Masculine mystique, or the problem that dare not speak its name
A conflicted play-in-progress at Summerworks and I wonder if the issue is self-censorship
But before the lead topic, I’ve been meaning to share at least some pictures from the Sarah Connolly - Joseph Middleton recital on July 16 at the Toronto Summer Music Festival, for which I kept failing to find space in the newsletter. (All photos are by Lucky Tang for the TSMF.)
It was a concert in a university setting—a bit awkward, Connolly should be performing at the Koerner Hall, but she is/was not very well known in Canada, and this was her Canadian debut. (We are a small, and very remote market.) She is well into her 60s, though: how did this not happen earlier, mind boggles. The closest she got to an operatic debut in this country was the Richard Jones Ariodante set in a Scottish village, the production which travelled to the COC without its original singer in the title role (a much less interesting singer, as it happens also an English mezzo, was cast in the COC production. The world is mad, part the umpteenth).
Meanwhile, I’ve travelled to Glyndebourne to see her Giulio Cesare in the now classic McVicar production, and to Chicago to hear her in Das Lied von der Erde with the Chicago Symphony, so I’ve enjoyed SC’s artistry in other countries. Today, the voice isn’t what it used to be—it’s weaker and paler than is the SC standard—but the artistry is undiminished, as is the willingness to experiment, and the respect for music. Her intros to the song sets that we knew very little about were sweet, as were her self-deprecating jokes.
The stand-outs in the program for me where Richard Rodney Bennett’s A History of the Thé Dansant (1994), which sets his sister’s Molly Peacocke’s poems to music. It’s the 1920s, a family is in the south of France for holidays, and the girl is experiencing various visual and auditory delights for the first time. The music is whimsical and entertaining, and the words are flashes of experiences, nothing linear or elaborate.
Another standout was, as expected, Mahler’s The Rückert-Lieder, particularly “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” and “Um Mitternacht”. Connolly gave a public Master Class on that same week, and had been spending a lot of time with her students at the TSMF by then. They were a rowdy and supportive bunch, which was good to see. Not a few kisses were blown in their direction from the stage.
“Meet Gerald Bloom”, says the play description, “overcommitted, overworked, undervalued, overstimulated, undernourished, and pulled in a million directions by friends, family, work, politics, health and enlightenment. Today is Gerald’s birthday and he is up against everything. Everything is a fight.” As well as “How on earth do we fucking manage? There isn’t even time to cry!”
Based on this, you would conclude that the latest Adam Lazarus-Guillermo Verdecchia collaboration must be a play about time management, overwork, and the noxious presence of the always-on phone in our lives. Except that it isn’t.