OPERA REVIEW: LOVE FROM AFAR

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
03 FEB 2012
R: 4.5/5

Pictured: Erin Wall

If they were being totally honest, one suspects, even the greatest supporters of modern opera would have to admit that a lot of what they love is, in fact, a bit of a study in sensory deprivation for opera’s broader audience. That is, modern operas feature scores largely devoid of traditional melody and harmony, presented in a style largely devoid of traditional theatricality.

But the Canadian Opera Company grabs that whole notion by the scruff of its neck and gives it a good shake, with its staging of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s LOVE FROM AFAR, set in the infinitely more romantic 12th century but composed in the very contemporary 21st. Co-produced with the English National Opera and Vlaamse Opera, the COC opened this production Thursday on the stage of the Four Seasons.

It is, in its way, a simple love story, complicated to some degree by the fact that the lovers — a French troubadour of noble birth and attitudes, and a ravishing countess who holds court in Tripoli — don’t even meet (and then only briefly and tragically) until the opera’s end. Their affair, if it can be called that, is inspired, then championed, by a mysterious figure known only as The Pilgrim (mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabo) who, overhearing the jaded Jaufré Rudel (baritone Russell Braun) lament the lack of loveable ladies in his life, tells the nobleman of the fair Clémence (soprano Erin Wall) who lives a lonely but irreproachable life in Tripoli. Having left Jaufré besotted, the Pilgrim then journeys to Tripoli, where she tells Clémence of a man in Aquitaine, who is so enamoured of the mere idea of her that he spends his time composing odes to her beauty — and, of course, that ensures that Clémence is hooked as well.

The Pilgrim passes on that bit of good news to the besotted Jaufré, who immediately sets sail for Tripoli — a voyage complicated by a case of terminal mal de mer that leaves him barely enough time to meet the girl of his dreams before departing for the sweet hereafter.

As librettos go, Amin Maalouf’s is a scant affair, particularly when stretched rather thinly over a canvas of almost three hours. It is driven primarily by a score that washes over its audience in almost viscous waves of atonality, spiked with and occasionally enlivened by an array of found sound. Into this aural womb, however, director Daniele Finzi Pasca injects the very latest in modern stage technology, tempering it at almost every turn with a theatricality as old as time itself.

He casts each of his characters in triplicate, leaving his three hugely talented principals to concentrate on the complex musical and emotional demands of the work, while their alter-egos create a dreamlike world around them, disappearing and reappearing in Jean Rabassé’s achingly beautiful set design, as if by magic, trailing often hauntingly gorgeous costumes designed by Kevin Pollard.

In Finzi Pasca’s world, they not only fly and spring fully formed from nowhere, but thanks to collaborations with videographer Roberto Vitalini, lighting designer Alexis Bowles (who with Finzi Pasca manages to bend light to their will) and movement consultant Julie Hamelin, they also appear to walk on water as well as under it.

In short, they create a world of wonder that not only provides a magnificent showcase for three rich and evocative voices, but in the process, they provide enough sensory engagement that the charm of Saareiaho’s seemingly spartan score is slowly revealed, assisted at every turn by the artists of the COC Orchestra, under the assured baton of Johannes Debus.

Along the way, it also injects more than a bit of sense into a world that too often seems to thrive through sensory deprivation.