The Abominable Showman; Baritone Étienne Dupuis

The triumphant homecoming of Etienne Dupuis

After receiving accolades across Europe, Montreal baritone Etienne Dupuis returns home to star in The Barber of Seville at L’Opéra de Montréal 

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

(Rehearsal photos by Yves Renaud)

Montrealers remember seeing rising baritone Etienne Dupuis when he was part of a flash mob of opera singers staged in the busy Marché Jean Talon market in his hometown of Montreal, to promote L’Opéra de Montréal in 2010. “I love people’s faces when I start singing opera in an up-close space,” Dupuis told the Vancouver Straight alt-weekly. “We were standing right in front of them and they just became statues. People don’t realize the nature of that sound and what it does to you. It can make you vibrate.”

Watch the clip here.

The Abominable Showman, September 17, 2014

The Italian Stallion
The foremost Verdi baritone of his generation Paolo Gavanelli makes his grand Opera de Montreal debut in the title role of Nabucco

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

The eminent British classical music critic Hugh Canning once described Italian Baritone Paolo Gavanelli as “the foremost Verdi baritone of his generation.”

And certainly Gavanelli has been one of the most successful, with a repertoire of over 50 roles in a career that has spanned over 30 years. He is renowned for his signature roles: Rigoletto, Macbeth, Simon Boccanegra, Falstaff and, of course, Nabucco, which he will reprise in his L’Opera de Montreal debut opposite Russian soprano Tatiana Melnychenko as Abigaille.

The Abominable Showman, September 12, 2014

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (photo by Denis Rouvre)

Opera Nation

Canadian opera companies stick to crowd-pleasing Italian masterpieces to anchor their 2014- 2015 seasons

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

The upcoming 2014-2015 opera season across Canada continues to rely on old Italian classics by such tried-and-true composers as Gaetano Donizetti and Giacomo Puccini. And the biggest buzz this season is the return of the Canadian Opera Company’s internationally-hailed double-bill of Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung, directed by Robert Lepage.

Vancouver Opera’s upcoming 55th season features four productions: Georges Bizet’s Carmen, in French with English translations projected above the stage (Sept 27 – Oct 5); Stickboy, a moving new opera by world-renowned spoken-word artist Shane Koyczan and composer Neil Weisensel about the inner life of a young boy (Oct 23 – Nov 7, at the Vancouver Playhouse); Johann Strauss, Jr.’s melody-filled epic Die Fledemaus (Feb 28 – March 8, 2015); and to close the season with a bang, Stephen Sondheim’s darkly comical Sweeney Todd, starring real-life husband and wife Greer Grimsley, one of the great bass-baritones of his generation, as Sweeney Todd, and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Luretta Bybee as Mrs. Lovett (Apr 25 – May 3, 2015). All performances (except Stickboy) are at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

The Abominable Showman, May 15, 2014

Kamen Chanev and Galina Shesterneva

A  Day in the Life

The Charlebois Post goes backstage to preview L’Opera de Montreal’s international All-Star production of Puccini’s classic Turandot

by Richard Burnett (rehearsal photos by Richard Burnett)

@bugsburnett

Two of the most demanding and best-loved roles in the history of opera are Princess Turandot and Prince Calaf in Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, which premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in April 1926.

Opera Australia’s current production of Turandot has been travelling the world for years, and arrives in Montreal with New Zealand-born former ballet dancer, choreographer and director Graeme Murphy at the helm.

“In the early days Turandot used to come with her own eye make-up and her own wigs, and sometimes her own costumes,” Murphy told me last week at an OdeM rehearsal for Turandot. “Every new Calaf and Turandot – these opera singers have careers playing these two roles around the world, it’s one of those roles that is quite demanding, and they may get stuck in the role. So my job is to make them feel fresh. Sometimes I make drastic changes, although this production is [also very] specific.”

For this Opera Australia production of Turandot, L’Opera de Montreal has hired two renowned singers to portray Princess Turandot and Prince Calaf: Russian-born soprano Galina Shesterneva and Bulgarian tenor Kamen Chanev. The international cast is rounded out by Japanese soprano (and Montreal favourite) Hiromi Omura as Liù.

Shesterneva is known for her Turandot, but it was another Puccini opera, Madama Butterfly, that inspired her to be an opera singer.

The Abominable Showman, May 8, 2014

(photo by Max Telzerow)

The Piano Man

The Trans-Canada journey of award-winning singer-songwriter and actor Bryce Kulak, from the prairies to the big city 

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Edmonton native Bryce Kulak is the darling of his hometown alternative press. See Magazine has dubbed him “the new brilliant wunderkind” and crosstown Vue Weekly says Kulak’s ballads are “worthy of any Andrew Lloyd Webber production.”

