Krisztina Szabó as the Pilgrim and Russell Braun floating above as Jaufré (Image: Michael Cooper)
To say the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Love From Afar has a lot going on would be a bit of an understatement. This particular take on Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s 2000 opera—about a medieval poet who falls in love with a faraway woman he’s never seen—was directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, a Cirque du Soleil alum, and the result is like a less flashy, opera-fied version of the troupe’s Michael Jackson Immortal show. Before the singing even begins, a shimmering sheet of blue silk flies over the audience. Then there are the cartwheeling tumblers, the dazzling video projections, and Russell Braun hanging in a suspended throne that looks like Glinda’s bubble from Wicked. It’s almost enough to distract you from the music.
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As the crowd settled in for an early June performance of Édouard Lock’s Untitled at the Bluma Appel Theatre, Matthew Jocelyn, the artistic and general director of Canadian Stage, stood under the spotlight, urging his audience to renew their subscriptions. Some serious name-dropping ensued. The company will be staging Red, about the life of the painter Mark Rothko, which won a Tony last year, as well as Clybourne Park, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play inspired by A Raisin in the Sun. And Atom Egoyan—who was in the audience that day—will be directing his wife, Arsinée Khanjian, in the war-themed British play Cruel and Tender.
She had no interest in opera—she wanted to sing jazz. But when Simone Osborne was 17, her voice teacher suggested she learn “O mio babbino caro,” Lauretta’s aria from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. The heart-melting melody hooked her on opera for life. It’s been a dizzying ascent for someone who not long ago was performing in her teacher’s living room. To pay for singing lessons, Osborne made Blizzards at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, her hometown (“I still love them!” she says). In 2008, she began training with the legendary mezzo Marilyn Horne, before being accepted into the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio (grad school for the next generation of singers). She snagged the lead soprano role in Mozart’s The Magic Flute last winter and sang Naiad in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in the spring. Now, just 24, she’s taking on Gilda, the self-sacrificing daughter in Verdi’s Rigoletto, a part that requires a voice both winsome and fierce with conviction (she’s got it). As for what she might have in common with Gilda, Osborne quips that she, too, is a hopeless romantic, who happens to be “very much single but taking applications.” More importantly, she’s got enough natural sass to bring something new to her portrayal of Gilda, a character too often played as wearyingly naive. “She has the strength of character to die for someone she loves even when she knows he’s a bad person,” says Osborne. “There’s no way she should be played moony and pukey.” When she walks into the death trap set for her in the last act of Verdi’s masterpiece, you’ll know she means it, every step of the way.
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