Welcome to The Opera Queen.
The name, as you will learn in the “About Me” section, is firmly done with tongue in cheek, and in no way implies this site is about one art form alone. How could it be? Opera itself incorporates so many disciplines — music, theatre, visual art, dance, literature — and my tastes and passion are too wide to ever focus on one art form. The name actually comes from a friend who teasingly called me “the opera queen” in 2015, when I decided to more fully immerse myself in reporting on the art form following the passing of my opera-loving mother in 2015. (There’s also the fact my first and last names are frequently misspelled; theoperaqueen.com eliminates the possibility of any confusion, I hope.) The name was chosen with a playful spirit (and in the interests of clarity), though hopefully you’ll find a variety of things here, both playful and serious, vivacious and thought-provoking, joyous and contemplative.
This premiere post integrates so many of the things I believe in when it comes to culture; it is being done from Berlin, a city I seem to be visiting frequently. I was here in both January and May, each time for opera-heavy visits; this time I’m attending the Musikfest portion of annual Berliner Festspiele, (which is considerably, and wonderfully, heavy on symphonic work. (Look for a full report in a future edition of Opera Canada magazine.) Tonight I am seeing Riccardo Chailly conduct the Filarmonica della Scala, whom I saw at last year’s Salzburg Festival, with a program chalk-full of Verdi works. “It is an orchestra which is living daily with opera,” Chailly said recently.
Lots of people live that way, I think, including David Devan, General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia. A fellow Canadian who’s been with OP since the mid 2000s, Devan is the driving force behind the company’s visionary new 017 Festival, which focuses solely on contemporary work. You won’t find any Verdi at 017 — but you will find Mozart, specifically The Magic Flute, and more specifically yet, the famous Komische Oper Berlin production. Also being presented during the 017 Festival is the world premiere of We Shall Not Be Moved, by an incredible team of people: composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and director Bill T. Jones. The work explores a painful episode in Philadelphia’s history, and speaks to very timely issues of race, politics, and power. The Wake World, another world premiere (by Opera Philly’s composer-in-residence, David Hertzberg), is being presented in the famous galleries of The Barnes Foundation, and brings together the work of physician and collector Dr. Albert Barnes, and British magician and occultist Aleister Crowley, for what OP terms “a mystical world of hallucinatory vividness.”
Devan’s vision is, as you will hear, wide-ranging and very inclusive; he’s worked to make an old art form, in an old and very historic city, into something entirely for and of the 21st century, while still firmly retaining all the flavour, beauty, drama, and originality of opera, in and of itself. Devan’s ideas about audiences, art, and engagement are so thoughtful, and so worth considering, not for purely administrators — but for artists, creators, and yes, arts media as well.
The Opera Queen is officially here — to entertain and delight, yes, but to make you think as well. I hope you’ll enjoy.
https://soundcloud.com/catekusti/david-devan-sept-2017