It’s one thing for Winnipeggers to have an opportunity to hear Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch performed in its 46-song entirety. It’s a whole other thing to have the chance to explore them through original visual art creations in an immersive concert experience.
This ambitious premise is Love Languages: Songs & Pictures on Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. Presented by Flipside Opera and Art Song Collective and the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg on January 11 at the Desautels Concert Hall, the concert features renowned Winnipeg soprano Tracy Dahl, baritone Clarence Frazer and pianist Lisa Rumpel alongside original artwork by visual artist Ana Toumine.
“It’s really more like reading someone’s diary then reading,” says Dahl on the nature of Wolf’s songs, which sets the words of Paul Heyse.
“You’re definitely never questioning how your character in any particular song feels,” adds Frazer. “So how Tracy will deliver certain poems and things to me, I definitely know how the character is feeling about me at any given time. And [Wolf] is just so direct with the musical language.”
While the individual songs of the Italienisches Liederbuch may be direct, hearing all 46 songs in the collection in one evening is a tall order for both performer and audience. “You just have to manage the emotions, I think,” says Frazer of the challenge of performing the piece. “Even though the songs are really small, I find each one packs a punch and it’s like its own little drama, which is quite intense.”
Dahl notes that the intensity of Wolf’s lieder comes from its dual Italian and German nature. “If this was German, like first German, you’d be going, ‘Oh, this is Wagnerian’,” she explains. “But because it’s Italian where you’ve got fiery personalities who really will have a good fight and then make up and make love right next to it.”
“The act of love and the act of murder are that close to one another, that passion.”
The audience is assisted in seeing both the passion of the individual pieces and the dramatic arc of the larger work through the visual art created by Toumine. A former student of Dahl’s at the University of Manitoba, Toumine collaborated with Flipside Opera to paint individual renderings of each of the pieces using Italian and German foods to illustrate the story.
“There’s a lot to take in, for sure,” Toumine laughs about the short run time the songs gives the audience little time to interact with each individual painting. “It makes me think of how relevant that is to our modern age on the Internet. It’s kind of bringing that addictive nature to like, ‘What’s going to happen next?’”.
Rumpel, who also serves as Flipside Opera’s General Manager, adds that the decision to use anthropomorphized vegetables to visually tell the stories of the lieder was twofold. “For one thing, it takes away the heteronormativity of this set,” she says. "We chose to use an Italian food and a German food as a nod to these linguistic origins of the poetry.”
“Our interpretation that we get to doesn’t have to be the same thing that the audience gets to. But this way, I think we’re giving them another way. They have the music, they have these incredible acting singers, and they have a picture plus an English translation. It’s like four different ways of understanding.”
Audiences can experience Love Languages: Songs & Pictures on Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch on Saturday, January 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Desautels Concert Hall. Tickets and more information can be found at the websites of either Flipside Opera and Art Song Collective or the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg.