Now available online…
University of Toronto Quarterly
Volume 87, No. 4, Fall 2018
UTQ Online: http://bit.ly/utq874
Hearing Riel
Introduction
Editors’ Introduction: Hearing Riel
Caryl Clark, Linda Hutcheon, Sherry D. Lee, Tegan Niziol, Carolyne Sumner
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Historical Contextualizing
The Genesis and First Production of Louis Riel
Robin Elliott
The premiere performance of the opera Louis Riel on 23 September 1967 was a
landmark event in the history of Canadian opera. The circumstances of the
genesis of the opera and its first production are examined. The birth of
Louis Riel took place in the context of Canada’s centennial celebrations,
which saw several other dramatic works about Riel created and also a number
of other new Canadian operas. The revivals of the first production of the
opera in 1968 and 1975 are discussed, as are the radio (1967) and television
(1969) broadcasts and the recordings on LP (1985) and DVD (2011). The
critical reception of the first production of Louis Riel is examined for the
light it can shed on the nature and quality of the opera as a collaborative
work of art.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874b> http://bit.ly/utq874b
Radical Modernism, Operatic Failure, and Louis Riel’s Challenge to
Reconciliation
Sherry D. Lee
This article contextualizes the dissonant modernist musical language Harry
Somers employed for Louis Riel in relation to the internationalist
avant-garde of the mid-twentieth century, with its complex political
ramifications, and considers the suitability of the opera’s resultant
musical-aesthetic challenge to listeners as a reflection of the conflictual
and dissident elements of its subject.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874c> http://bit.ly/utq874c
The Sermon from the Mount: The Messages in the Canadian Opera Company’s
Remount of the Riel Opera
Jean Teillet
The Canadian Opera Company chose Canada’s centennial to commission and mount
a new Canadian opera – Louis Riel. It chose to remount the opera fifty years
later for Canada’s sesquicentennial. This article explores this curious
choice by discussing three themes: (1) the tension that results from using
the highly stylized Western medium of opera to tell the story of an
Indigenous leader, Louis Riel; (2) the opera’s plot, which justifies the
state execution and, in so doing, exonerates Canada; and (3) the message
conveyed by the choice to mount an opera with such a plot in order to
celebrate Canada’s centennial and sesquicentennial.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874d> http://bit.ly/utq874d
Theatricalities
Director’s Notes
Peter Hinton
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Louis Riel: History, Theatre, and a National Narrative – An Evolving . . .
Story
Paula Danckert
How do historiographies change over time? What are the factors that
necessitate change? This article offers a comparative view of two
productions of the opera Louis Riel, by Mavor Moore and Harry Somers, as a
way to investigate these questions. Commissioned by the Canadian Opera
Company for its 1967 season, then produced again fifty years later, these
centennial and sesquicentennial productions provide a glimpse into the
political and cultural circumstances that informed the dramaturgical choices
that led to adaptations made to the production of 2017. Tracing the roots of
a Nisga’a song, the “Kuyas” aria, from its preservation in the archive, to a
rewritten version, and eventually back to its origins, tells a story of
acculturation and assimilation. It also tells a story of resistance in the
form of a wake-up call for a nation.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874f> http://bit.ly/utq874f
Haunting Riel
Colleen Renihan
This article considers the many productive forms of theatrical, historical,
and musical haunting in Harry Somers’s 1967 opera Louis Riel. Although the
opera has been criticized for its datedness, an examination of the several
layers of haunting and manipulations of embodiment and sound/silence in the
score and libretto suggest that the opera has the potential to resonate
beyond its original historical context to create meaning for contemporary
Canadians. A consideration of how the 2017 Canadian Opera Company’s
production, directed by Peter Hinton, amplified these hauntings reveals that
the opera presents opportunities for both the past and present to haunt one
another.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874g> http://bit.ly/utq874g
Can Opera Listen? Canada’s (Sesqui) Centennial Opera, Louis Riel
Sarah Koval, Taryn Dubois
Engaging with recent work on Métis history, this article situates Harry
Somers’s Louis Riel (1967) within a framework of changing public perceptions
about Riel, the historic Métis leader. We cast the opera as a sonic
technology through which Riel is reanimated and ventriloquized in displays
of Canadian nationalism. Our argument draws on interviews with
musicologists, historians, and members of the cast and crew from our
podcast, Riel Opera Talk. We scrutinize the extent to which the Canadian
Opera Company’s new production of Louis Riel (2017) enacted cultural
attentiveness both on stage and, crucially, through its music. Turning to
literature on the ethics of listening, we propose that the score itself can
listen to its changing cultural context and articulate an attentive
response. Challenging the colonizing impact of the opera, we conclude,
necessitates a willingness to dismantle the very score in which it is
written.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874h> http://bit.ly/utq874h
Contemporary Realities
“Decolonizing” Riel
Colette Simonot-Maiello
Harry Somers and Mavor Moore’s opera Louis Riel embodies inherently
conflicting messages. While the opera was intended to celebrate nation
building and suggest a new, postcolonial Canadian nationalism in 1967, it
also conveys a distrust of its own nationalizing message. Setting the opera
in the broader context of works created about Louis Riel (whether
historical, literary, socio-political, or musical) makes clear that it
participates in a mythmaking enterprise surrounding the Métis leader. This
process aims to present Riel as the quintessential Canadian hero. However,
because this paradigm suggests a collapsing of Canadian-ness and
Indigeneity, it is at odds with calls for decolonization and Indigenization.
Examining more recent musical works about Louis Riel by Andrew Balfour and
Karen Sunabacka highlights some of the limitations of the nationalizing
discourse around the opera and provides alternative musical representations
of Riel that foreground his Indigeneity and, specifically, his Métis
identity.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874i> http://bit.ly/utq874i
Doing Long Work: Critical Perspectives on Indigenous-Settler Collaboration
in Canadian Art Music
Jeremy Strachan, Patrick Nickleson
Following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s ninety-four
Calls to Action(2015), many art music composers, ensembles, arts
organizations, and administrators have taken up the task of decolonization
by exploring possible modes of collaboration between settler and Indigenous
artists. In this article, the authors report on their experiences as
audience members in three recent productions and as witnesses to
Indigenous-led discussions to explore trends and problematic assumptions
constitutive of these collaborations. Against the ideal of collaboration as
a model of social harmony, the authors explore ongoing tensions between
settler colonial logics of authorship, collaboration, and appropriation and
argue that embracing the discomfort of ally-ship remains key to moving
forward in solidarity work in scholarship and creative practice.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874j> http://bit.ly/utq874j
Listening to the Lake
Mary I. Ingraham, Brianna Wells
The authors document the collaboration among Westbank First Nation members,
Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble, and Astrolabe Musik Theatre in creating
The Lake / N-ha-a-itk in the Okanagan region in 2014. As a production
including a modernist opera by Barbara Pentland and Dorothy Livesay, Syilx
dance, song, drumming, storytelling, and an original composition by Leslie
Uyeda, The Lake / N-ha-a-itk reorganizes structures of authority and
authorship common in opera into a process akin to some forms of “collective
creation” or “devised theatre.” The article archives some of the
conversations surrounding the collaboration among its creators and suggests
that The Lake / N-ha-a-itk offers an important perspective on the ethics,
politics, and aesthetics of opera production in Canada today.
Read at UTQ Online >>> <http://bit.ly/utq874k> http://bit.ly/utq874k
Acclaimed as one of the finest journals focused on the humanities, UTQ
publishes interdisciplinary articles and review essays of international
repute. This interdisciplinary approach provides a depth and quality to the
journal that attracts both general readers and specialists from across the
humanities. UTQ is available in print and online.
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