Opera in LoveOpera Valentine 2009

Friday, February 13, and Saturday, February 14, 6:00 p.m. for 6:30 p.m.The Italian Canadian Cultural Association, 2629 Agricola Street

FEBRUARY 2009 ISSUE NO. 27

For All

serenades at the table to a lady and to a gentleman, ElviraGonnella’s “The Game” – always challenging but alwaysfun, the nightly raffle basket, and, of course, the famousSilent Auction with its astonishing array of wines, crafts,and special offers on cruises, get-away holidays, anddinner in your home with the Italian chef.

Speaking of Chef Lanfranco Nardi, here is the menu forthis year’s Opera Valentine four-course gourmet meal:

Antipasto: Con amore dal Piemonte(with love from the Piemonte Region)Scrippelle ripiene al salmone e asparagiCrêpes stuffed with salmon and asparagus in a cheese sauce

Pasta: Con amore dall’Emilia(with love from the Emilia Romagna Region)Fettuccine al ragùFettuccine pasta with meat sauce

Main Course: Con amore dal Lazio(with love from the Lazio Region)Brasato di manzo al vinoBraised strip loin in a wine sauce

Purea di patate e verdure mistePuréed potatoes and mixed vegetables

Insalata mistaMixed salad with Italian vinaigrette

Dessert : Con amore dal Veneto(with love from the Veneto Region)Tiramisù Heaven in your mouth

In response to last year’s enthusiastic response to thecatering, the Club, and the cantabile, our most popularannual fundraising gala, Opera Valentine, resumes itsformer two-night presentation. This year’s theme “Operain Love” is again under the direction of Nina Scott-Stoddart. Four singers who have favored OperaValentine guests in former seasons will return to entertain

diners with solos and ensembles fromgreat opera.

Nina Scott-Stoddart as mezzosoprano comes to this eventimmediately from directingthe Dalhousie OperaWorkshop production ofOffenbach’s Orpheus in the

Underworld ; Amber Bishop, now pursuingher career in New Brunswick, will be the

soprano; Toronto tenorLenard Whiting is well-knownto Nova Scotia audiences through hisappearances with the South Shore Opera;baritone Jason Parkhill will beoffering his final performancein Halifax this season prior tohis taking up residence in

British Columbia. Dalhousiestudent Josh Whelan will also sing, as partof his prize winning success in the 2008Kiwanis Festival Opera Class. Frances Royle ispianist.

All the features that make Opera Valentine such ananticipated annual “hit” will be there awaiting the gala’sguests: the charming atmospheric décor, bidding for the

Nina Scott-Stoddart

Amber Bishop

Lenard Whiting

Jason Parkhill

continued on page 2

Library Lectures FeatureItalian Opera

Introductory Talks to the Metropolitan OperaHigh Definition Broadcasts Season 2008-2009 with

Dr. Walter H. Kemp, Artistic Director,Opera Nova Scotia

Tuesday Afternoons, 2:00-3:30 p.mThe Keshen Goodman Public Library

330 Lacewood Drive, Halifax

Experience and appreciate opera on a whole new level, asOpera Nova Scotia Artistic Director Dr Walter H. Kemptalks on the context, story and musical aspects of each ofthe operas to be telecast from the Metropolitan Opera atEmpire Theatres Park Lane, Dartmouth Crossing, andother Nova Scotia locations.

Feb. 3 Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti)March 3 Madama Butterfly (Puccini)March 17 La Somnambula (Bellini)May 5 La Cenerentola (Rossini)

These talks are free, and the Public is cordially invited toattend. No tickets or reservations required. For moreinformation call (902) 490-6410.

Looking for SilentAuction Items

I am looking for lots of treasuresthat we can sell at the Opera

Valentine 2009 Silent Auction. If you have leads oncompanies or individuals that might like to donate to us,please call me at 852-4208, or if you have items that youwould like to donate (new or in good shape), please dropthem off at the Opera office or call me and I will try toarrange to pick them up.

Valda Kemp

Opera in Love (continued)

Dalhousie Workshop’sOffenbach

For their 2009 Production the students of the DalhousieUniversity Department of Music will stage Offenbach’ssatirical romp Orpheus in the Underworld Thursday Feb. 5through Saturday Feb. 7, 7:30 p.m., with matinee at2:00 p.m., Sunday Feb. 8, The Sir James Dunn Theatre,Dal Arts Centre.

