OPERA: FEATURE INTERVIEW

Set designer Gauci recalls big break
20 Oct'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

You never know where that next step is going to lead you: A few feet ahead, or a whole new life. Just ask Gerard Gauci. A quarter century ago, he was a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, eking out a living as an illustrator. In that capacity he found himself charged with designing a cover for what he describes as "a now-defunct CBC Radio guide."

The result owed more than a passing debt to the baroque period and, lovely though it was, would no doubt have been forgotten had it not caught the attention of a pair of artists who were fascinated with all things baroque. They ripped the cover off the magazine and stuck it on their fridge, where it was noticed by a friend of theirs and of Gauci's, who proceeded to give Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg a telephone number where Gauci could be reached.

"They called out of the blue and asked if I'd have tea with them," Gauci recalls, by way of explaining his 25-year association with Opera Atelier, the Toronto-based baroque opera company formed and nurtured over the past quarter century by Pynkoski and Zingg. And Gauci, whose cover sketch landed him a job that would eventually morph into his being named OA's resident set designer, has gone along for the ride. In fact, you could say he has been responsible for the look of that ride, as the fledgling company outgrew the AGO's Walker Court and the Macmillan Theatre, before coming to roost in the opulent confines of the Elgin Theatre, where it still makes its performance home.

"I've been able to grow along with them," says Gauci, who admits that while growing up in Etobicoke he "intended to work in theatre, and got waylaid. I've grown with them. That was the wonderful thing about coming in on the ground floor. I've just had to learn as we grow, and I'm still always learning."

Indeed he is. Starting with the Elgin's Oct. 30 opening of OA's ACIS AND GALATEA, audiences are going to see a whole new dimension to Gauci's talents. For the Handel classic, Gauci is not only working his magic on the sets (he has proven himself a dab hand at trompe l'oeil over the years) and props (including a flock of mechanical goats that will gambol across the stage at will), this time out he also has taken responsibility for the costumes. As if he didn't have enough on his plate.

"Every once in a while, I like to take on something that's very difficult -- and this is," he says, adding that costuming adds a whole new layer to things. "You can do a perfectly nice sketch, but it's not about sketching." he says. "The thing that is most different (is that) it all happens in the last few weeks." So, in addition to worrying about the sets and props, he's now embroiled in fittings, tailoring and a thousand other concerns. But if Gauci seems to be taking it all in his stride, it's because of past experience. "At the beginning of every show, I'm always nervous about how it's going to go," he admits with a quiet smile. "But it always works out, if you have a good team. And I have a great team."

Gauci has designed more than a dozen shows for OA, but through it all he has built a successful career as a painter, as well. His work has been exhibited across Canada and featured in several prestigious collections. Maintaining two careers, Gauci says, isn't so much a matter of keeping them separate as using them to complement each other. "The biggest difference is your paintings are always about your very personal experience," he says, "but your design work is very collaborative. Painting is about me." And while he says he enjoys the work that is all about him, "I'm also very happy to open that door and start working collaboratively, It's a very different experience and a very refreshing one. It's great to shift back and forth."

As an artist, Gauci may be singing out of two different songbooks, but he quite happily designed the cover for both, 25 years ago.

Gauci, Pynkoski partnership works:

Ever wonder what it would be like to work with a larger than life personality? Ask Gerard Gauci, the resident designer of Opera Atelier. He's been been working with the ever-ebullient and always-enthusiastic Marshall Pynkoski since the baroque opera company was little more than a dream.

"I don't find working with him hard," Gauci says happily of the man whose enthusiasm for his company flows over the audience at the top of every OA performance. Indeed, Gauci welcomes that kind of enthusiasm "I find it really stimulating," Gauci says. "The hardest thing is going to function and not talking about work. The wonderful thing about (Marshall) is he gives as much as he takes -- probably more."
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