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<b>by Harry Somers, directed by Todd Hammond
Canadian Children's Opera Chorus, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
May 8-11, 2003
</b>
"Exciting Music, Static Libretto"
Musicools is the third circumpolar arts festival organized by Lawrence Cherney, founding Artistic Director of Soundstreams Canada. It has presented five operas for children over the past two weeks, becoming the first such festival in North America. The event has included works from Finland, Iceland, Quebec and the rest of Canada. The flagship work and last to open is "A Midwinter's Night Dream" written by Harry Somers to a libretto by children's author Tim Wynne-Jones. The opera premiered in Toronto in 1988. For the current production Wynne-Jones has rewritten the libretto with Inuit cultural consultant John Houston. But it must be admitted that while Somers' music and the performances are excellent, the libretto still remains the weakest part of the opera.
The story concerns young Jimmy Moonwok, who is uninterested in joining in the midwinter feast celebrated in his Arctic village of Mary's Bay. He's been to Edmonton and seen "Star Wars" and now looks down on native traditions. Because of this the local shaman Ai'o'u chooses Jimmy to go on a vision quest during which he meets a talking seal, ghosts of the dead and hears the Northern Lights. He returns to his village with renewed faith in tradition and community.
The main difficulty with the libretto is that it is not dramatic. More than half of its 70-minute is taken up in showing Jimmy's boredom with the midwinter feast. A librettist can't expect people, young or old, automatically to be caught up in a sequence of celebrations at a party if we don't know what the party is about and especially if we are waiting for the plot finally to kick in. When the plot involving Jimmy's quest does start it immediately comes to a halt again. The first episode, involving talking, card-playing seal, owes more to Lewis Carroll than Inuit legend and includes lots of punning on card-playing terms that only adults will appreciate. Worse its static nature dissipates whatever excitement was roused with the launch of the quest. With Jimmy's slip beneath the ice and meeting with the ghosts of the dead, we feel we're finally under way again. But then Wynne-Jones introduces the choirmaster of the Northern Lights, another non-Inuit touch, and assumes we will immediately find the situation humorous. The quest seems to end barely after it began.
Having already preached at the party about how story-telling is more real than movies and how remembering one's people and traditions should be one's goal, Wynne-Jones concludes the opera with more preaching on the same topics. How much better the effect would be if he had exercised more imagination in extending and detailing Jimmy's quest itself. How much stronger the work would be if had relied not on exhortations but on our own experience of Jimmy's quest make us realize the moral of the story. From the children's positive reaction to Jimmy's being tossed in a blanket, more action, less didacticism, is what the story needs to engage its intended audience.
Flawed as it is, the opera can be enjoyed for Harry Somers' music alone, especially when given such a persuasive performance by the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus under Ann Cooper Gay. The work covers a wide range from the spooky whispers and moans that conjure up the cold North, to the boisterous syncopated party music, to rhythmic speech, folksong, Britten-like chorales and the Ligetiesque sounds of the Northern Lights. The contrasts in the music almost make up for the lack of drama in the text. Gay's vigorous, precise conducting ensures that the work is always musically exciting.
Stage director Todd Hammond proves he is adept at managing the large cast of nearly 70. How to make the encounter with the seal for visually interesting defeats him as does the introduction of the Northern Lights, which would seem to require a stage with a balcony to work properly. It seems Hammond wants us to think Jimmy's quest really begins when he is first spotted by Ai'o'u before the feast. If so, that point has to be made more clearly. Julia Tribe's design does well at conjuring the Arctic wastes and is quite inventive in depicting Jimmy's fall through the ice. The children's costumes, however, are so varied and colourful at the party that, given all the Caucasian faces, it took far too long time to realize these were supposed to be Inuit children in the North rather than ordinary Albertan children ready for winter in the South.
Robert McCollum's choreography is imaginative and enthusiastically performed. Luckily, Somers and Wynne-Jones thought to include an interlude in the midwinter feast for actual Inuit drum dancers. The troupe Aqsarniit (Sylvia Cloutier, Sarah Laakkuluk Williamson, June Shappa) provide a welcome dose of authenticity in the opera, so intriguing in itself I hoped for such another interlude in the celebrations at the end. Michael Kruse's lighting is effective in recreating the chill light of the North and the warmth of interiors. His Northern Lights display is the highpoint it is meant to be.
The three adult singer are excellent--tenor Michael Colvin clear and firm as Ai'o'u, baritone James Westman warm-toned as Jimmy's father and mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy sympathetic as Jimmy's mother. As Jimmy, John Michael Schneider (alternating with Matthew Galloway) is an extraordinary performer. His acting skills, as he demonstrated last year as Miles in the COC's "The Turn of the Screw", are very advanced for one his age and he has clearly mastered Somers' tricky rhythms and intervals. The CCOC, expert in producing lovely harmonies, readily communicates its joy in singing to the audience.
It is rare enough to see such a full-scale work written for children much less a Canadian one. Anyone interested in Harry Somers or in children's opera in general need not hesitate.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Cover of <i>A Midwinter Night’s Dream</i> on Centrediscs. ©2010 Centrediscs.
<b>2003-03-17</b>
<b>A Midwinter Night’s Dream</b>