Director is Nina Scott-Stoddart , with conductor GaryEwer and pianist Dean Bradshaw. Heading the doublecast are Rebecca Topp and Mary-Claire Sanderson(Eurydice), Josh Whelan and Jonathon Kirby (Jupiter),Jeremy Butcher and Owen McCausland (Orpheus). Fordetails of further double casting call the Dal MusicDepartment at 494-2418.

General admission tickets are $15.00 and $10.00,available from the Dal Arts Centre Box Office (494-3820or 1-800-874-1669 ).

Zuppa Continues to ExploreOrpheus Myth

Zuppa Theatre (formerly Circus Theatre), who madesuch a tremendously effective contribution to the ONS2007 production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, havecontinued to entertain creative thoughts on their workinterpreting the Orpheus myth. Audiences who attendedthe Gluck opera will be interested to discover how thiscollaboration has stirred the energies of the Zuppa artistsby attending their production of a new contemporary“take” on the myth: Poor Boy at the Neptune StudioTheatre, running February 10 to March 1. Poor Boy isdirected by Alex McLean and stars Ben Stone, SusanLeblanc-Crawford, Claire Gallant, Stewart Legere andKathryn McCormack. A live musical score has beenprepared by Jason MacIsaac and David Christensen, withcostume and lighting design by Leesa Hamilton andLouisa Adamson respectively. Tickets are between $15.00and $35.00 and are on sale now through the NeptuneTheatre box office.

In Poor Boy a Pop sensation has lost his lover, a radicalrock diva. He abandons his music and nosedives into self-delusion and self-destruction. But as Zuppa puts it, “in hiscomically absurd and desperately tragic journey, thepeople he meets and the people who follow him won’t lethim forget the life he is trying to escape.” For showtimedetails call 429-7070.

Cash bar is available, for a fine selection of Italian wineschosen especially for the event by ICCA.

Whether you are chasing away the Friday 13 voodoos orcelebrating the charms of Cupid’s day, you will be guaranteeda memorable evening at Opera Valentine.

For “Opera in Love” do not delayReserve your places now, today!

Tickets: $80.00, incl. HST and $30.00 tax receiptFor reservations call Sheila Andrecyck, 445-5768

Valda Kemp, Producer

Counter-tenor Featured inMarch Informoperal

On Sunday March 1, 2:30 p.m.,Andrew Pickett, recently returnedto Halifax after studies andperformances in the UnitedKingdom, will present a lecture-recital, “The Counter-tenor inOpera: Baroque to Britten,” in theJudith Grant Room of theMaritime Conservatory ofPerforming Arts. Accompanist willbe Jennifer King.

A native of New Brunswick,Andrew received his Master ofMusic in Vocal Literature and Performance, Universityof Western Ontario, and then proceeded to The RoyalCollege of Music, London, England where he obtainedhis Graduate Diploma studying with Andrew Watts. Hehas coached with such notable experts in the vocalBaroque as Emma Kirkby-Jones, James Bowman,Michael Chance and Daniel Taylor.

Andrew Pickett(Photo by Helen Tansey)

The first ONS Informoperal of the Season, Jan. 18, wasan unqualified success, with nearly 100 people in LilianPiercey Hall experiencing a vivid concert rendition ofRachmaninoff's one act opera Aleko, sung in Russian,with Peter Allen supplying a brilliantly executed pianoreduction of the orchestral score. Effective portrayalswere offered by Gregory Servant, Beth Hagerman, Jason

His repertoire includes performance roles in operas byMonteverdi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Hasse, Handel, Purcelland the contemporary composer Jonathon Dove. He is afounding member of the vocal consort "The 1607Ensemble" and of the period ensemble "My Lady'sChamber,” was Lay Clerk in the Manchester CathedralChoir and from 2000-2004 a member of the TafelmusikChamber Choir. In the UK he was soloist in concert choralworks by Purcell, Handel, Orff, and Bach (Mass in b minorand St. John Passion). He was a Britten-Pears Young Artistand Brighton Early Music Festival Young Artist.

ONS is delighted to welcome Andrew back to Halifax,and to present him in what will be an exciting andrewarding experience of the true sound of the Baroque.

As usual, admission is on a “Pay-As-You-Can” basis,with open reception to follow.

January Informoperal an Outstanding Success

Davis, Kathryn Servant and Neil Robertson, with supportfrom the Walter Kemp Singers. The audience respondedwith enthusiastic applause and a spontaneous standingovation. Prof. John Barnstead of the Dalhousie RussianDepartment offered a delightfully-styled preface to thepresentation.

