prepared preliminary work, Levine and Carsen went on a frantic 24-hour creative binge, stripping their intricately planned preliminary work of excess after excess. \u00a0Many carefully researched historical touches \u2014 the original Onegin <\/em>had its world premiere March 29, 1879, at Moscow\u2019s Maly Theatre \u2014 were jettisoned.\u00a0 Yet the more they ditched, the more they understood what was revealed. \u2013 the \u201clightness of space itself,\u201d Levine remembers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have this beautiful story to tell and music that tells itself, \u201che continues. \u201cYou just have to assist it. It was a joyful moment when we realized that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Eugene
(l-r, foreground) Oleg Tsibulko as Prince Gremin and Gordon Bintner as Eugene Onegin (Photo: Michael Cooper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Initially, the Levine pared-to-the-bone scenography was panned by the New York Times\u2019s critic Bernard Holland on March 15, 1997, for being the sort of opera \u201cmade to hide from its audiences.\u201d (The singing was too light for the production, Carsen now admits, with several of the key voices due for retirement in the following months.) But word started spreading.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my favourite stagings in all of opera,\u201d one critic for Almaviva said.<\/p>\n

This is Levine\u2019s Greatest Hits Year beginning with the July revival at the Aix-en-Provence festival of his revolutionary 2014 production of Mozart\u2019s The Magic Flute,<\/em> directed by Simon McBurney, another frequent Levine partner.<\/p>\n

The old architecture in Aix races dizzily from the Romanesque to the Baroque. But Levine and McBurney channelled the city\u2019s contemporary reputation as France\u2019s new media digital mecca. Central to their set was what can only be described as an enormous tablet crawling with singers, with the surface glowing on and off, the gizmo tilting this way and that.<\/p>\n

Bernard Foccroulle watched audiences respond. \u201cThere\u2019s something very generous about what they\u2019ve done,\u201d says the Aix festival\u2019s out-going director, retiring to Brittany to the life of a serious composer. \u201cThe way it ends, with the performers with their arms open to the audience as if to say, \u2018we are all part of the same community.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

McBurney adds: \u201cMichael and I fundamentally believe that music can fundamentally change consciousness. With our scenography, we ended up with something that could move and respond and change with the music. This is not a literal place or a symbolic place he creates. This is a kinetic place, a moving response to the music itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to his oval face, his high forehead, a hairline in full retreat and earnest way of talking, Levine has drawn comparisons to Charlie Brown. It\u2019s entirely unfair to both. Charlie is fixed forever where he is, and as who he is. Finding Michael Levine fixed anywhere, even to the highs and lows of his own history, is nearly impossible.<\/p>\n

A Forest Hill boy from a well-off family \u2014 his father was a senior executive in the clothing trade \u2014 Levine went to high school at Thornton Hall and emerged fascinated with art history. To this day, few other designers do deeper research than he does.<\/p>\n

\u201cInspiration?\u201d he says. \u201cWe get that from doing our homework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following a year at Ontario College of Art and Design (now OCAD University), Levine then went on to earn a 1980 diploma from London\u2019s highly-regarded Central School of Art and Design. After another spell in Toronto, he set off to Glasgow and the funky Citizens Theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople walk out of one of his shows not knowing what hit them. It\u2019s like getting opera for the first time. People are blown away that this actually exists.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Neef<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Operating in what was once one of the toughest neighbourhoods in all of Scotland, the company was energized by veteran director Philip Prowse to emphasize theatre\u2019s visual aspects.
\nBack in Canada \u2014 he still maintains homes in Toronto and in London \u2014 he worked for the Shaw Festival, Tarragon and Centre Stage. And a fascinated media began to chart his ascent. In the early \u201980s, he garnered nominations for Olivier and Tony awards in London and Broadway respectively for a London production of Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s Strange Interlude.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1986, he was lauded as Toronto theatre\u2019s \u201cnew step forward\u201d in the O\u2019Keefe Centre program, while the same year Saturday Night<\/em> called him one of its \u201cbright lights.\u201d Yet, by 2005 Saturday Night <\/em>said he \u201cno longer qualifies as theatre\u2019s wunderkind set designer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t set out to be an opera director,\u201d Levine tells me via Skype from Berlin during a break in rehearsals. \u201cI started work in the theatre and still think of myself as a theatre designer, someone who designs for theatre, opera, dance\u2026whatever. I like opera, but I also love working on plays and new creations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpera tends to contract a couple of years in advance which is why I do quite a lot of them. I then have to fit theatre pieces in between as they tend to contract a few months in advance. Lotfi [Mansouri] asked me to design Idomeneo <\/em>[for his COC debut], but it wasn\u2019t until I started working with Robert that I began to do more in opera.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, we\u2019ve done more than 25 productions together, and more than half of them are still around and are still being revived,\u201d Carsen says. \u201cIt\u2019s because he\u2019s not limited in any way,\u201d adds the director credited with \u201cdiscovering\u201d Levine some 30 years ago for work done for the Royal Alexandra Theatre. \u201cWith Michael, I don\u2019t think in terms of an aesthetic. We do completely different things. We don\u2019t have a look. Michael has this signal gift in that he has a talent to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"(L-R)
(L-R) Joseph Kaiser as Lensky and Gordon Bintner as Eugene Onegin (Photo: Michael Cooper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Carsen was waiting to fly from Edinburgh to Berlin as we talked. He was to meet Levine a day later to begin work on a \u201cHitchcockian\u201d vision of Eric Korngold\u2019s Mahlerian Die tote Stadt<\/em> for Berlin\u2019s Komische Oper.<\/p>\n

