Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

Beat by Beat | World View
Performing Scholars
Amidst Small World's
Asian Music Series
ANDREW TIMAR
Lucia Cesaroni is The Merry Widow
And something seldom seen
The important seldom-seen opera in April is Against the Grain
Theatre’s production of Kopernikus: Rituel de la Mort (1980), the only
opera by Québécois composer Claude Vivier (1948-83). This will be
the first performance of the opera in Toronto since a touring Banff
Centre production visited in 2001. In 2017 the present AtG production
also had its premiere at Banff. Of what may be the most performed
Canadian opera outside Canada, director Joel Ivany says, “I think this
could be Canada’s greatest opera ever written. Vivier was unique, he
was an innovator and a true artist.”
Ivany related in a conversation in March that he first heard of
Kopernikus when he read that famed director Peter Sellars included it
on his wish list of operas he’d like to direct. Sellars indeed went on to
direct the American premiere of the opera in 2016 at the Ojai Festival
in California. Ivany began working on it as a project for Canada 150
at the Banff Centre. While AtG is well known for its productions of
Mozart’s operas with new English libretti written by Ivany, Ivany
mentions that AtG has also presented operas with their libretti
unchanged such as its open-air production of Debussy’s Pelléas et
Mélisande in 2014.
That will be the case with Kopernikus. Set in two acts for seven
singers, it challenges the norms of classical opera with its innovative
use of compositional and technical devices to create a vivid meditation
on self-transcendence. It unfolds through a series of obscure trials,
inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute, but played as an enchanted ritual.
Canadian mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan revives her role as Agni,
the central character who travels to an unknown space suspended in
time wherein she meets the fragmented embodiment of many eclectic
characters, such as Tristan and Isolde, Copernicus, Lewis Caroll and
Mozart. Singing these roles are mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó, bass
Alain Coulombe, baritone Dion Mazerolle, sopranos Nathalie Paulin
and Jonelle Sills and baritone Bruno Roy. Joining the singers on stage
are dancers Anisa Tejpar and William Yong who will realize Matjash
Mrozewski’s choreography.
Ivany has taken an innovative twist on orchestration by incorporating
members of the orchestra into the onstage roles of the ensemble.
AtG music director Topher Mokrzewski conducts the dispersed
ensemble. The production will be presented at Theatre Passe Muraille
on April 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 and 13, 2019.
Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and
theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com.
After a long, dreary, weary winter, spring is finally deigning to
show us some sun. Yet springtime signs are still meagre. In the
midtown city park across the street the trees remain starkly
bare. On the bright side, a few brave bird chirps can occasionally be
heard. It’s surely a harbinger of kinder weather to come when we can
venture out of doors to hear human as well as nature’s music.
Written while still firmly in the grip of winter, my column last
month, World Music Goes to School explored the commitment of
several Ontario universities to global music education. The focus was
on world music ensemble courses as seen through the perspectives of
several current teaching and performing practitioners.
Performing Scholars: Annette Sanger and James Kippen
We did not hear however from Annette Sanger and James Kippen,
veteran University of Toronto ethnomusicologists, musician-educators
and partners in life. And that’s because I found out only recently
that, by the time this issue is well and truly launched, the university’s
Faculty of Music will have honoured them with a rare two-day symposium
and concert on March 29 and 30, in celebration of their distinguished
university careers.
An expert on tabla performance and the life and music of communities
of hereditary drummers in North India, Kippen has authored
several books and numerous articles on the subject. He began his
career at the Faculty of Music in January 1990 where he has taught
and mentored several generations of students. He’s also been active in
several musical groups in our town.
Sanger received her PhD for her research on the music and dance
in Balinese society. That background served the GTA well, as she is a
pioneer of Balinese music performance here. Commencing teaching
in 1990 at the university’s Scarborough Campus, within a few years
she arranged to have the university purchase a complete Balinese
gamelan, inaugurating the Semar pegulingan gamelan ensemble
course in the fall of 1993. That launched the first Balinese ensemble
and course in Canada west of Montreal, an ensemble she led for a
remarkable 25 years. Later she formed the performing ensemble Seka
Rat Nadi – more of which further on.
Outside academia, Sanger served Toronto’s larger music community
in many roles. Just two examples: from 1990 to 2000 she was the
director of the Music & Arts School at the University Settlement
House, the first community-based social service centre in Toronto. For
several years she also reviewed CDs for The WholeNote.
Titled “Constant Flame: A concert honoring the retirements of
Professors Annette Sanger and James Kippen,” the March 29 event
features a performance by Seka Rat Nadi with Sanger, Kippen plus
Toronto musicians Albert Wong and John Carnes. Seka Rat Nadi is the
name of the group consisting of four Balinese gendèr (metallophone
instruments), a quartet traditionally called a gendèr wayang. In addition,
several guest musicians will perform Hindustani classical and
other musics.
The symposium is called “The Performing Scholar,” reflecting the
interlocking twin aspects of Kippen and Sanger’s careers. (It also
rather accurately describes the lifelong work of most of the musicianeducators
I interviewed for my March 2019 column.)
By the time most of you read this, the symposium honouring our
two performing scholars will have probably already taken place. But I
couldn’t leave you, dear reader, hanging like that. I asked them what
36 | April 2019 thewholenote.com