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by Louis Aubert, directed by Brent Krysa

WLU Faculty of Music Opera Program, WLU Theatre Auditorium, Waterloo

February 27-29, 2004

The Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music Opera Program production of La Forêt bleue by French composer Louis Aubert (1877-1968) was a thoroughly delightful experience.  Conductor Leslie De’Ath and stage director Brent Krysa made the best possible case for a beautiful work that does not deserve to languish in obscurity.

The production on February 27, 2004, was the work’s Canadian premiere and its first presentation in North America since its American premiere in Boston in 1913. The action mingles characters of three of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales--Little Red Riding Hood (Rosalind Pickett), Tom Thumb (Courtney Cain), Sleeping Beauty (Chelsey Schill) and Prince Charming (Joseph Schnurr).  The vibrant score merges the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel with the lushness of Richard Strauss.

Krysa and De’Ath wisely situated the playing area, surrounded by the audience on three sides, in front of the orchestra semi-hidden by a scrim.  This created a sense of intimacy and meant the young voices did not have to project over the surging 51-member orchestra.  Krysa’s brilliant conception divested the characters of their familiar iconography, clothing them in jeans, sneakers and cotton smocks.  This made us view the opera more as the stories of young people in love than as re-enactments of famous tales.   

Krysa’s ingenious set of twenty floor-to-ceiling columns of braided muslin represented everything from the forest to the draperies of Beauty’s bed.  The entire cast gave stylish, totally dedicated performances.  Under De’Ath the orchestra revelled in the music’s ebb and flow and shimmering, kaleidoscopic colours.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Opera Canada 2004 Summer.

Photo: Rosalind Pickett and Courtney Cain. ©2004 Brent Krysa.