Bluebeard’s Castle & Erwartung

Stock Image via Unsplash: @cherstve_pechivo

To make art, humans must take risks. In the most recent run of Bluebeard’s Castle (Béla Bartók) and Erwartung (Arnold Schoenberg), the Canadian Opera Company made bold creative choices and saw them pay off.

               With both works being operetta, the volume of content to work with was limited for the COC creative team. But within confines creativity can flourish, and with it called all departments—like light design—to have their spotlight.

               Our notes on the music, the singers did well with bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as the power and commanding noble, and soprano Karen Cargill sang the role of Judith. Her singing and acting brought an interesting depth of agency to the character who is stuck in difficult circumstances and tried to take hold of the situation for herself the best she could.

The set design for this production was a masterclass in the value light design. The casting of the seven keyholes across the stage, consecutively increasing in size helped build the tension in a clever yet subtle way, and the different light effects from each doorway were an ingenious story telling technique that didn’t crowd the stage yet clearly told the audience of the magnitude that lay beyond each threshold.

               And a moment of different departments collaborating to set the perfect ambience, was the water pooling at the bottom of the stage. A first for us to see in a COC production, it was cleverly hidden at the beginning of the show and became an exciting discovery later. The dying of the water red, and the addition of the red lighting cast over the scene making the lead’s broken pearls shine in the water played together in a visually wonderful narrative. Small details like said pearls in the water really added to the immersion of the “Lake of Tears” in the story.

               Another first for us was seeing performers swim on and off the stage. It was such a wow factor entrance, and it made us glad our seats were in the 4th ring, which allowed us to look down on the stage to see it. The drama, ingenuity, and performance requirements from the actors brought levels of drama and narrative excitement that really made an impact and added a new exciting layer to live opera.

               Erwartung was a fever dream explosion of creative staging and use of projected imagery. The narrative offered very little for the team to work with, so they really leaned into how they could make the performance intriguing. Visions of dimensionally inverted streets and illuminated hands of temptation reaching out to symbolize the protagonist’s insecurities and anxieties were clever forms of storytelling.

               But perhaps most impressive was the choreography of the performance. Actors slow-mode flipping chairs into regular seating positions, interpretative spiraling dance as the main character’s anxieties grew, and hallucinations of people walking sideways made for an immersive, if somewhat unsettling, depiction of the character’s perspective.

               As the music of the 1800s pushed the boundaries of musical form then, it continues to do so now. Art presents the much-needed opportunity for us all to stretch our minds, foster creativity, and to showcase the talents ever present here in our city. Art encourages us to challenge convention ourselves, and allow for the invaluable continual growth of art and artist.