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by Benjamin Britten, directed by Yoshi Oida

Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto

October 16-November 6, 2010

The Canadian Opera Company’s presentation of Britten final opera, Death in Venice, is absolutely flawless.  Seldom has the staging of an opera so perfectly reflected the nature of the opera itself.  The acclaimed production from the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival arrives in Toronto complete with its original director, Yoshi Oida, its original star Alan Oke as the central character Gustav von Aschenbach and its conductor Steuart Bedford, who first conducted the work when it premiered in 1973.  It is a triumph for all concerned.

Based on Thomas Mann’s 1912 novella, the opera follows the widowed writer Aschenbach on his journey to Venice, where he hopes to rekindle his creativity.  There he is struck by the beauty of the Polish boy Tadzio (played by the non-singing dancer Adam Sergison), staying in the same hotel with his family.  Aschenbach first tries to intellectualize his attraction, but soon must acknowledge, to his own humiliation, that desire has finally broken into his highly regulated life.  At the same time Venice is struck with an outbreak of cholera that authorities try in vain to keep quiet.  Thus hidden love parallels hidden death and Aschenbach chooses to acquiesce to both.  Neither the story nor the opera is solely about homosexual desire, since Tadzio also represents youth, vitality and freedom--everything Aschenbach feels he has lost.  Also both the story and the opera explicitly relate Aschenbach’s plight to the competing demands in every life of bright Apollo (William Towers), god of reason and order, and the shapeshifting Dionysus (Peter Savidge), god of ecstasy and chaos.

Bedford brings out the spare beauty of the score and is especially impressive in the gamelan-inspire music associated with Tadzio that dominates the long, exciting ballet sequence of the Games of Apollo.  Just like the score Oida’s staging is also spare and beautiful, using techniques from kabuki and mime to portray events on a raised platform in the midst of a shallow rectangular pool.  He captures the multiple ironies of Mann’s story and Britten’s opera by emphasizing the performance as performance and having both Oke and Savidge on stage throughout changing costumes in full view.  Oke’s performance as actor and singer is simply outstanding, one able to convey complex meanings from every word and gesture.  Daniela Kurz’s choreography is boldly inventive.  Give in to the eerie, illusive soundworld of Britten’s opera for a profound contemplation of the mystery of life at its close.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-10-18.

Photo: Alan Oke far left, Adam Sergison far right.  ©Michael Cooper.