When I listened to his piano ballad Just Grand – I became so obsessed I think I listened to it like 50 times already in two days – I swooned.

(Click here to listen to Just Grand on SoundCloud.)

“I really love the song too. It came about as a result of my exciting collaboration with CBC host Tom Allen,” says Kulak, currently co-starring in the Montreal production of 2 Pianos 4 Hands in that city’s venerable Centaur Theatre. 

The Abominable Showman, April 30, 2014

(photo by Ali Barillaro)

Over The Rainbow

Legendary theatre director Roger Peace teams up with legend-in-the-making Chris Barillaro to recreate Judy Garland’s extraordinary 1961 concert at the Montreal Forum

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

After America’s national LGBT magazine The Advocate in 1998 called Judy Garland “The Elvis of homosexuals,” openly-gay stand-up comic Bob Smith debated the tragic idols – Elvis the King, and Judy our Queen – in a classic gag:

“Elvis had a drinking problem.”

“Judy could drink Elvis under the table.”

“Elvis gained more weight.”

“Judy lost more weight.”

“Elvis was addicted to painkillers.”

“No pill could stop Judy’s pain!”

For decades, of course, LGBT people used the code phrase “Friend of Dorothy” – inspired from Garland’s portrayal of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz – to identify one another. Then when Garland died in June 1969, myth has it her death and funeral, held in New York City, fuelled the Stonewall Riots which ignited the modern Gay Liberation movement. In fact, the very first Gay Pride parade was held one year later to commemorate Stonewall, and today LGBT people worldwide link the Gay Liberation movement’s Rainbow Flag (created in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker) with Garland’s signature song Over the Rainbow.

The Abominable Showman, April 17, 2014

Kendra Moore (via Facebook)

Hakuna Matata

The Charlebois Post goes behind-the-scenes as The Lion King musical returns for extended runs in Toronto and Montreal 

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

(Production photos courtesy of Disney Theatrical Productions)

Theatre snobs think The Lion King musical represents everything that is wrong with theatre. But ask some of the 70 million people who have seen this musical on a stage in the farthest corners of the world, from Sao Paulo to Shanghai, and you’ll get a very different answer. 

Or just ask my younger brother Skye, who was born the year the Disney movie was released, and grew up with the film – his favourite as a child. Skye had Lion King hoodies, toys, bed sheets, you name it, he could not get enough of The Lion King. 

So when the musical made its Montreal debut in 2011, I brought Skye. I have always been Mufasa to his Simba, so during the production when Mufasa sang He Lives In You to his son Simba (their relationship in the very strong first act is the real heart and soul of The Lion King), I was quite overwhelmed.

The Abominable Showman, April 10, 2014

Remembering Greg Kramer

Friends and colleagues pay tribute to late Canadian theatre legend Greg Kramer

by Richard Burnett (photos from tribute by Richard Burnett)

@bugsburnett

Canadian actor and writer Greg Kramer was found dead in his Montreal apartment a year ago, on April 8, 2013,  after he failed to show up for the first day of rehearsals for his new play, Sherlock Holmes, starring Hollywood actor Jay Baruchel at Montreal’s Segal Centre for the Performing Arts.

The widely-revered Kramer had performed on stages across Canada, from the historic Vancouver Playhouse to the venerable Centaur Theatre in Old Montreal. But Kramer told me that working with Christopher Plummer on The Tempest at Stratford in 2010 ranked up there as one of his favourite jobs. “Plummer is incredible – an unbelievable professional,” Kramer said. “Given his age and how well he has kept himself, he is an inspiration.”

The Abominable Showman, April 4, 2014

Rosemount High cast of Fame

Fame!

Veteran Montreal actor and arts journalist Sharman Yarnell passes on the acting torch to a new generation of theatre students

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Remember my name
(Fame) I'm gonna live forever!
I'm gonna learn how to fly (High)
– Irene Cara, Fame

She can recite lines from Shakespeare as easily as she can break into song from a Broadway musical. So it comes as no surprise that Montreal arts reporter Sharman Yarnell has long been a booster of local theatre, in newspaper and on the radio, whether it’s a high school production or touring Broadway musicals.

She can’t get enough of all of it. And this month Yarnell is putting her money where her mouth is to direct a Glee-inspired cast of 14 to 16-year-old students belt out some classic tunes in a production of Fame: The Musical at Rosemount High.

