Latest news with #CanadianOperaCompany
Toronto Star
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
This Tchaikovsky opera of gale-force emotionality gets an exceptional cast and conductor in its Canadian Opera Company revival
There are many, many reasons to see the Canadian Opera Company's latest revival of 'Eugene Onegin,' which opened Friday at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
CBC
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Ambur Braid got her dream opera role — and singing it still makes her cry
Ambur Braid always wanted to be a singer, but it wasn't until she saw Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck as an undergraduate student that she knew she wanted to pursue opera as her career. Now, the Canadian soprano has come full circle with a leading role in the Canadian Opera Company's new production of Wozzeck. "It's so visceral. This show hits you," Braid say in an interview with Q 's Tom Power. "At the end, there is this incredible moment that's so simple. And it's heartbreaking. And it just destroyed me. And I said, I need to be a part of this." Even after countless rehearsals, Braid is still struck by the power of Wozzeck. Partially inspired by World War One, the opera tells the story of soldiers and citizens living in a militaristic small town in the early 20th century. "I just cry every time. It's so beautiful when it resolves." WATCH | The Canadian Opera Company's trailer for Wozzeck: Braid says its themes are timeless — both narratively and musically. "I mean, it's society now," she explains. "It's the wealthy taking advantage of the poor. It's poverty. It's jealousy. It's love. It's murder…. But humans are humans, and this is the beauty about art, right? We're reflecting it all." Wozzeck is a groundbreaking piece of work because it was one of the first atonal operas. This means that the music isn't in one particular key — and it often sounds off-kilter and strange. That atonality allows the audience to hear the world from the perspective of the character Wozzeck. "It's very hard to memorize the correct notes, because nothing is expected," Braid tells Power. "It has this oral landscape of what Wozzeck hears. So think of yourself as being totally drunk … and you hear music in a different way. And it's this very trippy experience." Wozzeck is a demanding show. It's both extremely technical, and intensely emotional. But Braid is more than ready: she has dedicated her whole life to performing at this level. "You can liken it to being in a monastery at times, because you do have to be so cautious about everything you do, so aware of what's happening with your body and your health," she says. "And then, then you have the constant learning. The work that is never done…. I mean, my life is planned out until 2028, 29 now. And that is a wild thing to think about. Every week off it's, 'When can my coach come? When are we doing this?' And you live for the work."
Chicago Tribune
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Seven Veils' review: The operatics are everywhere in this backstage melodrama
Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan scored a fair-sized sensation with his 1996 Canadian Opera Company production of the Richard Strauss opera 'Salome' — the one about the stepdaughter of the depraved King Herod, her Dance of the Seven Veils, Salome's lust for John the Baptist and the circumstances forcing Salome to settle for a kiss on the lips of her beloved's beheaded head instead. Psychosexually forward, Egoyan's staging went on to Houston Grand Opera and Vancouver Opera, which co-produced the 'Salome' production with the Canadian company. Egoyan then revisited 'Salome' in 2023. But he had more thoughts about the material he wanted to realize for a new medium. Re-using the physical production, dominated by Derek McLane's strikingly angular scenic design, Egoyan had an idea for a movie about a director, new to opera, restaging her late mentor and semi-secret lover's triumph while a big pot of backstage operatics simmers away. 'Seven Veils,' starring Amanda Seyfried, is the result. The themes are deadly serious: In the fictional narrative cooked up by Egoyan, staging this 'Salome' finds Seyfried's fraught character confronting the memory of her abuser-father and her childhood sexual trauma while exploring how life can illuminate and amplify art. At the same time, Egoyan's impulses lean toward a kind of wry melodrama, and a slew of narrative developments and hidden agendas. From what we see of the Egoyan stage production of 'Salome' in 'Seven Veils,' it looks like a winner; the movie, unfortunately, is a mixed bag, though still fairly absorbing. 'Small but meaningful': That's how Jeanine, Seyfried's character, describes the tweaks she has in mind for the 'Salome' restaging she has been hired to direct. Her late mentor, who encouraged Jeanine's ideas while exploiting her sexually, represents a legendary figure, especially to his widow (Lanette Ware), now the opera company's general manager. She's likely aware of the affair her husband had with Jeanine. Meantime, there are present-day affairs underway in this busy operatic troupe, and also a considerable number of underminers. At one point, Jeanine sits for an interview with a podcaster and it takes roughly eight seconds of screen time for him to establish his bona fides as a world-class weasel. Jeanine also is dealing with an uncertain marriage (they're in a tentative open-it-up phase) and a mother living with Alzheimer's, whose caregiver is involved with Jeanine's semi-quasi-separated husband. It's a lot. Seyfried, who has worked with writer-director Egoyan before on the super-ripe erotic drama 'Chloe' (2009), finesses some zig-zaggy tonal swerves confidently and well. The writing, however, wobbles. And in that regard the screenplay's inventions are wholly unlike Egoyan's own staging of 'Salome,' as judged by what we see of it in the cinematic riff 'Seven Veils.' Running time: 1:47
New York Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Seven Veils' Review: Private Anguish in Public View
Only the Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan ('Exotica,' 'The Sweet Hereafter') could have made the movie 'Seven Veils.' His signature obsessions — the ripple effects of trauma, the use of video as evidence, private anguish played out in public view — pervade every frame. The film centers on a theater director, Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), who is remounting a production of Strauss's opera 'Salomé' that she had worked on as a student with a mentor, Charles, who is never seen. The new assignment comes from Charles's widow, Beatrice (Lanette Ware), who manages the opera company and surely knows that Jeanine and Charles were having an affair back then. What's more, during the old production, Charles had exploited Jeanine's experience of childhood abuse, vampirically drawing out her memories of being terrorized by her father and integrating those details into 'Salomé.' The restaging requires Jeanine to faithfully replicate a troubling production while contradictorily making it her own, to expel her demons — all without disclosing her personal stake to the cast. She also has to manage present-day problems, notably a baritone (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) who is a liability around women. There's more than a hint of self-reflexivity to 'Seven Veils,' which incorporates Egoyan's own remounting of 'Salomé' for the Canadian Opera Company from 2023. That production's singers play fictionalized versions of themselves. In short, 'Seven Veils' offers plenty to think about. But fans who mourn that Egoyan's dramatic instincts have slipped in recent years won't quite be getting a return to form. Seyfried in particular seems out of place, and although the apparent miscasting might be intentional (Jeanine, giving an interview to a podcaster, pointedly explains that she is older than she looks), certain plot points and motifs, such as home movies featuring a blindfold and tangerines, approach self-parody. Seven VeilsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.
