Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

NEW OPERA WORKS
Scaling
Gould’s
wall
The mysteries of
collaboration
GLORIA BLIZZARD
What happens when you combine a cornucopia
of talented musicians with a decidedly off-thewall
idea? A magnificent new work presented by
Tapestry Opera, titled Gould’s Wall, featuring the talents
of director Philip Akin, writer Liza Balkan and composer
Brian Current.
Brian Current dreamed for years of creating a project using a wall
in the Atrium, the enclosed space that joins the Royal Conservatory of
Music (RCM) and Koerner Hall in Toronto. It took a conversation with
librettist Liza Balkan (followed by a few years of writing and workshopping)
to create the work, and the alchemical processes of director
Philip Akin to animate it into being.
Gould’s Wall tells the story of a young artist as she struggles to
develop her career. For Balkan, the building itself was the inspiration.
The presence of pianist, composer, broadcaster Glenn Gould is everywhere.
His photograph is on the walls. The namesake Glenn Gould
School resides here. “The desire for mastery in music, the constant
practising and the revelling in music and the vibrancy of it – it seemed
that wall, what lives around it, through it, in it, behind it, is connected
to pursuing excellence,” Balkan says.
I had the opportunity to sit in on an early rehearsal of the work. As I
arrived, Akin was leading the cast and crew through a physical warmup.
It ended. He turned and welcomed me. I heard bits of text and
music as the company blocked their scenes. There were three levels
Lauren Pearl plays Louise
of platforms to approximate the multiple levels of the windows in the
RCM’s wall. There was a piano, the conductor, a second conductor
and, at a long table along one wall, most of the artistic and technical
crew from lighting to librettist.
Lauren Pearl who plays the lead, Louise, clambered into climbing
gear. (Throughout the piece, Pearl’s Louise climbs the red-brick
wall several times, a feat that must be accomplished while singing.)
Meanwhile, Roger Honeywell, who plays Gould, sat stretched out,
head angled and fingers twirling, inhabiting the essence of his character.
“Tut tuts”, sung by the cast, could be heard, fashioned after
Gould’s way of verbalizing as he worked. And there was Akin, crafting
movement through space with a call to the actors to bring in their
whole selves to the moment. I was smitten by the sounds, the movement
and the process.
Says Akin, “Singers in opera are used to just being told what to do,
how to sing it. I refuse to work that way. I give a clue, the inspiration,
the breadcrumb trail and say, bring your best self to this. It gets
amazing results. Artists gain power and know that their contributions
are valuable. It is actually more interesting to me than sticking to the
boundaries of opera or musical theatre.”
To that end, the artist’s climb can be lateral learning or a deepening
of process as well as a vertical climb.
The Space
The location itself presents a significant additional artistic challenge.
For the five performances, the Atrium will house the 15-piece Glenn
Gould School’s New Music Ensemble, multiple pianos, a catwalk and
DAHLIA KATZ
8 | February 2022 thewholenote.com