ONS Spring Production 2009

Stravinsky, The Rake's ProgressTickets will go on sale March 1

Dalhousie Arts Centre Box OfficeCall 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669

At left: The soloists andchorus of the January 18concert presentation of Aleko.Photo by Stan Salsman.

Jason Parkhill to Leave Halifax

Jason Parkhill has made his name synonymous with operain Halifax. As a founding member of the Nova ScotiaOpera Association he brought his ideals to bear on theproblems and pleasures attached to developing a basis forprofessional opera performance in this Province. Hiscontributions on the Board and “on the boards” wereequally significant in this regard, imprinting his presenceon the memories of his audiences in our Galas, “OperaFor All,” as Ford in Falstaff, Arbace in Idomeneo, and mostmovingly as King Melchior in Amahl and the Night Visitors.

After coming to Halifax from Ontario, Jason made astrong impression with his performances with the NSG&S Society (starting with Bunthorne in Patience), atDalhousie (as Gianni Schicchi, Leporello, among others)and in Peter Lieberson’sAshoka’s Dream. Havingproceeded to HarttCollege, Connecticut forfurther vocal studies hereturned to the MaritimeConservatory as a Facultymember in vocalperformance,Kindermusic, and operaappreciation. His serviceas Conservatory BoardChair and convener oftwo communityconferences on the state ofperforming arts education inNova Scotia demonstrated hisconcerns for the effectiveness of the arts within thecultural climate. As our Newsletter’s Quizmaster he hasteased his readers with appropriate wit and query.

He is about to leave Halifax for Victoria, BritishColumbia, where his wife Jenny has achieved a fineappointment in orthopaedics. His farewell performanceswill be at Opera Valentine, but we all hope he will pursuea career of continuing “Farewell” performances here foryears to come.

Everyone at Opera Nova Scotia says “Thank you,Jason, and best wishes to you and your wonderful family!”.

Walter H. Kemp

Opera For All!Layout by David Keenan

Newsletter of Opera Nova Scotia6199 Chebucto Road, Halifax NS B3L 1K7

Tel. (902) 425-8586www.nsopera.org e-mail: info@nsopera.org

Opera QuizB y J a s o n P a r k h i l l

Addio

I’m sorry to say that I’m leaving you – myfamily and I are moving to Victoria thisspring. Some fond memories of a few ofmy mentors who have given much forprofessional opera in Nova Scotia…

1. Can you name four of the six founding boarddirectors of Nova Scotia Opera Association in 2000?

2. Who is the only performer who has been in all of the“Opera Valentines” since the very first one in 2001?

3. Who produced our production of Falstaff in 2004?

4. Who played King Balthazar in our first twoproductions of Amahl and the Night Visitors in 2001and 2002?

5. Who is the only active board member of NSOA/ONS who has been a member since its inception?

6. What superb Chartered Accountant did about fiveyears of yeoman service as the NSOA/ONS’sTreasurer, largely because he has a big heart and is mynext door neighbour?

7. What long-time pillar of Nova Scotia’s musiccommunity deserves a great deal of support andrespect for carrying the banner of professional operain Nova Scotia?

Answers

Jason, as Figaro, shavesTed Rhodes at an ONS

Opera Valentine.

1.TedRhodes,JohnRapson,AndreaMcQuillin,IfanWilliams,ElviraGonnella(OperaValentineGoddess)andJasonParkhill.2.FrancesRoyle(OurIntrepidAccompanist).3.JimMagee,producer;TedRhodes,executiveproducer.4.Dr.GregoryServant.5.IfanWilliams.6.RichardStevens.7.Dr.WalterKemp.Rememberingeveryoneelse–Ian,Barry,Rae,Vanessa,Pam,

Thanks,andofcoursetoJenny...XXOO

Opera Nova Scotia appreciates the support of

The full version of this charming Preface read at theJanuary 18 Informoperal will be found on the ONSWebsite next month.

It’s -16C this icy and snow-blown afternoon in Halifax, butI’d like you to join me in imagining that we are elsewhereand elsewhen. Let’s close our eyes for a moment andsqueeze them – harder, harder – and now let’s imagine thatthe roiling reds and browns and golds on the blank screensof the backs of our eyelids are sweeping us back in timealmost one hundred twelve years, andnortheast of here by 6644.42 kilometres(that’s 4128.77 miles for those of us morecomfortable with Imperial than withmetric).

