Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Hailed as a masterpiece at its sold-out 2009 world premiere in Toronto and subsequent 2011 tour to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Canadian Opera Company presents the revival of Robert Lepage’s theatrically transcendent production of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Other Short Fables. Nine performances take place on April 13, 14, 22, May 1, 2, 10, 12, 13, 19, 2018.
A co-production between the COC, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Dutch National Opera and Opéra de Lyon, in collaboration with Lepage’s own Ex Machina, The Nightingale and Other Short Fables bears the unmistakable signature of Canada’s theatrical visionary. It’s a visual feast that turns the operatic experience on its head, placing the orchestra on stage while singers perform and manipulate puppets in an orchestra pit flooded with water.
COC Music Director Johannes Debus conducts a program featuring the best of Stravinsky’s music. The production opens with the short vocal and instrumental pieces of the jazz-tinged Ragtime, Pribaoutki, Two Poems of Konstantin Balmont, Berceuses du chat, Four Russian Peasant Songs, and Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet; followed by the satirical one-act opera-ballet The Fox; and concluding with The Nightingale, a Russian conte lyrique based on the tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Internationally acclaimed Canadian soprano Jane Archibald, the COC’s Artist-in-Residence, leads a cast of established and rising stars, and makes her role debut as the Nightingale. Also making role debuts are COC Ensemble Studio graduate tenor Owen McCausland as the Fisherman, who discovers the Nightingale; American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as the Emperor, whose life is saved by the Nightingale; and Lindsay Ammann as Death, who threatens the Emperor.
The Nightingale and Other Short Fables is an international cultural showcase that draws costume and set inspiration from the Vietnamese water puppetry and bunraku (traditional Japanese puppet theatre) featured in the production. Puppets were designed by Tony and Emmy award-winning American puppet designer Michael Curry, whose work has appeared in The Lion King on Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, the Olympics, and the Super Bowl, among other credits.
All performances of the COC’s production of The Nightingale and Other Short Fables feature the COC Orchestra and Chorus. The opera is sung in Russian and presented by the COC with English SURTITLES™.
TICKET INFORMATION
Single tickets for The Nightingale and Other Short Fables range from $35 – $225 and box seats, when available, are $350. Tickets are now on sale, available online at coc.ca, by calling 416-363-8231, or in person at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts Box Office (145 Queen St. W.). For more information on specially priced tickets available to young people under the age of 15, standing room, Opera Under 30 presented by TD Bank Group, student groups and rush seating, visit coc.ca.
Photo: Scene from The Nightingale. ©2009 Michael Cooper.
2018-03-06
Toronto: Robert Lepage's production of "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables' returns to the COC