Volume 21 Issue 3 - November 2015

ISABELLE FRANÇAIX
Beat by Beat | On Opera
Boesmans’ Julie
Comes to CanStage
CHRISTOPHER HOILE
An unusual event that bodes well for opera in Toronto takes
place in November. Canadian Stage and Soundstreams have
combined forces to produce the chamber opera Julie by
Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans. This will not only be the North
American premiere of Julie, but, amazingly, the North American
premiere of any opera by Boesmans, one of the most highly regarded
contemporary composers of opera. This will also mark the first
time that an opera has been included in Canadian Stage’s subscription
series.
Julie, which had its world premiere at La Monnaie in Brussels in
2005, is based on August Strindberg’s classic play Miss Julie from
1888, a portrait of class and gender politics that was far ahead of its
time. The libretto was written by the director Luc Bondy and Marie-
Louise Bischofberger in German. For the Toronto production, director
Matthew Jocelyn has decided to use an English-language translation,
with English super-titles, first presented by Music Theatre Wales in
London in 2007.
The cast is entirely Canadian. Singing the aristocratic Julie will be
Lucia Cervoni, a mezzo-soprano from Toronto who has a great career
singing all the major mezzo roles in Europe, but until now, has never
sung in Canada. Jean, the servant with whom Julie is enamoured, is
baritone Clarence Frazer, who graduated from the COC Ensemble last
year. Christine, the servant engaged to Jean, will be sung by coloratura
soprano Sharleen Joynt. The conductor will be Leslie Dala.
To discover how the Canadian Stage/Soundstreams production
came about, I spoke with Jocelyn in mid-October. Jocelyn noted that
there are both practical and philosophical reasons: “Soundstreams
and Canadian Stage have been speaking for two or three years about
various forms of collaboration and this one seemed like an ideal
project. It’s not the kind of thing Canadian Stage could have done
alone, but by partnering with another organization we have the
resources with which to do it. There is a philosophical reason as
well. For me, from the very beginning, it has been important to say
of Canadian Stage that we are no longer a ‘theatre’ – we are a place
of contemporary performance practice, and some of that is straight
plays, and some of that is contemporary dance and new musical
theatre like London Road, that we did in 2014 – which was a radical
departure from the more standard type of musical fare that had
been presented at Canadian Stage in the past. London Road was our
first foray into a new form of contemporary musical vocabulary. So
now with Julie we are going one stage further into an actual piece of
contemporary classical music. It is just one stage further in the sophistication
of the palette that we are offering audiences here.”
When asked whether he is confident that his audience will follow
Canadian Stage in this next step, Jocelyn answered, “The audience has
not only been following us, they have been increasing over the course
of the past few years and becoming more diverse. At present more
than half of our audience is under the age of 50, which no other largescale
theatre in the country can claim.
“We find that each of these adventures brings us new audiences. I
think that there are a lot of opera aficionados in the city who don’t
go to the theatre, don’t go to contemporary dance. The opportunity
of seeing the North American premiere, in Toronto, of an
opera by Philippe Boesmans is extraordinary. There may be many
in the audience who have never been to Canadian Stage before. On
the other hand, for theatre lovers, the opera is based on a classic of
dramatic literature so there is automatically a point of reference, a
point of recognition. And the opera follows the storyline very closely,
though very economically, since the entire opera is only 70 minutes
long. Reducing the play to a libretto has left the work incredibly
precise, incredibly
heart
wrenching, and a
powerful form of
music theatre.”
There are
at least two
other wellknown
operatic
versions of
Miss Julie – one
by Ned Rorem
from 1965 and
one by William
Alwyn from 1977
– besides that
of Boesmans.
So I asked
Jocelyn why
he chose this
version, “I have
a long-standing
relationship
with Philippe
Boesmans. I
met him over
20 years ago
when I was
Patrice Chéreau’s
assistant for a
production of
Matthew Jocelyn (left) and
Philippe Boesmans
Hamlet by Shakespeare and he engaged Philippe to write the music
for the Ophelia songs. Later he came to see the work I was doing for
Opera Studio of the Strasbourg National Opera; I asked him to do a
chamber version of his opera Reigen [from 1993], based on the play La
Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler, and he agreed to do it.
“That chamber version is now the one done around the world far
more than the full orchestral version because it’s just got that extra
theatrical quality and it’s a great piece for younger singers. And
Philippe has come to prefer the chamber version himself because
he says it brought him closer to the theatre, and his real love is the
theatre. So when he received his next commission from La Monnaie,
he asked to do a chamber opera and wrote Julie.”
“After the world premiere,” Jocelyn continues, “I did my own
production of Julie, two or three years later, that played in Orléans,
Paris, and toured to about 12 or 14 theatres in France, Belgium and
Switzerland. So because of this long relationship with Philippe and
because I have done the opera before and know it so well, that’s why I
wanted to do it again.”
“Besides that,” Jocelyn emphasizes, “Philippe really is one of the top
opera composers, if not the top, in the world today. This year he won
the International Opera Award for his latest opera Au Monde. He is
an exceptional composer. He has an understanding of dramaturgy, an
understanding of theatre on the stage. He has a complexity of musical
languages at his disposal.”
Asked to characterize Boesmans’ music, Jocelyn responded that
“Boesmans is a non-dogmatic composer. He’s free of the Boulezian
orthodoxy or the 12-tone orthodoxy or the new American music
orthodoxy. Philippe was a master of baroque music and so he has
the facility of tempo changes and the facility of the relationship with
the spoken word of the baroque and an absolute virtuosity in terms
of rhythm. His greatest inspiration probably comes from [Alban]
Berg and a bit from Richard Strauss. In terms of other 21st-century
composers, he has the brio and the orchestral sophistication of a
George Benjamin. He’s really in a class of his own. He is also 80 years
old and had the opportunity to live through many, many schools of
music. But even though he may quote or play with specific styles, you
hear a page of his music and you know it’s Boesmans.”
“The Philadelphia Opera is co-producing his next opera in 2018,
14 | Nov 1 - Dec 7, 2015 thewholenote.com