Stage Door News
Stage Door News
What might an aristocratic woman of 17th-century England, firmly decided against marriage and men, do with her life? According to the prolific and eccentric playwright of the period, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, she might retire from society and create an all-female community within an enclosure called "the convent of pleasure." She might surround herself with music and dance, and contemplate the very things she wishes to avoid.
Committed to mining the rich masque tradition of the Baroque and Renaissance, Toronto Masque Theatre is delighted to present three rarely performed and thematically linked gems from the 17th century.
TMT will bring to life the little-known Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish, under the direction of Derek Boyes. The production incorporates not only music of Cavendish’s time composed by William Lawes, but also two 17th-century works: Claudio Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate, in which Cupid and Venus complain bitterly to the gods of the underworld that their arrows have lost their power amongst the women of Mantua; and Luigi Rossi's Noi siam tre donzellette in which three young ladies stroll home after a ball, full of gossip about their admirers, sung in the most exquisite trios imaginable.
All are presented, as they would have been at the time, as entertaining spectacles of dance, music, acting, singing, costume and pageantry.
TMT is delighted to welcome Montreal’s Renaissance dance troupe, Les Jardins Chorégraphiques under the leadership of Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière. Joining them are sopranos Dawn Bailey, Michele deBoer and Virginia Hatfield, baritone Benjamin Covey, some of Toronto’s finest young actors and a Baroque band led from the violin by Larry Beckwith.
The Convent of Pleasure: An evening of Renaissance music, dance and theatre
Friday May 11 and Saturday May 12, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
Pre-show chat at 7:15 p.m. both nights with TMT artistic director Larry Beckwith and special guest Prof. Katie Larson
Hart House Theatre, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto
Single tickets for The Convent of Pleasure: Regular $40 / Senior $33 / Under 30 $20
Available at www.uofttix or by calling 416-978-8849.
(Student dress rehearsal, 1:00 p.m., Thursday May 10th, 2012, $10 per student, available through the TMT office at 416-410-4561 or admin@torontomasquetheatre.com.)
Artistic Direction
Directorial Consultant : Derek Boyes
Choreographer: Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière
Music Director : Larry Beckwith
Production Design : Caroline Guilbault
Lighting Design : Gabriel Cropley
Dancers
Les Jardins Chorégraphiques (Montreal)
Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière
Nina Richmond-Goring
Marie-Laurence Primeau
Dorothea Ventura
Mikael Bouffard
Singers
Virginia Hatfield, soprano
Dawn Bailey, soprano
Michele DeBoer, soprano
Scott Belluz, counter-tenor
Benjamin Covey, baritone
Instrumentalists
Larry Beckwith, music direction and violin
Justin Haynes, viola da gamba
Noam Krieger, harpsichord
Elizabeth Loewen Andrews, violin
Avery MacLean, recorder
and others TBA
Toronto Masque Theatre was established in 2003. It performs critically acclaimed, fully professional multi-media works that combine elements of music, theatre and dance. Since then, TMT has produced close to 25 critically-acclaimed productions, including Venus and Adonis (John Blow and William Shakespeare), Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (Monteverdi), Acis and Galatea (Handel), A Soldier's Tale (Stravinsky) and a cycle of the five major works for the stage by the great 17th century English composer Henry Purcell,. In addition, they have commissioned five new works, two from James Rolfe and one each from Omar Daniel, Abigail Richardson and Dean Burry, as well as presenting plays (Aria da capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay, One Man Masque by James Reaney and Brief Lives by Patrick Garland, a double-bill of plays by Moliere) and "variety" evenings (Commedia, Masque of Love, A Scottish Masque, Tears of a Clown, Masque of Irony, Masque of the Muses). TMT has appeared at the Guelph Spring Festival, Festival of the Sound and Elora Festival and has been heard on CBC Radio.
Taking as its inspiration the core Baroque repertoire of masques and semi-operas, TMT explores and expands the repertoire of the art form by reviving little-known works, creating innovative programs, and commissioning and performing new works in the spirit of the masque. TMT generally presents three programs per year in the Toronto area, offering two or three performances of each, ranging from fully-staged productions to informal cabaret-style evenings. In addition we present educational outreach initiatives, pre-show chats, and a range of performance-based fundraising events.
Montréal's Les Jardins Chorégraphiques is a Baroque dance company under the artistic direction of Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, who has been a choreographer and director in the early music and dance worlds for 20 years. With its six dancers, trained in the aesthetics and techniques of the 17th and 18th centuries, the company has created several productions based on ancient forms (ballet, opera and comédie-ballet) in which dance plays a central role. The company's originality comes from combining a dash of audacious modernity with its mastery of historical tradition. One of the strengths of Les Jardins Chorégraphiques is its multi-disciplinary team which brings together equally distinguished artists from the worlds of the theatre, baroque and early music, classical and contemporary dance, and the academic worlds of art and dance history. As part of the Nouvel Opéra, Les Jardins Chorégraphiques collaborates with many musical and theatrical groups in Québec and across Canada including Les idées heureuses, l'Ensemble Masques and the Toronto Masque Theatre. Since its founding in 2007, the young company has performed Charpentier's La Descente d’Orphée, Handel's Giulio Cesare, Rameau's Pygmalion (Early Music Vancouver), Molière-Lully's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Graupner's La Constanza, and Purcell's King Arthur and The Indian Queen. The company has also mounted its own new creations including La Belle Danse (Festival of Ideas, Edmonton) and Le Ballet de l’Impatience to music by Lully (which had its world premiere at the Montréal Baroque Festival in June 2011).
2012-03-30
Toronto: Toronto Masque Theatre presents Margaret Cavendish’s “The Convent of Pleasure” May 11-12