May 2000 - Nr. 5
Views and Reviews
by Alidë Kohlhaas
Those,
who encounter Faust for the first time through the medium of Charles Gounod’s
opera, will meet a different character from the one Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe created in his play. Gounod went for the story’s melodrama, not its
philosophy, and called the text to life with his fine score.
Opera Hamilton closed its season with a solid production of Gounod’s vision of Faust. Conductor Christian Segarici’s vast background in French opera came to the fore in his handling of the score, played by the Hamilton Philharmonic with the requisite Gallic touch. Director Tom Diamond and choreographer Timothy French combined their talents with that of a fine cast to produce a sound, though perhaps not sizzling, Faust.
Stephen
West’s richly coloured bass-baritone was ideal for the role of
Méphistophélès, although he didn’t always fully utilize it. Tenor Guy
Bélanger’s Faust could have used a little more shading at times, while
soprano Wendy Nielsen’s bright voice needed a touch more softness here and
there in her rendition of Marguerite. Yet, overall, this was a competent
Faust that makes one look forward to Opera Hamilton’s 2000/01 season of
Madama Butterfly, Popera, Eugene Onegin and The Merry Widow.
Ursula Hegi gave us the outstanding novel, Stones from the River, and the non-fiction work, Tearing the Silence. Now she has given us a companion work to her novel. The Vision of Emma Blau, follows Stefan Blau from Burgdorf, the scene of Stones from the River, to the America of the beginning of the 20th century. There it takes up the tale of a not quite typical immigrant family and closes near the end of the same century with Stefan’s granddaughter Emma. Stefan’s successes and failures, and those of his family, are richly and evocatively drawn. The novel’s drawback is that it contains perhaps a little too much drama. It thus gives a much harsher view of the effects resettlement on an individual, and on future generations, then commonly seen. Yet, it was hard to put the book aside. Hegi has a way of holding ones attention with her vivid descriptions, her sweeping view of an important century, and of life on the American side of the Atlantic. [The Vision of Emma Blau, Helga Hegi, Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $36.00]
Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel, Black Snow, had to wait some 30 years for publication, 25 years after his death in 1940. The Russian playwright’s short novel takes a close look at the vanities of the theatrical world in communist Russia and in the process tackles some very important personalities, including Konstantin Stanislavski, the founder of "method" acting.
This brief novel is important not only because it peeks with sly humour at the hypocrisy of the former communist system, but also because it has a contemporary application to our own general art world. It, too, is not without its excesses. Perhaps the book should be a "must read" for anyone in the field.[Black Snow, Mikhail Bulgakov, The Harvill Press, 171 pages, $11.00]
Another
artist, whose extra-ordinary work and vision did not become public until
decades after her death, is German painter Charlotte Salomon. She created a
painted play with words and music between 1940-42 that is so modern in its
concept that many a contemporary artist must be envious of her vision.
Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre? is on exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This multi-media work is life-confirming, at times touchingly humorous despite the often tragic events it follows through its characters (all of them comically re-named members of her family and friends) from 1917 to 1942. The original work contained some 780 gouaches, of which 405 are now on display at the AGO. Some call it a Gesamtkunstwerk in the spirit of Wagner’s concept of opera, and they are not wrong.
Comments to: alide@echoworld.com