It’s April 27, 1893 here in Moscow –but in Western Europe and NorthAmerica it’s May 9, because the world is amuch different place almost one hundredtwelve years ago, and the Julian calendarused in Russia is running twelve daysbehind the Gregorian one. It’s really anenormously different world now that it’s1893: why, in the United States they’re inthe midst of the worst financial crisis inAmerican history – in six days the stockmarket will hit its all-time low EVER, andunemployment later this year will topsixteen percent . . . Well, perhaps that’s notthe best example of how the world isdifferent. Let me try again . . . In Bearden, Arkansas, twoblack men, John Stewart and “Doc” Henderson, werelynched earlier today. So, too, might the Father of RussianPoetry, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, have been, if he hadbeen there. By the definitions applicable in Arkansas onMay 9, 1893, Pushkin, too, is black. He is also the author ofthe 1824 poem The Gypsies, the source for the opera today.

We’re in the Bolshoi Theatre, and now let’s makeanother, even greater effort of the imagination, this timewith our eyes wide open – let’s suppose we are slender,male, handsome and stern-visaged – and we are all ofnineteen years old. Our name is Sergei VasilievichRachmaninoff, and the opera that won us the Great GoldMedal when we graduated from the Moscow Conservatory,something that had been awarded only twice before wereceived it, is about to receive its world premiere.

We’re competing with another premiere, too, althoughwe’re unaware of it: across the world the first publicdemonstration of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope is beingheld at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Edisonis particularly pleased today, because a suit against theWaring Electric Company claiming patent infringement onhis invention of the light bulb has been settled in his favour.Here in the Bolshoi Theatre we are lit by limelight still.

Little do we know how the descendants of theKinetoscope will affect the perception and propagationof our own work in years to come.

There’s an audience of 400 physicists and scientistsfor Edison’s little vaudeville, but here at the Bolshoithere are considerably more people in attendance. Let’stry to pick out some familiar faces in the crowd. Over inthat box is Grandma Rachmaninoff, who has come allthe way from Tambov. She is seated next to Father, whois barely able to contain his excitement – we remember

how irked we were when we firstreceived the libretto, more than aweek later than the March 15 it hadbeen promised for, so that our twofellow students and we would have awhole month to write an opera for it.We’d run all the way home to beginwork on it, only to find that Fatherwas entertaining business guests inthe room where the piano was. Wewaited, and waited, and finally wentto our room and threw ourselvesdown on the bed and wept infrustration. Finally Father wassummoned, and learning what thetrouble was, gently dismissed hisguests. And so we began. It took us

only 17 days to finish – not just a pianoversion, mind you, but the complete,fully-orchestrated score.

Over there is our librettist, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko – already a well-known prose writer anddramatist. Just last year his play Life’s Worth won theGriboedov Prize. He told the judges that it should havegone to Chekhov – just imagine! – for some flop calledThe Seagull. Although we don’t know it now, in just ayear and a month or so from now he will team up withan actor named Konstantin Stanislavsky to found theMoscow Art Theatre. Their radical restaging of TheSeagull will revolutionize acting. Be that as it may, if wehad just a bit more experience and were much lessreserved and shy, we might have realized that in our owncase Nemirovitch-Danchenko has done something of ahack job, cutting a good forty percent of Pushkin’spoem along the way, and rearranging and reassigning todifferent characters not a small portion of whatremained. This is certainly not Pushkin’s philosophicaltale with its then revolutionary mixing of lyric, narrative,and dramatic verse, contrasting urban slavery to moneyand greed with the pastoral, nomadic, impoverished butfree life of the gypsies. At the end of the poem theomniscient narrator comes to the coldly classicalconclusion that there are fatal passions, and against the

A Welcome to Aleko

(continued overleaf)

Prof. John Barnstead at the Jan. 18performance of Aleko. Photo by

Bruce Bottomley.

fates there is no defence. Instead, in the libretto we aregiven pure melodrama, with those supremely final linesshifted to the middle of the opera. All Pushkin’sphilosophy is removed. In fact, except for the line “Youonly want freedom for yourself” almost all the referencesto Russia’s own struggle for freedom are gone, too – eventhe beautiful covert reference to the martyred enemy ofslavery in Russia, Aleksandr Radishchev, who in one ofPushkin’s extremely rare extended similes is evoked in thepoem by mention of a single crane with a broken wingtrailing ever further behind its departing flock . . .

