Luminato 2009: Opera Revival in an Industrial Playground

Opera on Steel Bananas? Really? I know, opera isn't something that independent artists in Canada often consider within their realm of influence. Powdered wigs, haughty Italian vocals, fat ladies, and the inevitable presence of the pretense-ridden bourgeois? Our beloved Richard Huelsenbeck is turning in his grave as I write this. Opera, stereotypically, is the antithesis of the gritty low-budget Toronto art community, but I quickly learned, as I walked to an industrial warehouse by the Welcome to Parkdale sign on Dufferin street, ticket for the world premiere of The Children's Crusade in hand, just how down to Earth opera's new-school visionaries really are.

R. Murray Schafer

Composed by R. Murray Shafer, world renowned acoustic ecology activist, educator, composer and writer, The Children's Crusade is a revolutionary revisioning of traditional Opera, blending site-specific theatre with the Toronto Consort, the Canadian Children's Opera Company, the expert direction of Tim Albery and textural music direction of David Fallis. As part of Luminato 2009, The Children's Crusade sought to transgress the boundaries of traditional Opera and bring the audience into the action of the story by staging it in an industrial warehouse on Dufferin Street, moving through and around minimal sets as the audience stood, watched and walked along with the journey of Stephen - played by Jacob Abrahamse - the main character.

Jacob Abrahamse plays Stephen. Photo/Steve Wilkie

The story is inspired by the children's crusade of 1212, a historical/mythical event that has been reworked and rewritten so many times that no single account stakes any claim to legitimacy. In this particular account, a young French boy is tricked into believing he is a chosen child of God, subsequently leading the orphans of Paris to their deaths by setting out on a well-intentioned but ill-fated crusade of love and friendship. It all sounds very lofty and irrelevant to the urban-art-types at Luminato, but the revolutionary staging really brought Opera skeptics like me into the action and humanity of the story, creating a stage on which the audience itself could stand within the throng of believers - the proximity really made the emotional impact stick.

I must admit, when the large industrial door rolled up, letting the 375 audience members walk with the guidance of a mute tuxedo-clad director, directing the flow of the crowd with crisp white gloves, I was both impressed and frightened by the stark contrast of the tuxedos and orchestra with the dusty raw space of the warehouse; the atmosphere was surreal and dream-like, using the odd juxtaposition to entrance the audience from the very first step into the performance space. When the Toronto Consort began the show with deep avant-garde textural sounds, I felt my heartbeat quicken - I knew I was in to be moved. My skepticism melted away within the first five minutes. It was impossible to avoid being captured. Within the first ten minutes I had my breath entirely taken away - representing the evil of deception, a haunting clamour of tenors dressed in black writhed out of the darkness, following the children and eventually, at the end of the play, forming a sea of bodies that enveloped their ardent innocence. The representations of evil were extremely frightening, ranging from the palpable darkness of the tenors, to a bright red brothel that sang of empty broken love and the lust for purity. Throughout the entire performance, the audience was at the mercy of the enrapturing voices and unconventional settings. It was impossible to detach from the surreal world within the warehouse.

The journey was only an hour and a half long, but as the bright young voices of the Canadian Children's Opera Company moved, the audience moved, creating a connection between the actors and the audience that I had never experienced before. Now, I'm a fit young woman in her early 20's - I was at least 40 years younger than almost everyone in the audience, ha - and by the time we reached the final performance space, my feet hurt, I was tired, and felt discouraged along with the characters. The tragic conclusion hit so much harder because of the physical fatigue of the audience - to watch the children fall beneath the waves of the human ocean, made up of the black-clad bodies of the tenors, was beyond heartbreaking. I wasn't the only member of the audience who broke into tears.

Walking up Dufferin street after leaving the surreal performance space, I tried to think of some way of writing about this experience. Even now, writing this, I feel as though I couldn't possibly fit the profound emotion that I - a young artist who had never been moved by Opera before - experienced. I guess the only thing I can definitively say about this experience is that this is definitely new territory for opera, territory that had to be covered to connect it with artists of today in a meaningful and relevant way. I don't think this has fully happened yet, I mean, the vast majority of the audience at this performance was nearing the end of the road, if you know what I mean, but the simple fact that opera is pushing to become relevant proves that it is possible, that change in old artforms can create new relevancies and new audiences, attracting people who wouldn't otherwise seek it out. The new fresh faces of the Canadian Children's Opera company, lead by Jacob Abrahamse gesture to a new era in opera, one with new promise for evolution, play, and innovation. Even the simple fact that it was staged in Parkdale really symbolizes the change in Opera, connecting what is stereotypically seen as lofty irrelevant high-art with the on-the-ground low-art to which Parkdale panders.

The Children's Crusade is a pivotal piece in the history of opera, theatre, and modern art - I feel privilaged to have been able to attend the world premiere along with three hundred extremely elderly women. Yeah.