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<b>by George Frideric Handel / Richard Strauss, directed by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière
Toronto Masque Theatre, Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, 106 Trinity St., Toronto
November 17-19, 2016
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“There did a thousand memories roll upon him,
Unspeakable for sadness” <i>Enoch Arden</i>
Toronto Masque Theatre’s latest show is one that makes it feel good to live in Toronto. In how many cities does a music lover get to hear a superb live performance of Richard Strauss’s <i>Enoch Arden</i>? In how many cities does a music lover get to see a fully staged version of Handel’s cantata <i>Apollo e Dafne</i>? And in how many cities does a music lover have the chance of seeing both rarities on a double bill? While neither <i>Enoch Arden</i> nor <i>Apollo e Dafne</i> is a masque, Toronto Masque Theatre’s motto is “performing arts in fusion” and that’s exactly what both of these fascinating works have in common. We are very lucky in Toronto to have a company like Toronto Masque Theatre to perform such pieces that combine the arts in ways that are so varied.
The evening begins with <i>Enoch Arden</i>, in which an actor recites Tennyson’s 1864 narrative poem to piano accompaniment. The name for this type of work is a melodrama in the original sense of the word – spoken words accompanied by music. This was a type of salon entertainment that was particularly popular in the 19th century. When melodrama was used in the theatres of the time, however, the exaggerated acting that performers employed to communicate a script to a vast audience led to the term’s current negative meaning.
Tennyson’s <i>Enoch Arden</i> is not at all about excess of emotion but rather about restraint. We learn that Enoch, Philip and Annie are childhood friends. When young Enoch and Philip used to alternate as Annie’s “husband” when playing. As they grew older Annie and Enoch grew closer, Philip had to repress his feelings for Annie since he wished his two friends happiness. Enoch follows his father’s profession as a sailor and to earn enough money to so that his children can have a better life than he did, he joins a long voyage to Asia and back. On the way back he is shipwrecked on a desert island. Meanwhile, Annie’s fears about the voyage are realized when Enoch does not return at the appointed time. After a year of waiting, Philip offers Annie and her children financial assistance. Only after Enoch has been missing ten years does Philip finally allow himself to ask Annie to marry him. Even then, she makes him wait another year and a half. Enoch, of course, eventually does return when a passing ship takes him on. For those who don’t know the story, I won’t reveal the ending. If the story sounds familiar it is because the so-called “Enoch Arden plot” has been used so many times since in both comic and serious films and in such novels as Winston Graham’s first Poldark novel (1945).
Richard Strauss’s music of 1897, written at the same time as his major tone poems, serves as the expression of the emotions that the main characters repress. In this it reflects the natural and hidden emotional world that ultimately controls the personal and public social world of the characters. The overture and an interlude that introduces the tale of Enoch’s voyage, reflect the turbulence of the sea and also, as becomes evident, the turbulence of the emotions that all three characters keep under tight control.
Usually, Strauss’s music does not underscore the words of the speaker, but rather appears when a character is lost in thought or has to make a decision. Less often the music does underscore the words expressing the feelings that the words only allude to. Strauss fans will recognize the composer’s favourite chromatic sequences as well as his mastery of tone painting. Strauss also uses leitmotifs for the main characters as well as a theme that seems to symbolize the idea of domestic bliss that occurs in many variations depending on the circumstances.
As the Narrator, Frank Cox-O’Connell is the opposite of “melodramatic” in the popular sense of the word. Instead, he fully adopts the neutral stance of Tennyson’s own narrator and never tries to use his voice or gestures to wring emotion from a passage. The Narrator presents all three characters as good people who are caught in a painful situation. Cox-O’Connell is completely aware that the spoken word and the music play off each other and he frequently moves away from his reading stand to give attention to the longer passages given to pianist Angela Park. Throughout the hour-long work Cox-O’Connell and Park seems to revel in the pleasure of the give and take of words and music and in their occasional joining up. Cox-O’Connell uses distinct voices and changes of facial expression for each of the characters when they speak and only then departs from the neutrality of the narrator’s voice.
For her part Park’s playing is exquisite. She brings out a wide range of colours from the piano and is as impressive in the beautifully paced quieter passages as in the stormier louder passages. Together Cox-O’Connell and Park reveal Strauss’s <i>Enoch Arden</i> not as a curiosity but as an unusually moving work in which Strauss’s music immeasurably enhances the impact of Tennyson’s poem.