Levine\u2019s workload after Die tote Stadt continues later this year with a Sweeney Todd for Opernhaus Zurich \u2014 one of Levine\u2019s favoured stages \u2014 directed by Andreas Homoki and starting Dec. 9, with Sir Bryn Terfel, the Welsh bass-baritone who has made the bloodthirsty role as much his as Johnny Depp made it his on film.<\/p>\n

Theatre and opera were once local, \u00a0with productions integral to the local economy, drawing on local painters, basket weavers and food suppliers. To today\u2019s crowds, opera might just as well come from deep space. (A recent New Yorker<\/em> cartoon showed a lone figure on stage saying: \u201cTonight\u2019s Walk\u00fcre <\/em>features actual Norse Gods and takes place in the sky.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s audiences \u201care more and more unfamiliar with what we do,\u201d says Neef.<\/p>\n

Levine \u2014 turning 57-years-old Nov.5 \u2014 meets this audience half-way, drawing on the spirit of Peter Brook, the formative British director whose 1968 treatise, The Empty Space<\/em>, is to theatre what Marshal McLuhan\u2019s 1964 Understanding Media<\/em> is to electronic media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe set is the geometry of the eventual play,\u201d wrote Brook, who\u2019s still actively producing work. \u201cA true theatre designer will think of his designs as being all the time in motion, in action, in relation to what the actor brings to a scene as it unfolds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka appeared in two Levine-designed operas, the COC\u2019s earlier production of Die Walk\u00fcre<\/em> (2004 and 2006) and Francis Poulenc\u2019s Dialogues des Carmelites<\/em> (2013). Everything about the Wagner was earthy and grounded. But for the Poulenc, \u201cthe set was non-existent\u201d for a look of \u201cstark, desolate beauty,\u201d remembers Pieczonka in a recent email. \u201cIt was truly religious to perform this opera each night.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, the Met\u2019s marketing-savvy new general manager, Peter Gelb, announced a Eugene Onegin<\/em> production of his own, produced by Deborah Warner and to be directed by Fiona Shaw. But soon enough the splash Gelb wanted to make became a muddle of indirection.<\/p>\n

But before that, Alexander Neef made Gelb a deal. Let the COC buy the Met\u2019s original, 1997 production. \u201cIf, of course,\u201d Neef said, \u201cyou are going to throw it away.” So, in a plot with endless twists, Toronto audiences will see a world-famous production, now years old, crafted by its own creative stars and owned and controlled by its very own opera house \u2014 for the very first time.<\/p>\n

Sounds unbelievable. Over the top. Unlikely. Operatic, even.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a plot with endless twists, Toronto audiences experience a world-famous production of Eugene Onegin, crafted by its own creative stars and owned and controlled by its very own opera house \u2014 for the very first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":56513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14761,4967,43],"tags":[223,402,22960,23632],"yst_prominent_words":[22965,22963,22968,23692,22971,22970,22967,23691,23617,22964,22961,22301,9352,22298,22972,22969,6886,23724,6911,23717],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/Eugene_Onegin.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-eGV","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56477"}],"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\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56477"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56524,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56477\/revisions\/56524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56477"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=56477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}