An afternoon at the opera

John Barnstead introduces the rarely performed dramatic opera. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

The holidays are over, but on Sunday, January 18, Opera Nova Scotia and the Dal Department of Music offered a rich winter treat: a collaboration on Rachmaninoff’s one-act opera Aleko.

While the latest blizzard raged outside, those in attendance at the Lilian Piercey Concert Hall viewed an in-concert performance of Aleko by baritone Gregory Servant, soprano Beth Hagerman (a Dalhousie student,) tenor Jason Davis, mezzo Kathryn Servant, and bass Neil Robertson, as well as Dalhousie professor Peter Allen on piano. The Walter Kemp Singers performed choral sections. This talented ensemble (about half of whom are Dalhousie faculty, students and alumni) is headed by Walter Kemp, previous chair of the Dalhousie Music Department and Director of the Kings’ Chapel Choir.

John Barnstead of the Dalhousie Russian department introduced Aleko: a rarely-performed dramatic opera from 1893, inspired by Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies. The opera’s libretto, somewhat loosely following the original verse, charts the crimes and infidelities of Aleko, a young fugitive, and his gypsy wife Zemfira. Rachmaninoff—a child prodigy, as well as Tchaikovsky’s protégé—was only a teenager when he composed Aleko, which won a coveted gold medal for composition from the Moscow Conservatory before premiering at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Neil Robertson and Kathryn Servant perform Aleko. (Bruce Bottomley Photo)

Dr. Barnstead also coached the singers in diction, as Aleko was performed entirely in Russian: a task which, according to Dr. Kemp, required learning much of the score phonetically.

As well as singing the title role, Dr. Servant, chair of the Dalhousie Department of Music, produced and coordinated this performance of Aleko.

“Rachmaninoff’s songs are so beautiful, so I decided to research his operatic repertoire,” says Dr. Servant. “When I discovered Aleko, I said… ‘we have to perform this.”

The opera, which Dr. Servant characterizes as “very lush, with rich harmonies and sweeping, passionate melodies,” features echoes of Mascagni and Tchaikovsky, as well as hints of Rachmaninoff’s future mastery of his craft.

“This presentation is a 100 per cent collaboration between Opera Nova Scotia and the Dal Music Department, demonstrating the university's service to the community and its willingness to forge links with performing arts organizations across the province,” says Dr. Kemp.

Aleko was also the latest offering of Opera Nova Scotia’s “Informoperals” program – a season of more relaxed, pay-what-you-can operatic performances, especially of rarer and less widely-performed pieces.

Judging by the near-full house that greeted Aleko—despite the equally dramatic weather—and the standing ovation that followed it, the Informoperals program is succeeding admirably. In fact, the diversity of the crowd was striking: young students brushed shoulders with more experienced patrons of the arts, but when Dr. Barnstead asked the audience to indicate who among them was previously unfamiliar with Aleko, almost everyone raised a hand.

Other Informoperals to be offered this year include “The Counter-Tenor from Baroque to Britten,” featuring Andrew Pickett and Jennifer King, on March 1, and “Children in Opera” on April 5, at the Maritime Conservatory. Both performances are pay-what-you-can—“25 cents to 2,500 dollars,” in the words of Dr. Kemp.

Opera Nova Scotia’s spring production will be Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress: like Aleko, a relatively recent composition, and, like Aleko, chronicling the dangers inherent in idleness and wanton behavior. “Even in the desert, our nomad tents did not escape misfortune; fatal passions exist everywhere, and against fate there is no protection,” the old gypsy dramatically warns Aleko (whom of course goes off and causes catastrophe anyway.) Presumably, however, one should be relatively safe at the opera.