“There is nothing out there that can replace the joy and thrill of seeing a cast of actors performing live in front of you on a stage,” Yarnell says. “To see these kids give it their all is a reminder that young people are still excited by live theatre.”

The Abominable Showman, March 19, 2014

Director Hugo Belanger and mezzo-soprano Emma Char (centre, rear) during a rehearsal for Engelbert Humperdinck’s classic 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel

Young hearts, run free

The Atelier lyrique de L’Opéra de Montréal, National Theatre School of Canada, and the National Circus School join forces to create a brand-new cutting-edge production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s classic 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

(All rehearsal photos by Richard Burnett)

Canadian mezzo-soprano Emma Char was among the very lucky few to be chosen to study in the renowned Atelier Lyrique de L’Opéra de Montréal, a school that has bequeathed the opera world such talented singers at Etienne Dupuis, Marie-Josée Lord, the handsome Phillip Addis, as well as Taras Kulish, who today is executive director of the McGill Chamber Orchestra.

The 29-year-old Atelier Lyrique de L’Opéra de Montréal offers professional internships – combining training and on-stage experience – to young Canadian artists who have completed their studies and intend to pursue a career in the field of opera.

Char is one of 10 young artists chosen for the 2013-2014 season and while she may be young, Char has already experienced some terrifying showbiz moments, like the time she sang the title role in La Cenerentola when she completed her Artist Diploma at Cincinatti’s prestigious College Conservatory of Music. 

“It was one of the first operas I ever did, my scene partner forgot he was supposed to stay onstage with me during my entire aria!” Char recalls today. “He left the stage and I had to improvise my acting right there on the spot. I was freaking out, but I was like, ‘I can do this!’”

The Abominable Showman, March 15, 2014

The ensemble cast of Glengarry Glen Ross at Montreal’s Segal Theatre (L to R):  Tristan D. Lalla, Mike Paterson, Brett Watson, Daniel Lillford, R.H. Thomson, Michel Perron and Graham Cuthbertson

Photo credit:  Photo by Richard Burnett

Down but not Out 

CharPo asks the ensemble cast of the Segal Theatre’s new production of Glengarry Glen Ross – a play about desperate salesmen trying to make a living – what they did when their own careers were in the toilet …

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Theatre lovers the world over are familiar with David Mamet’s classic 1983 play Glengarry Glen Ross, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1984. The hit play was then turned into the 1992 cult film starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin and Alan Arkin.

Glengarry Glen Ross was also last performed in Montreal at the Centaur Theatre in 1986. So the play’s limited-engagement run at the Segal Theatre is welcome, and its cast of seasoned actors shared a few war stories of their own when this week I asked them all what they did when their own careers were also in the toilet. 

Brett Watson, who plays Richard Roma: “When I started out some 20 years ago I auditioned for a role in a film. I’d heard the director was a big reality guy and the character I was audtioning for was supposed to be drinking from a bottle of white wine. I was so desperate to get the part, I thought I’d be bold and do the morning audition with a real bottle of wine. Just to be different. But I had to do the scene over and over. After 15 minutes I had finished the bottle of  wine and left absolutely tanked. I didn’t get the part, but I got a hangover at two in the afternoon.”

Mike Paterson, who plays James Lingk: “I was living with two comedians who didn’t pay their rent or the gas bill. They left and here I was in the huge 7 ½ trying to pay rent. I had to boil all of my baths and I had no money to eat. But one thing I had was a little bit of margarine, ketchup and mustard. So I went to the store with $1.15 and bought a jumbo loaf of white bread and made my first ever ketchup and mustard sandwich. That was my staple for a long time. It was rough, but at the same time it was wonderful because it builds character.”

The Abominable Showman, February 20, 2014

What if Dr Martin Luther King and Malcolm X had sat down and had it out? 
Black Theatre Workshop imagines what could have been, in The Meeting …

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Their meeting is famous: March 26, 1964, the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X shook hands in front of the Washington press corps outside the U.S. Senate Caucus Room on Capitol Hill.

Malcolm – who once called King “Rev. Dr. Chicken-wing” – stepped out of the crowd, blocked Dr. King’s path, extended his hand and smiled.

“Well, Malcolm, good to see you,” King said, shaking Malcolm X’s hand.

That meeting almost 50 years ago lasted only a minute. 

But what if it had lasted an hour?

The Abominable Showman, January 30, 2014

Munich-born tenor Jonas Kaufmann makes his  Canadian debut in Montreal (Photo by schotzshootspeople)

The World’s Greatest Tenor

The world’s greatest living tenor, opera superstar Jonas Kaufmann, sits down for a one-on-one with CharPo on the eve of his much-anticipated Montreal debut …

Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

Everyone knew they were witnessing a historic concert when then-36-year-old Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra, hailed by The New York Times as the successor to Pavarotti, took the stage at L’Opéra de Montréal’s Signature Event back in 2004.

