The University of Manitoba Opera Theatre is posing a difficult question to audiences this weekend: Where Do We Go From Here?
Their latest concert – which features this uncomfortable question as a title – hopes to provide answers through a series of operatic scene offerings at the Desautels Concert Hall. The showcase features excerpts from Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, George Frederic Handel’s Ariodante, and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The singers and pianists performing in Where Do We Go From Here? acknowledge that living in uncertainty is not the easiest place to be for actors of any kind, especially when there isn’t a resolution for that uncertainty in a showcase of scenes.
“I live very in the present with whatever’s happening in the scene,” shares soprano Tessa Hartl, who will be performing the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when asked about how she confronts that uncertainty. “You have to imagine what your character was doing before the scene, so before I go on stage, I try and put myself in that position.”
"It feels very human to me,” adds soprano Hannah Orr, who will be portraying the disgraced fiancée of Ariodante, Ginevra in Handel’s 1735 masterwork. “There’s so much raw emotion going on. It makes the aria that I sing a lot [sadder] and a lot more human in the sense of ‘Where do I go from here now? Now that everything is taken away from me, what do I do?’ It’s incredibly hard and vulnerable.”
The student pianists involved in the production also have a hand in drawing out the uncertain circumstances of the scenes. Pianist Henry Kelsey cites the uncertainty and mysterious circumstances that Britten inserts into the score for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “The uncertainty really comes out with discord and bass notes that offset really gorgeous harmony and create that discord that is underlying the entire aria,” he explains.
The discord that Kelsey cites in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is also hard to ignore outside of the concert hall. With looming economic uncertainty and ongoing conflict in the world, Where Do We Go From Here? strikes a fitting soundtrack to the current social climate.
“I think there’s both an opportunity to provide a sense of escapism from that reality through art,” says Kelsey, “but also as a vehicle to deliver potential messages, whether social, political, or in reference to encouraging people to be confident about the future.”
“I think there’s a real opportunity through art, both in terms of putting some of those worries to rest, but also as a way to get away from them.”
Where Do We Go From Here? takes the stage on March 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m. at the Desautels Concert Hall. Tickets and more information can be found on the concert hall’s website.
