In our first opera excursion (it was actually an operetta), we talked about the wild ‘n’ whacky world of Die Fledermaus, which tells the story of people attending a ball while pretending to be people they aren’t, and who all get super drunk in the end.
The idea, in part, was to bring an operetta originally written for the masses… to the Edmonton masses who love different types of local theatre yet still give opera little more than a second thought. But they can’t all be comedies. So in his quest to spread the operatic love, Artistic Director Joel Ivany reached out to Daisy Evans who, through her company Theatre of Sound and with collaborator Stephen Higgins, has brought her stripped-down rendition of Bluebeard’s Castle to seven other cities since premiering it London in 2021.
“The first time we made it in London, it was pretty basic with resources, because we were still in a sort of semi-lockdown, and we had certain restrictions. But we managed to create this really beautiful show that has since gone on to tour the world,” the award-winning director says. Evans met Ivany while he ran Against the Grain Theatre, which brought this production to Toronto in 2023, shortly before Ivany headed west with his accessible-opera philosophy — a philosophy Evans already followed.
“One of the central tenets of Theatre of Sound was about bringing opera to new audiences,” Evans says. “And we do that through imagining the opera in different and more modern terms, so that it’s a very relevant, modern piece of artwork that makes a comment on society as it is, rather than a kind of historical practice that’s based in the past.”
The original production, composed by Béla Bartók in 1911, is a fairy tale that sees Bluebeard bring his new wife, Judith, home from their wedding. All her family members have told her not to marry him because he’s dangerous, but she doesn’t listen because she loves him. She’s then taken through a castle with seven locked doors, behind each of which waits a new kind of fresh horror. At the final door, we meet his three past wives, who appear to have all been murdered. But Bluebeard professes his love for Judith, begging her not to open the doors and put him through any more emotional pain.
“Bartók’s is a very symbolic, symbolist piece, kind of an impressionist score that’s less specific, but nevertheless still pretty terrifying,” Evans explains. “We wanted to think about how that story would work in a more modern setting, and we came up with the idea of: Rather than an old man and a young girl, it’s an old man and an old woman who have been married for 40 years, and behind each door is a memory of that life together. But she’s actually living with dementia, so she’s no longer able to access these memories. Bluebeard has become her carer, and he’s living with the emotion and loneliness of caring for somebody living with dementia, so it immediately becomes a much more accessible and relatable story, because it’s kind of a reflection of society as it continues to stand with an aging population and overly strained health services.”
Evans translated the original Hungarian-sung pieces to English, further upping the opera’s accessibility, and reduced the usual 90-to-110-person orchestra to seven, with the haunting piano playing prominently throughout the 55-minute show. These artistic decisions are no doubt affected by budget restraints, but they are mainly a way to reach out to people still under the impression that modern opera is something they just won’t “get.”
“To me, it’s not that the art form isn’t accessible — it’s just that people are not aware of it,” Evans says. “Opera is one of the most giving and emotionally restorative art forms there is, and the wider world just doesn’t know that. Back 100 years ago, opera was the thing to do. It’s not anymore, and I think one of the things we have to do is make it more reflective of its audience, and kind of smash that elitist prejudice of how opera is represented in the wider media. Because if we don’t reach more people, then the art form won’t survive.”
As a long-time instructor, Taina Lorenz has reached people of all ages and abilities through classical music, and helps them play it everyday. A former grade-school music teacher, and now director of the Cosmopolitan Music Society, Lorenz focused her PhD (in Music Education and Cognition) on “how we communicate as people, and how do we communicate in a music environment? And so that’s really become my focus through my career: as a community leader through music.”
One of the things she’s learned as a musical leader, regarding the public’s perception of opera, is that “our imaginations tend to be far more scary than the reality — if we’ve grown up with the idea that opera is all these massive, gilded sets with the fat lady and the horns, in languages that we don’t understand that run 25 hours long, then when you hear the word opera, you aren’t thinking Bugs Bunny, you’re thinking something that’s antiquated and only for the very smart, or the very fancy.”
The idea of opera in most people’s heads overwhelms before they even give Edmonton’s stripped-down operas a chance, Lorenz continues. “And this is where [Ivany] is so brilliant, because he’s getting away from that stereotypical, mega-opera production, and paring it down, putting it in languages that we understand. Like Die Fledermaus — I’ve actually played that opera, I was in the pit orchestra, but his rendition is the most I’ve ever understood it, because of how he staged it.”
Despite seeing many well-reviewed, “one-off” operas over her life, Lorenz only became a season-ticket holder in the last few years, specifically because of how Ivany’s vision “blew her away” at the first show she saw. So what’s her pitch to someone who’s opera curious, or even opera adverse?
“Opera is for the people — if you want to wear jeans, wear jeans. If you want to drink beer, drink beer. If no one wants to go with you, show up by yourself. Some of those stigmas of the classism associated with opera don’t actually exist. And now as a season ticket holder, I can see that there’s more young people in the seats, there are more people taking selfies and engaging with the music. The imagined ‘typical opera goer’ has changed — it’s regular people, and that’s part of the fun.”
Dress up, dress down — just come as you are to Bluebeard’s Castle, February 1, 4, 6 and 7.