It was Licitra’s first-ever concert in Canada and last in Montreal: Tragically, Licitra died in September 2011 after crashing his scooter into a wall in Donnalucata, Sicily.

But a new tenor has risen to occupy the throne once held by Pavarotti (who passed away in 2007) and Licitra: Munich-born Jonas Kaufmann is considered by many to be the world’s greatest living tenor (73-year-old tenor Plácido Domingo transformed himself into a baritone five years ago) and one of the Top 10 tenors of all time.

The Abominable Showman, January 29, 2014

Will the actors in the Montreal premiere production of The Full Monty take it all off? (Photo by Tam Lan Truong, courtesy Beautiful City Theatre)

Much Ado About Dick
by Richard Burnett
@bugsburnett

CharPo sits down with theatre director Calli Armstrong to preview the “full-frontal nudity” in the Montreal premiere production of the Tony-nominated Broadway musical The Full Monty. Audiences lap it up – but what about the actors onstage?

There is going to be full-frontal nudity in the Montreal premiere production of the Tony-nominated Broadway musical The Full Monty.

That may be a bit of a yawn for Montrealers who can see cock in Montreal strip joints seven nights a week, 52 weeks a year.

But it is still the first thing everybody asks before they go see this show, from Broadway to London’s West End: “Are they really going to take it all off?”

Yes, they will.

The Abominable Showman: Tom Kitt and American Idiot

Photo Courtesy Type A Marketing

Ain’t nothing like a Pulitzer
Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning composer Tom Kitt sits down for a frank tete-a-tete about the landmark Broadway musical American Idiot – which headlines Quebec City, Montreal, Kitchener, Hamilton and Toronto in early 2014 – and what it feels like to see one’s name up in lights on the Great White Way …

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

John Cameron Mitchell famously debuted his drag-punk rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the gloriously rundown Jane Street Theatre in NYC’s West Village back in 1998, the very same venue where Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer and conductor Tom Kitt kicked off his sensational Broadway career with a bang back in 2002, working on the raunchy Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, which was adapted from the 1978 porn film that starred Bambi Woods. 

“That was one of my first big shows,” says Kitt who has since gone on to score such musicals as the landmark Next to Normal (for which he won the Pulitzer with his old friend Brian Yorkey, with whom he attended the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop as a team when they were both students at Columbia University) and, of course, the Tony and Grammy-winning rock musical American Idiot, for which Kitt arranged the music of Green Day for the Broadway stage.

The North American national tour of American Idiot – which tells the story of three lifelong friends forced to choose between their dreams and the safety of suburbia in a post 9/11 world – will headline in Quebec City (Jan 2-3, 2014) and Montreal (Jan 4-5) before headlining several cities across Ontario in March 2014.

“American Idiot is a wonderful musical and I am so proud to be a part of such a visceral show,” Kitt told me this week.

The Abominable Showman, November 9, 2013

(photo by Denis Rouvre)

Diva with a Heart

CharPo sits down for a revealing tete-a-tete with contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who is reprising the role that earned her accolades and standing ovations last year at The Royal Opera at Covent Garden, Mistress Quickly in Verdi’s classic opera Falstaff

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

French composer Claude Debussy once famously said, “In opera, there is always too much singing.” Of course, he never heard Marie-Nicole Lemieux, the first Canadian to win the First Prize and the Special Prize for Lieder at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium.

To hear Lemieux tell her own story – with her amazing charisma and bubbly personality – you  know she’d be able to convince Debussy he was dead wrong, and without her even singing a note.

That is how utterly convincing and invested Lemieux is in her craft.

“I never asked myself if I could sing because singing was always natural for me,” says Lemieux. “I could always sing. I only studied music later. But I could always sing. It was like breathing. Then when I discovered opera when I was 10-years-old, it was like a dream, untouchable. It really was the start of my passion.”

The Abominable Showman, September 30, 2013

l-r Vittorio Rossi, Steve Galluccio, Bugs (photo by Eloi Savoie)

The Italian Stallions
CharPo sits down for a revealing tête-à-tête with Montreal  playwrights Steve Galluccio and Vittorio Rossi – who also co-stars in Galluccio’s new play The St. Leonard Chronicles – and the boys dismiss all talk about their rumoured professional rivalry …

By Richard Burnett (all photos by Richard Burnett except when noted)

@bugsburnett

There’s one thing that Vittorio Rossi and Steve Galluccio do extremely well, and that’s cuss like sailors.

