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theatre review

In Toronto's small but interesting indie opera world, Opera 5 is the tiny, feisty company with amusing YouTube videos and a reputation for approaching this most sacred and conservative of art forms with a little twist. Their annual production this spring followed suit: a pairing of two one-act operas by Dame Ethel Smyth, a member of classical music's most lonely club – female composers – and in her prime, around the turn of the 21st century, a musical force to be reckoned with.

And based on the performance of Smyth's Fête Galante and The Boatswain's Mate, her reputation as a fine composer is well-earned. Both scores were tuneful, well-constructed, with a great deal of turn-of-the-century-charm. And they were performed expertly by the chamber-sized orchestra Opera 5 assembled for the occasion, led by Evan Mitchell – just another reminder, if one were needed, of the extremely high quality of instrumental playing just about everywhere you look in Toronto.

The problems with the two halves of Suffragette were on stage. Reviving curiosities from the musical past demands one of two approaches – either a museum-like, historically accurate approach, or a modern, no-holds-barred treatment. Opera 5 was somewhere in the middle with their presentations, which denied them both the intellectual satisfaction of the historical or the emotional satisfaction of the intense. And there were possibilities in these two pieces, both with libretti as well as music by Smyth. Fête Galante could be a highly stylized look at love and passion, with differing couples constantly hooking up with the "wrong" partners. In naming her characters after commedia dell'arte figures, perhaps Smyth was expecting exactly that kind of production. Opera 5 tried to update the setting to the 1970s, but that wasn't clear enough on stage, and so the mini-opera's tragic ending came as something of a surprise. It felt as though you were watching a show through gauze, where you knew something important was happening, but you couldn't quite make out what it was.

The plot of The Boatswain's Mate was exactly the opposite of Fête Galante, very down to earth and clear, sort of a sitcom-style story of a strong woman barkeeper, and her would-be husband, who concocts a faked burglary in her bar from which he can rescue her and win her hand. There is a feminist tinge to this plot (probably more strongly felt in 1916 when it was first performed; Smyth was a noted Suffragette) but it's still a very conventional story on which to plop an hour-plus worth of music. There were good performances in The Boatswain's Mate, but the young singers sometimes made the common mistake of adopting one vocal attitude toward their role, and then never deviating from it, thereby denying their characters the kind of emotional development you need for successful theatrical presentation.

All that said, however, there were more than a few fine vocal performances on the opera stage – as with instrumentalists, there are fine performers in this city and country. Elizabeth Polese was powerful and engaging as Columbine in Fête Galante, Jonathan MacArthur a whirlwind as Harlequin (the one character on stage who paid homage to his commedia dell'arte roots). Eugenia Dermentzis's Queen and Kevin Myers's The Lover had a few touching moments of real passion before the mini-opera's end, and the staging, while sometimes confusing, had its effective moments as well.

In The Boatswain's Mate, Asitha Tennekoon, as the conniving suitor, reminds us why he's been such a find in Toronto since he appeared, more or less out of nowhere, in last year's Rocking Horse Winner for Tapestry Opera. He's a fine musical actor, with a very light but appealing voice. Jeremy Ludwig was good as the ex-soldier Tennekoon's character enlists in his plot, but the real focus in Mate was Alexandra Smither's star turn as Mrs. Waters. Smither has a very beautiful voice, quite compelling in its upper registers, but she, of all, suffered, I thought, in lacking emotional modulation throughout her performance. She acted many emotions during the one-acter, from humour to reverie to passion to anger, but the sound she made as she did so was often the same. A slight change in focus would have allowed her good performance to reach another level.

Art is just like other forms of activity based on performance and experience, like sports, for example. Opportunities for training, for success and failure, are essential to the development of polished, secure performers. Opera 5 needs to keep at it in their imaginative quest towards the highest standards of their art.

Suffragette continues at Theatre Passe Muraille until June 25.

A performer in a new dance-opera focused on the residential school system says the production avoids being just a 'history lesson.' Dancer Aria Evans stars in Bearing, which premieres Thursday at Toronto’s Luminato Festival.

The Canadian Press

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