The second half the the programme brings us to more familiar Toronto Masque Theatre territory. Handel’s began his secular cantata <i>Apollo e Dafne</i> in Venice but finished it in 1710 in Hannover when he joined the court of George, the Duke and Elector of Hannover, who later became George I of Great Britain. Given that Handel would write his first opera <i>Rinaldo</i> in 1711, <i>Apollo e Dafne</i> is so highly dramatic it feels like the composer is already pushing the bounds of the cantata form into the realm of opera.
The action begins when Apollo boasts about having freed Greece from the plague of the dragon Python. He brags (always a bad thing to do in Greek mythology) that his archery is even better than Cupid’s. His hubris is immediately punished when he spies the virginal water nymph Daphne and falls irretrievably in love. She, however, is repulsed by Apollo and would rather die than lose her honour. When Apollo chases and captures her, she prays for divine aid from the river god Peneus and and is transformed into a laurel tree. Apollo still loves her and as a token of this love vows to award crowns of laurel leaves to the greatest heroes.
To stage the cantata, director and choreographer Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière has added the character of Cupid played by dancer Stéphanie Brochard. Since the overture to the cantata is lost, conductor Larry Beckwith has substituted the overture to Handel’s 1738 opera <i>Serse</i>. During the overture, Lacoursière has Brochard dance Cupid as a comic feline creature prone to mercurial changes of mood. Cupid is traditionally blind, but Lacoursière has decided that Cupid can see but only if wearing bottle-bottom glasses that he is in the habit of losing. Lacoursière shows Cupid practicing his archery with his little bow, becoming quite offended when Apollo boasts about his skill. Rather than imaging that Cupid has revenge as in the cantata, Lacoursière shows Cupid planning just the right time to shoot Apollo with one of his gold-tipped love-inducing arrows so that the god will deliberate fall in love with the unwilling Daphne. Just to make certain of her defiance, Lacoursière has Cupid shoot Daphne with one of his lead-tipped love-repelling arrows. Though the shots are well mimed it would have helped if Apollo and Daphne could have pulled an arrow out to show us the difference in colour. Once the plot is set in motion, Cupid disappears only to return to gloat over the pain he has caused Apollo.
Not only are both Geoffrey Sirett who plays Apollo and Jacqueline Woodley as Dafne fine singers, but they are also excellent actors and know how to move on stage in an elegant dance-like fashion. Apollo’s chase of Dafne by running in place is a testament to their agility and his near captures of her of their physical adroitness.
Sirett has a baritone very like black coffee. It is unusually dark and it wakes you up and keeps you alert. Yet it is liquid and easily flowing, able to negotiate Handel’s flashiest passages effortlessly. Sirett brings out both the comedy and tragedy of Apollo’s situation and makes the god’s wonder and remorse at Dafne’s arborification thoroughly believable.
Woodley has a wonderfully full soprano which she has scaled down to suit the needs of baroque music and her role as a nymph. The way she sings all of her arias is lovely but she pulls out the stops for the one that most looks forward to Handel’s future operas “Come in Ciel benigna stella”, where Dafne pleads with Apollo to use his reason to control his passion. This Woodley lends an earnestness and grandeur that are clearly operatic.
Lindsay Squire’s design for the square raised stage in the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse is simple but effective – four banners of painted trees at the corners of the stage and baskets of flowers on the window sills behind. Angela Thomas’s design for Dafne’s transformation into a tree is ingenious. Dafne does not so much turn into a tree as into a symbol of a tree, which for the mythological story is just as good. The magic of the transformation is also aided by Gabriel Copley’s lighting design.
Larry Beckwith leads an eight-member ensemble from the violin in a lively account of a score filled with pre-echoes of later works. Apollo’s chase after Dafne keeps threatening to morph into the “Entry of the Queen of Sheba” from <i>Solomon</i> (1749). <i>Enoch Arden</i> and <i>Apollo e Dafne</i> make up an unusual double bill of two works about love lost and sublimated. It’s a thoughtful and satisfying coupling that shows the “performing arts in fusion” in two very different but compelling ways.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Jacqueline Woodley as Dafne and Geoffrey Sirett as Apollo, ©2016 Katy Lee; Frank Cox-O’Connell; Angela Park, ©David Leyes; Jacqueline Woodley as Dafne and Geoffrey Sirett as Apollo, ©2016 Katy Lee;
For tickets, visit <a href="http://torontomasquetheatre.com">http://torontomasquetheatre.com</a>.
<b>2016-11-18</b>
<b>Apollo and Daphne / Enoch Arden</b>