Manitoba Underground Opera bolted out of the gate this spring with the first production of its annual opera festival, Gareth Williams Rocking Horse Winner, based on D.H. Lawrence’s 1926 short story of the same name.

The multi-award-winning chamber opera originally premiered in 2016 as the fourth co- production with Tapestry Opera and Scottish Opera; a re-mount slated for 2020 cancelled due to the ravages of the global pandemic.

A plucky, 16-year old Prairie troupe, Manitoba Underground Opera has a knack for staging opera in unusual – and often highly surprising – venues. Some of those include last October’s swashbuckling production of Verdi’s Il Corsaro, that set sail aboard the historic Nonsuch replica ship “docked” inside the Manitoba Museum and Mozart’s Così fan tutte, presented at the Manitoba Legislative Building in August 2018.

Holding the pair of late May performances at the Millennium Centre – a long shuttered, Main Street bank now re-purposed as a popular event and concert hall – proved another inspired choice for an opera driven by its characters’ lust for money, and lack thereof, marred only by the marbled rotunda’s intense reverberation that played havoc with the singers’ clarity.

Music director Shannon Hiebert skilfully led a string quartet including Julie Savard and Darryl Strain, violins, violist John Sellick and cellist Alyssa Ramsay. She navigated the hall’s acoustical challenges as well as balancing the ensemble with the vocalists.

There are truthfully so many different ways in which to approach this powerfully multi- layered, 65-minute work based on Anna Chatterton’s libretto. One can highlight the chokehold of highly dysfunctional, fractured family relationships or more simply explore ever-timely issues of mental health, including the unique parameters of neural divergence.

In this case, stage director Alissa Watson crafts principal character Paul as an emotionally isolated misfit within his own family, who clings to his toy wooden rocking horse named “Blue Peter” as he craves love from his self-obsessed, materialistic mother, Ava.

Photo Credit: Paul McKeen

Manitoba Underground Opera’s Rocking Horse Winner

Tenor Andrew Derynck’s protagonist walked a razor’s edge between mystical clairvoyant and achingly vulnerable, dutiful son, his keenly nuanced portrayal including frantically rocking his horse (in this case, pulsing his body to and fro while clutching his toy stallion like an amulet) to reveal the names of race-winning steeds. His compulsive drive towards
pleasing his mother is further fuelled by the quasi-Greek chorus, “House,” comprised of vocal quartet Max Fingerote, Brady Barrientos, Sofia Escamilla and Ashley Schneberger, that hisses “There must be more money” from an upper balcony, their spooky voices wafting over the opening night crowd to spine-tingling effect.

Soprano Janice Marple created a suitably haughty, embittered Ava who imbibes bubbly to soothe her nerves while tickling the onstage grand piano’s ivories, as she drills into Paul “Your father had no luck,” and sings “It’s easy to smile when you’re young.” Her solid grasp of Williams’ knotty score impressed, with her voice soaring through its wide dissonant leaps as easily as child’s play.

Her counterparts, Ava’s brother Oscar (tenor Kyle Briscoe) and Basset (lyric baritone Paul Forget), the house’s steadfast caretaker, take advantage of Paul’s gift at predicting winners. The race scenes kicked off with Basset’s ebullient “And we’re off!” infusing the overall narrative with further texture and thrust. While Briscoe fully animated his character with agile vocals, Forget’s mellifluous delivery could have been even more forceful to create greater dramatic counterpoint.

Eye contact between characters also works wonders, and more of this was needed to fully cement the central, albeit fraught, relationship between mother and son. We would have sensed Paul’s withdrawal even more deeply had that all-too-human contact has been.established – before he slips away into Ava’s increasing spiral of discontent.

The opera ends tragically as Paul “rides” to fever pitch to secure the winner’s name for the climactic derby, ultimately resulting in his own death as the House intones “There’s never enough.” Watson and her entire cast are to be commended for their sensitive artistry in bringing this harrowing opera to life, with its final stark image of Oscar and Bassett giddily tossing dollar bills above their heads in the balcony well worth the price of admission alone.

Photo Credit: Paul McKeen featuring Andrew Derynck

Manitoba Underground Opera’s Rocking Horse Winner

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