Following its world début in Manchester, Luminato co-commissioned opera Prima Donna, by Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright opens at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto tonight.
Today's performance is sold-out, but there are still tickets available for the subsequent three shows.
I'll be reviewing tonight, and, I have to say, it's one of the most high-pressure reviews I've had to face in my five-year stint as music critic at the Star.
My biggest problem is prejudice. Given all the hype over this opera, it's very difficult to me to walk into the Elgin Theatre without a whole lot of preconceptions rattling around in my brain. The biggest is an antipathy toward its creator.
Bravo! TV is airing a 55-minute version of the making-of documentary tonight at 9 p.m. (EDST). The title says it all: Rufus Wainwright: Prima Donna. It's well worth watching, but it didn't help me get over the impression that Wainwright is a supremely self-obsessed person with a hugely inflated sense of who he is, and what the role of the composer is in the collaborative world of classical music and opera.
Over the past five years, my greatest pleasure has come from meeting and talking to singers, conductors, instrumentalists and composers -- the bulk of whom are not only deeply engaged in their personal journeys, but also deeply attuned to the people and dynamics around them.
Absolutely nothing in the world of opera (or music, or theatre, or publishing) happens in isolation. The finished product that we consume has been carefully crafted, often over many years, by many pairs of hands.
Prima Donna, the opera, is no different. Except that Wainwright appears to think that it is all about him. Oh, his poor, tortured soul. Oh, the inability of other people to relate to his vision. Oh, the beauty of putting all of one's personal suffering into song.
Ultimately, I have to put Wainwright aside before tonight's curtain goes up. I have to appreciate the opera as an opera -- a combination of singers (including some mighty fine Canadians), orchestra, conductor and staging, wrapped around a story and a musical arc. The personal stuff will need to get left on the sidewalk.
Here is a pirate video of Wainwright singing the aria "Les feux d'artifice t'appellent" from Prima Donna at a Niagara winery concert last summer:
First it was High School Musical. Now it's Glee giving a new generation a fresh appreciation for the pleasures of singing and dancing on stage.
Here's the opening of an article on the positive influence of Glee on some typical suburban high school students, from Saturday's Boston Globe (for the full article, click here):
Chino Lopez, a junior at Waltham High School, didn’t mean to join the school’s show choir, Music Unlimited. Two of his friends, who were members, dragged him along.
Still, he thought it would be smart to keep it to himself. “People would make fun of me, and I didn’t know what to say back,’’ said Lopez, 18. “They’d say, like, ‘It’s for gay people.’ ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ ’’
Around the middle of the year, though, things started to change. “Now they come up to me, and say, like, ‘I take it back,’ ’’ Lopez said.
Could this have anything to do with “Glee,’’ the Fox television series about an Ohio high school glee club full of losers? A club that bears a striking resemblance to Music Unlimited? Lopez prefers to think the change of heart occurs when his classmates see how good his show choir is. Still, he says “Glee’’ has made a huge difference in his life. The series “brought more of my personality out,’’ said Lopez, who had never danced before. “I used to be really shy. I used to have stage fright. I used to be scared, a lot. Now I’m not scared of going up on stage anymore.’’
“Glee,’’ which just returned after a four-month hiatus, has struck a chord among high school choral students. It has emboldened students who are tired of being seen as dorky, and bolstered music programs across the country, with students lobbying for show choirs at their own schools.
The National Association for Music Education recently polled choral teachers to see whether the Fox show has had an impact on their music programs: 43 percent said it had, reporting that students had been turning out in record numbers for auditions and pleading for choral arrangements of songs from the show.
Here's further inspiration, from the other coast: the Sound Express show choir from Carlsbad High School in California, preparing for a competition in Burbank earlier this year (there's a nice a cappella moment about 4 minutes in:
I was one of those high school kids who lived for band practice, choir practice and drama group. Life began after 3:30 p.m., as far as I was concerned. (I think back on everything I did, including piano lessons and, in my senior year, taking on organist duties at church, and I wonder how the day managed to have so many hours back then.)
My TV heroes were the kids on Fame. Their hopes and fears felt like a mirror of my own roiling teenage hormones.
So it's no surprise that I've joined the legions of fans of the new TV series Glee. Much of the adult stuff is way more cynical than anything I would've seen way back when, but the teenage angst -- and ability to channel it and overcome it through music and movement -- is exactly the same.
Just as Fame helped validate my decidedly unpopular artsy cravings, there's a whole new generation of musical drama queens who can gain strength and comfort from realising that there are so many more like-minded souls out there.
There's a nice little story in The New York Times on how the theatre community has been drawn to Glee, like Neil Patrick Harris to an awards show.
Here, to cap my little burst of nostalgia, is Valerie Landsburg (who is 51 now) singing her stuff in Fame:
Today begins the two-week countdown to a festival of organ music being organized in Toronto as part of the 100th anniversary celebration and convention of the Royal Canadian College of Organists.
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