If we’d been more experienced, and less shy, we mighthave demanded changes – as we did with the tempi duringrehearsals. But that was different – our patron andprotector, the musician we most admire, has been with usat the rehearsals to intervene on our behalf with theconductor. There he is – in the director’s box – Pyotr IlichTchaikovsky. We first played the piano for him when wewere twelve, and he has been helpful on more than oneoccasion since – this last summer, for example, he helpednegotiate a remarkably good price for our first publishingcontract with Gutheil, and he has asked if we wouldn’tmind having Aleko run in tandem with his own latestopera, Iolante. Alas, all that will come to naught with hisdeath this coming autumn, from cholera, just days afterpremiering his Sixth Symphony. We will compose oursecond Elegiac Trio in his memory.

It must be getting close to curtain time. We pull outour gold pocket watch to check – it was given to us by ourteacher, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zverev, and although infuture years we will have occasion to pawn it, we neverpart with it, and we will have it with us on our deathbed in1943. We broke with Zverev well before graduation, butwhen he heard Aleko´s intermezzo played through atgraduation he called us out into the hall, and congratulatedus, and gave us the watch, and we were reconciled.

Frankly, we’re nervous about how Aleko will fare withthe public. We’ve written to our childhood friend NataliaSkalon that the opera is sure to fail, simply because allcomposers’ first operas are usually failures. To tell thetruth, we’re secretly concerned that the structure is a littletoo much like Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, which wasperformed in Moscow just a year ago after earning itscomposer forty curtain calls at its Italian premiere.

Fortunately we are spared foreknowledge of what thepremiere of Edison’s little invention in Brooklyn todayportends for both of us – Mascagni will be dead longbefore the intermezzo from Cavalleria rusticana is used asbackground music for Raging Bull and Godfather III, and ourown death will spare us from hearing Frank Sinatra turnthe second theme from the third movement of our SecondPiano Concerto into the 1945 hit tune “Full Moon andEmpty Arms,” or learning of its exploitation by NoelCoward in his 1945 film Brief Encounter, or its use for theseduction of Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 movie The SevenYear Itch. Still, we keep wondering: will our audience hear(as we do) the echoes of Borodin’s Polovetsian Dances in our

first chorus, or of Tchaikovsky’s Evgenii Onegin elsewhere inour opera? We’re worried about the lack of transitionsbetween the individual scenes – and we are having second,third, and seventeenth thoughts about having made one ofthe Gypsy choruses a fugue – perhaps not the mostappropriate form to convey wild impetuous freedom?...

* * *

Well, I expect we’ve strained our imaginationssufficiently. Back here in 2009 Halifax the management hastaken the composer’s concerns to heart, and made a fewcuts to the original score – including that fugue.Rachmaninoff himself contemplated various changes to hisopera over the course of his career. Fyodor Chaliapin, whosang the role of Aleko in 1899 for the opera’s SaintPetersburg premiere on the occasion of Pushkin’shundredth birthday, begged his good friend to expand itinto a full-length work. Rachmaninoff refused – it was toofar behind him. When it was given in New York in the1920s he shocked the woman singing Zemfira by saying hewould certainly NOT be in attendance, and that he dislikedthe work, just as he had come to dislike his C# minor prelude.

I wonder how many people will be hearing the operafor the first time today? How I envy you: hearing it for thefirst time! In the few moments left before we begin, let metell you about my first Aleko.

It was a sunny day in early May, 1972. My Russianteacher, Dr. Ijewliw, had invited me to his home, and wasdetermined to introduce me to every aspect of Russianculture possible in the course of an afternoon. Thisinvolved giving me my first shot of vodka, which broughttears to my eyes. It was followed by a chaser comprised ofa piece of Russian black bread thickly spread with crushedraw garlic, which sent those tears streaming down mycheeks... Later, when he had wiped away his own tears oflaughter, to make amends he took a treasured LP recordfrom the cabinet, put it on his phonograph, and carefullylowered the needle into the groove. It was Aleko – my firstexperience of opera (outside of Mighty Mouse cartoons inmy childhood) . . . I forgave Dr. Ijewliw the vodka and thegarlic immediately.

Later that summer I went to the USSR to study at thePhilological Faculty of Leningrad State University. I wason an extremely tight budget – one hundred dollars for tenweeks – but while I was there I went to the main outlet ofMelodiya Records on Nevsky Prospect and spent one rubleseventy five kopeks for Golovanov’s 1950s recording ofAleko on two ten-inch discs, with Petrov singing the titlerole. I have it to this day. It is my very favourite version –or, rather, now it is my second favourite version – myfavourite, of course, is the one you are about to hear.

John A. Barnstead