Marilyn Monroe show has a happy birthday
by Morgan McPherson
Opera. Intimidating, stodgy patrons, opera glasses, and fat ladies in horns belting their hearts out? Not this opera! I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Marilyn Forever, in all of its glorious modernity, and it was an experience unlike any I’ve had before.
Opera and I have had an interesting relationship. I have seen three operas prior to seeing Marilyn, and all of them were quite different from one another. I have seen a modern retelling of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (where I first discovered that even though the libretto is in English, it can be downright unrecognizable when sung operatically), Mozart’s The Magic Flute (light and fun, as Mozart’s works are wont to be), and Tchaikovsky‘s Eugene Onegin (a highly dramatic and stunning Russian opera based on a novel by Pushkin). As an instrumentalist of nearly 20 years, I have previously found it a struggle to stop watching the orchestra pit and pay attention to the stage.
That Rare Thing
Approaching a new Canadian opera
by Joel Ivany
I have never enjoyed researching an opera as much as I have for this project.
Aventa Ensemble, run by Bill Linwood, approached me in early 2010 about a new opera that was being commissioned for their group. Aventa (based in Victoria BC) is one of the top five leading contemporary, classical music groups in the world. It was a piece to be written by English composer Gavin Bryars, libretto coming from Canadian Marilyn Bowering, based on the American actress Marilyn Monroe, to be played by Eivør Pálsdóttir, from the Faroe Islands.
Sign me up.
We were able to workshop two scenes at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2010 and through this process; we were able to find the heartbeat of this piece. We are dealing with a voice (Marilyn Monroe), an artist who is craving to be loved and to be remembered.
Three years later, I find myself in Victoria BC.
