Stage Door News
Stage Door News
TORONTO, ON… Wayne Strongman, Managing Artistic Director, is pleased to announce Tapestry New Opera’s premiere production of Pub Operas. Written by David Brock and composed by Gareth Williams, Pub Operas celebrates the history of Glasgow’s oldest pub - Sloans. David and Gareth first met in 2009 as participants in LibLab – Tapestry’s composer/librettist incubator – and Pub Operas was born out of this annual meeting ground. The Pub Operas will be directed by Sue Miner, music directed by Wayne Strongman and performed by soprano Xin Wang, mezzo soprano Heather Jewson, tenor James McLean and baritone Benjamin Covey and a 6-piece bar band.
“One of the many wonderful collaborations born of our partnership with Scottish Opera - Irish composer Gareth Williams (now resident composer at Scottish Opera in Glasgow) and Canadian writer David Brock - have chosen the storied history of Glasgow’s famous 18th century Sloans Public House to create short operas for a marvellous evening. After its premiere for the Merchant City Festival, Glasgow, Scotland Tapestry’s production will magically transport our audience to witness first-hand the fabled stories of fantastic events at Sloans over the centuries.” …Wayne Strongman
Pub Operas tells five stories from inside Sloans, including a raucous wedding reception; the time when Chopin drank there; one last celebratory drink for a deceased buddy; and a newly engaged couple toasting to their future. This final story is a common Glasgow tradition as Sloans Pub is attached to the Argyll Arcade, Glasgow’s largest diamond selling area.
The Argyll Arcade offers the largest selection of diamond rings, diamond jewellery, wedding rings and watches in a single location in Scotland. The Argyll Arcade hosts more than 30 jewellers and diamond merchants all under one roof.
Taking its inspiration from Sloans long history (the pub was built in 1797 and claims to be the oldest in the city) this really is a peoples opera, drawing as it does on punters reminiscences and anecdotes surrounding the place down the years.
Sloans started life as a coffee house in Morrisons Court, named after prominent Glasgow man Baillie John Morrison, in 1797. Twice a week, a stagecoach would leave Morrisons Court bound for Edinburgh. The journey lasted five hours and, for a fare of 9s, each passenger was allowed to take one canvas travelling bag. The courtyard was the scene of many famous cock-fighting contests, the sport of the day.
Once called the Arcade Café, David Sloan bought the Café at the turn of the 20th Century transforming the renamed Sloans Arcade Café into an opulent venue containing a lounge bar, several dining rooms, a cocktail bar and even an aquarium. The Grand Ballroom was the jewel in Sloans’ crown featuring a magnificent vaulted ceiling, period marble fireplace and intricate stained-glass windows.
Many original features remain to this day including the ceramic tiled entrance, grand mahogany staircase, rich woodwork, rare acid-etched glass and ceilings heavily decorated with plaster mouldings, which have been newly-restored complete with gilt-edging and detail. Traditionally, couples would choose their engagement rings in the adjacent Argyll Arcade before celebrating in Sloans, often holding their engagement party and wedding reception in the Grand Ballroom.
Pub Operas consists of five scenes:
Scene One: Mad With It
A young couple purchases an engagement ring in the nearby Argyll Arcade and enters the bar to have a celebratory drink. Their celebration is cut short when a drunken old man curses young love, claiming that it never lasts. After he stumbles out of the bar, the couple sees that he left his ex-wife’s engagement ring in an empty glass. The couple takes the ring for themselves, unaware that it could lead to them to the same fate as its previous owners.
Scene Two: Chopin’s Ghosts
One night, composer Frederic Chopin enters Sloans with an entourage of women adorned in pearls, and he plays a single song that changes the lives of the bar’s manager and her husband, the resident piano player. Combining multiple legends from Sloans’ Pub, Chopin’s Ghosts is told from the perspective of the bar manageress who stole money from the register to pay for her resulting obsession with pearls. However, she now must pay for her crimes in an infinite and torturous purgatory: listening to her husband play piano. All that she wants is to hear Chopin again
Scene Three: Country Song
Past closing time, two men bring the body of a their friend into the bar on the night before his funeral. They plan to give him a proper goodbye, knowing his funeral will be an impersonal affair. The men drink and celebrate his life, playing their favourite songs on the jukebox.
Scene Four: Charm
Two men have a drink together at the bar. One man is a serial killer, the other is the father of his last victim, a teenage girl. The killer does not know whom he is drinking with, but the father has come to avenge his daughter’s death. Based loosely on Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel, Charm explores the moral questions of vigilante justice.
Scene Five: Young Love
We return to the happy couple from the first scene on the day of their wedding. Everything is perfect until the old man from the first scene shows up, this time with his wife. And she wants her ring back.
Tapestry is an international home to new opera for creators, developers and performers: all collaborators in telling stories that surprise, thrill and move audiences.
Pub Operas Details
November 10, 11 & 12, 2011 at 8pm
Composer Gareth Williams
Writer David Brock
Music Director Wayne Strongman
Stage Director Sue Miner
Assistant Director Michael Mori
Singers Xin Wang, soprano; Heather Jewson, mezzo soprano; James McLean, tenor; Benjamin Covey, baritone
Répétiteur James Bourne
Stage Manager Isolde Pleasants Faulkner
SM Apprentice Ann Bisch
6-piece Band
Ernest Balmer Studio at Tapestry
55 Mill Street, Bldg #58 Studio 315
Toronto, ON M5A 3C4
Box Office 416-537-6066 ext. 243, www.tapestrynewopera.com
Admission $30
Originally commissioned and premiered by NOISE as the Sloans Project at Sloans Bar, Glasgow, July 2011
Studio Passes
Save now with a Studio Pass with 15% off two or more events in the season.
To purchase a Studio Pass, please call (416) 537-6066 x 222 or e-mail your request to studiopass@tapestrynewopera.com. Further details and information are available at www.tapestrynewopera.com
2011-10-21
Toronto: Tapestry New Music presents the Canadian premiere of “Pub Operas” November 10-12