Latest news with #VancouverOpera
Vancouver Sun
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
Review: Vancouver Opera's Madama Butterfly puts a spin on Puccini's perennial favourite
Article content Vancouver Opera ends its 65th season with Puccini's perennial favourite Madama Butterfly, in an extended run of five partially double-cast performances. Article content The show opened Saturday evening in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to a full and enthusiastic house — no surprise, given Butterfly's enduring popularity and appeal. Article content But this isn't exactly Butterfly as seen in previous mountings of the work. Article content Article content Director Mo Zhou has made some telling changes to the mise-en-scènes, moving the setting from turn of the century Japan to the aftermath of the Second World War and the years of the American Occupation. This isn't Regieoper, in which an overriding directorial conceit becomes the justification for all manners of intervention. Article content Article content The slight shift in setting is an honest attempt at getting at the emotional heart of the story, a way of reclaiming the power and poignancy of a tale now slightly shopworn with constant repetition. Article content It works. Article content Zhou changes neither words nor music. True, costumes (from Kentucky Opera, Virginia Opera and Florentine Opera) are updated, but the setting (from Portland Opera) is traditional, attractive and effective, a case of having your cake and eating it too. Her most telling addition is a 'here are the facts' series of projections during the extended instrumental introduction to Act 3. Article content Article content During the run there will be two Cho-Cho-Sans and two Pinkertons: Karen Chia-Ling Ho and Adam Luther will sing the lead roles in two matinee performances. Opening night and subsequent evenings see Yasko Sato and Robert Watson as the leads. Article content Article content Watson is an effective Pinkerton: all brash adventurer in Act 1, snivelling coward in Act 3. His voice is attractive, and his sense of Italian style commendable. Article content Yasko Sata has a big, dramatic sound. On opening night, her delivery was occasionally uneven, but she owns the part, delivering the role with passion and intensity, just what director Zhou clearly wanted for the part. Article content The Suzuki, Cho-Cho-San's trusted maid/companion, was beautifully sung by Nozomi Kato; Julius Ahn was effectively loathsome as Goro, the so-called Marriage Broker; and Brett Polegato, a VSO stalwart, was especially fine as Sharpless, the American consul, an honest, even sympathetic man in a dishonest position. The extended interplay among Kato, Sata and Polegato made for an unusually rich and nuanced second act, which can often seem like operatic flyover country between the evocative opening and melodramatic denouement.
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
