View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (April 1999, week 2) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 12:10:49 -0400 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Jacques Brel is..., Winter Garden, Toronto, 12Apr99 April, huh. It tipped down snow a couple of days ago and is still intermittently freezing. Still, the exchange rate is also cool. Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris Michael Burgess, Susan Henley, Jeff Hyslop, Louise Pitre Concept, English lyrics and additional material by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman Director Elly Stone Music director David Warrack I confess that I had the vague idea that Jacques Brel wrote Frere gorille until thirty seconds into this long-running staged complation of his songs. Georges Bressons, who did, is another Francophone song-writing genius (but that's another story which has even more to do with The golden ass, also on this week in Toronto). Brel is the one who does Sondeim-insightful lyrics on the miseries of love, men's vanity and insecurity and women's sentimental unreliability, and war, set to rawly artful smoky bar-room music that recalls Astor Piazolla. Brel also has more than a hint of Lennon-McCartney sentiment and surreal humour, shown for example in Timid Frieda, which could be called Eleanor Rigby's leaving home. This is the only sign to someone who doesn't know the chanson tradition that he belongs to the 1960s rather than the 1930s, though this performance included a number of updated references. This show consists of performances of an excellent selection of songs, arranged for a small orchestra with synthesiser and four singers, on a single set (sparse ruins of a town square maybe). The songs are described as scenes in the programme, but the overall effect is more like a Lieder recital, with the songs held together by related and contrasting themes. The performers include a very few spoken lines to make transition, these seemed unnecessary. A characteristic transition involved a comic duet between two men both waiting for Madeleine (not the repentant one), who never shows up, followed by I loved, sung by a woman who tells an ex-lover she remembers all the details of their affair, but not his name. Jeff Hyslop and, even more, Michael Burgess, unfortunately embodied all the cruel stereotypes about Canadian actors. Both sing quite well, and get the words over, but they seemed unable to deliver any emotion except bumptiousness. This tended to turn everything into, at best, vaudeville humour. This was fine for Funeral Tango, when the dear departed describes the hypocritical thoughts of the mourners, and Timid Frieda, staged as a Salvation Army trio getting increasingly steamed up until they go off to bed together. But it misfired terribly for the updated Los Toros, which begins as a satire on machismo, and breath in the bull ring, and turns in the last verse into a denunciation of war. Hyslop's performance of this consisted of comic poncing around, and he couldn't carry off the final catalogue of slaughter of humans, with Verdun replaced by a litany ending with Rwanda and Kosovo. This could have been heart-breaking, but instead it was slightly embarassing. Susan Henley was closer to what Brel's words require, and Louise Pitre was almost stunning. She has a great y lower range, with the huskiness and little lisp of Glynis Johns, and a grand, belty but not quite vulgar upper range. She did a fine job of the big numbers, notably My childhood, a realistic account of a growing into young womanhood and suddenly destroyed by the loss of her lover in the war, Sons of, and Marieke, a folk-song like evocation of the low countries. The Winter Garden, by the way, takes its name seriously. It has a moon shining through painted trees in the auditorium, trompe-l'oeil rose trellises on all the walls and a roof and balcony propped up by tree trunks with (partly real) leaves forming the ceiling. There is talk of turning it into a cabaret or dinner theatre space, which seems more appropriate for its shallow space than mainstream theatre and opera. But it will have to be non-smoking (good), and certainly no crepes flambes. Regards, Helen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.