As we all settle on the terrasse outside the Centaur Theatre’s rehearsal studio on Young Street in Griffintown – the same building that used to house the police station where Susan Kennedy was charged with the beheading murder of Mary Gallagher in 1879 – I tell the boys that if things get a little rough or touchy during the interview, “Just tell me to fuck off and move on.”

“No fucking problem!” says Steve, smiling.

“Fuck do you guys swear a lot!” Vittorio pipes up.

And so begins a no-holds-barred conversation with the two finest Italian playwrights in Montreal.

“In Canada,” they both correct me, with gleams in their eyes.

The Abominable Showman, September 27, 2013

Photo Andrée Lanthier

In Praise of Extraordinary Women
CharPo sits down for a revealing tete-a-tete with theatre legend Roger Peace and Canada’s First Lady of Soul, Kim Richardson, about their collaboration on the iconic Broadway musical Ain’t Misbehavin' …

By Richard Burnett (all photos by Richard Burnett unless otherwise noted)

@bugsburnett

Legendary theatre director Roger Peace sailed from London to Montreal in 1957 on the ocean liner SS Columbia at the age of 21 and experienced the tail-end of Montreal’s famed and infamous golden Sin-City era. Montreal theatre scene wasn’t quite London’s West End, where Peace had landed a bit part in the musical Call Me Madam at the London Coliseum in 1952.

Kim Richardson
(courtesy Ms Richardson)

Roger Peace
(courtesy Mr. Peace)

But he has loved the theatre ever since, especially musicals, and has spent much of his professional life as a director and producer casting larger-than-life divas in his productions, notably his longtime muse, Montreal jazz great Ranee Lee, and another of his favourites, soul queen Michelle Sweeney. Lee and Sweeney co- starred in Roger’s first remount of Ain’t Misbehavin’ at Montreal’s La Diligence dinner theatre back in the late 1980s.

A quarter-century later, in his upcoming remount of Ain’t Misbehavin’ which opens at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts on Sept. 29, Peace cast another glorious diva in the role made famous by the late Nell Carter on Broadway, Kim Richardson, the pitch-perfect Juno Award-winning soul singer I have long called Whitney Houston of Canada.

The Abominable Showman, September 21, 2013

(courtesy Audrey Luna)

La Bella Luna

American soprano Audrey Luna embraces her diva status and her hardcore gay fans, on the eve of her L’Opéra de Montréal debut

by Richard Burnett 

@bugsburnett

(photos by Richard Burnett unless otherwise noted)

“I have always wanted to sing and perform, from when I was three or four years-old,” says American soprano Audrey Luna, who won over audiences and critics when she starred as Ariel in The Tempest at The Metropolitan Opera in 2012.

“[English composer Thomas Adès]’s Ariel is a dazzling creation, and Ms. Luna conquers the role,” The New York Times swooned.

The Opera News says Luna “has power and a blazing coloratura facility that most lyric sopranos can only dream of.” 

But Luna – who will star in the title role in the opera Lakmé that launches L’Opéra de Montréal’s 2013-2014 season – only figured out she wanted to be an opera singer when she was 16. 

The Abominable Showman, September 12, 2013

Measha Brueggergosman (via measha.com)

Opera Nation

Canadian opera companies stick to crowd-pleasing Italian masterpieces to anchor their 2013-2014 seasons 

by Richard Burnett @bugsburnett

The upcoming 2013-2014 opera season across Canada continues to rely on old Italian classics by such tried-and-true composers as Guiseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. And the biggest buzz this season is L’Opéra de Montréal’s superstar production of George Gerhswin’s Porgy and Bess starring soprano Measha Brueggergosman.

Vancouver Opera's upcoming 54th season will include Giacomo Puccini's Tosca  (Oct 26 – Nov 3), Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, co-produced with Pacific Opera Victoria (Nov 30 to Dec 8),  Mozart’s Don Giovanni (March 1-9, 2014) and – for the first time at the Vancouver Opera in 40 years – Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo (May 3-11, 2014). All performances are at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Across the bay, for their 2013-2014 season, British Columbia’s Pacific Opera Victoria – who boast they are “the only major opera company in Canada to build its own sets exclusively” – will present three productions: Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, with the Victoria Symphony and the Pacific Opera Chorus, and starring Brian Bannatyne-Scott as Falstaff (Oct 17 – 27); Ariadne auf Naxos (music by Richard Strauss and libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal) runs Feb 13 – 23, 2014; and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (April 24 to May 4, 2014).