Volume 23 Issue 6 - March 2018

company under the guidance of Panych and Gorling, but also very
tightly choreographed to carefully chosen and shaped musical selections
from the works of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovitch.
This first production was so quintessentially wordless, and so
successful in its physical storytelling, that my first question to Panych
about the new Overcoat was where the inspiration came from to do –
in effect – the opposite, putting words back into the mix. His answer
was that the experiment at the LibLab lit the spark but that once it
did, the opportunity was there to explore a “whole different idea for
the show than it originally had” in that there had to be “a development
of intellectual ideas because now there were words” – something he
had, in fact, long been contemplating.
The original version had been a thrilling and very successful experiment,
but a new opportunity had now arisen – going back to Gogol’s
original story and exploring it again from the point of view of philosophical
and intellectual ideas that could be brought out through
the new libretto and new score, to be expressed and explored by the
singers with the audience. As Panych explained, they went back to
the leading character Akaky being an accountant (as he is in the short
story) and “I came up with this idea of singularity and numbers, of
people counting and not counting, which developed through into the
piece as an idea about human value and existentialism and what the
coat actually means in terms of its intrinsic social and moral value.”
Back at the LibLab when the Overcoat scene was presented, it
immediately struck a chord with both singers and audience. Mori says
that Panych had very quickly written a very clever mini-libretto for
the scene of the tailor and his wife creating the coat for Akaky “based
on how deeply he knows the story and the interplay between the
characters, and I think James was intrigued and wrote the music very
Thursday, March 15 at 8pm
PENDERECKI QUARTET
Unity, polish and expressive flexibility.
Pre concert talk at 7:15pm
“The music is a twisted circus,”
Panych says. “It’s acrobatic,
you feel its tunefulness,
you feel the beat of it.”
quickly. We heard it and said ‘It’s almost Gilbert and Sullivan in a way’
– not because it was British, it was very Morris – but because it was so
fast and the energy was really exciting.”
Almost immediately after the LibLab and the success of the presentation
of the scene to an invited audience (including an intrigued
Mathew Jocelyn, artistic director of Canadian Stage), Tapestry found
the funding for a libretto workshop and the development snowballed
from there, moving very quickly through two more workshops to
reach the point where it is now about to go into rehearsal for the full
production. Vancouver Opera joined in along the way, as co-commissioner
of the piece, as did Canadian Stage, as a season presenter.
Both Panych and Rolfe commented upon the speed of this process,
Panych writing the libretto very quickly as he knew the story already
so intimately, and Rolfe connecting so quickly to the material that the
score was also completed very fast. In Panych’s words: “I wrote the
libretto and James took it, and I emailed and called him a few times
and said ‘Any changes?’ and he said ‘Not really, it’s perfect,’ and he
wrote the score. We did the first and second workshops and staged it
[so that we would have a] template for working on the show, then see
where to go from there.”
When I asked Panych and Rolfe about the original use of
Shostakovitch and if it had any bearing on the new music, both
said that it was really just a starting point and that Rolfe’s music is
completely new and original, although “very Russian in feeling,” and
that this was both right and exciting. The cast has been cut down to 11
from 23, although there is still a “mad chorus” and ensemble numbers
that Rolfe says he is excited by (as well as by the character interaction
Tuesday, March 27 at 8pm
DÉNES VÁRJON
Grandeur, clarity and incisive virtuosity.
See our 2018-2019 season at
www.music-toronto.com
27 Front Street East, Toronto
Tickets: 416-366-7723 | www.stlc.com
thewholenote.com March 2018 | 9