Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

Beat by Beat | On Opera
TrypTych’s
Toronto Farewell
CHRISTOPHER HOILE
ELMER DE HAAS
Upstaged by West Side Story but never
obscured, CANDIDE has become the darling
of opera companies and Broadway through
the sheer power of its drama, music and
imaginative splendour. Voltaire’s irresistible
– and censored! – masterwork becomes great
music theatre.
Tonatiuh Abrego
Barbara Hannigan
strategy in the pacing of the recital and then… I count on adrenaline
to get me through the final four songs of Hugo Wolf. I love them
so much, I love Mignon and her need for secrecy. I just slip into her
skin and she carries me through the music; her need to try to reveal
herself, without explaining herself, is so powerful that the songs just…
pour out. This recital program was devised by Reinbert de Leeuw.
As I wrote earlier, my mentor. He is the guide and inspiration for me
through this musical journey. And he carries me through it… every
rehearsal reminding and insisting that I attempt the most delicate
adherence to the composer’s wishes. Always searching for the real
pianissimi that the composers demand, rather than the verismo of
the earlier part of the 19th century. This world is one of reflection, of
suggestion, of intimacy without explanation. And I am so thrilled to
bring this program, with Reinbert, to Toronto.
Lydia Perović is an arts journalist in Toronto. Send her your art-ofsong
news to artofsong@thewholenote.com.
Guillermo Silva-Marin
General Director
by Leonard Bernstein
Derek Bate, Conductor
Guillermo Silva-Marin, Stage Director
Vania Chan
Elizabeth Beeler
Nicholas Borg
December 28, 30 & January 5, 6 at 8 pm
December 31, January 7 at 3 pm
416-366-7723 | 1-800-708-6754 | www.stlc.com
Dedicated Toronto operagoers know that operatic activity in
Toronto is not confined to the city’s two largest companies, the
Canadian Opera Company and Opera Atelier. Numerous smaller
companies have helped make the opera scene in Toronto one of the
most diverse in North America. There is therefore a pang of sadness
whenever one of these companies ceases operations, as did Queen of
Puddings Music Theatre in 2013 and as will Toronto Masque Theatre
in 2018. Some may have seen on the website for TrypTych Concert &
Opera that co-artistic directors Edward Franko and Lenard Whiting
will be leaving Toronto and moving to Kenora. To find out more about
the history of TrypTych and how the move will affect the company, I
interviewed Franko and Whiting last month.
TrypTych was founded in the early fall of 1999 by Franko, Whiting
and William Shookhoff. Franko had been working with Nina Scott-
Stoddart’s company Opera Anonymous. As Franko says, “The three of
us all got together and thought that we should do something together
and utilize all our different skills and decided that with the three
heads of the beast and the famous Il Trittico [by Puccini] we could
convert that to TrypTych and just change the spelling.”
Then, about ten years ago Shookhoff had to pull out of TrypTych
due to health reasons, leaving Franko to do the opera side of the
productions and Whiting the choral side. But the TrypTych name
stuck. (As it happened, Shookhoff recovered and founded his own
company, Opera By Request.)
Franko emphasizes: “We were very strong at the beginning about
not just being an opera company. We felt that we didn’t want to
be beholden to opera even though all three of us had a very strong
connection to opera. We were also working with singers from a lot of
different musical backgrounds. We thought that singing as a whole
isn’t just opera – you have to be able to fit into a lot of categories.
That’s why we did cabarets that featured music like jazz, pop and rock
and quite a wide range of things. Then we had the classical oratorio
side and tried to do some things that aren’t done a lot like Dubois’
Seven Last Words, Gounod’s Messe solennelle, Saint-Saëns’ Mass for
Four Voices and even the Widor Mass.”
Whiting explained the reason for this dual focus: “This is part of the
reality of what Canadian singers really have to be exposed to. There’s
a handful that find a really wonderful opportunity in opera, but if you
don’t happen to break into that market you’ve got to find other ways
to present yourself and to be diverse.”
TrypTych has presented quite a number of seldom-heard operas
over the past 18 seasons, such as Marcel Mihalovici’s Krapp, ou la
dernière bande (1961), Hugo Weisgall’s The Stronger (1952), Jack
Beeson’s Sorry, Wrong Number (1996), Menotti’s The Saint of
Bleecker Street (1954), Quenten Doolittle’s Boiler Room Suite (1989)
and the Canadian stage premiere of Verdi’s Oberto (1839).
Franko adds: “One of the big things we’ve been really happy with
over the last five years has been our relationship with conductor
Norman Reintamm and the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra,
doing fully staged opera with a 60-piece orchestra at the 600-seat
P.C. Ho Theatre in Scarborough. In fact, our shows get the best houses
of all their concerts. We’ve done all three parts of Il Trittico now and
two one-act operas last year. This December for the first time we’re
doing a full-length opera, Hansel and Gretel, with the big orchestra,
a children’s chorus and Lenard as the Witch with an LED screen for
backdrops.
“A lot of the opportunities that opera school graduates get is singing
opera in concert, which is great, but we and the CBSO give them a
18 | November 2017 thewholenote.com