Opera Atelier, a company known for preservation, adapts well in the digital, COVID age of the arts

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Back in May, it offered Together/Apart, a quick-and-dirty digital gala akin to what New York’s Metropolitan Opera did around the same time

– and two new works by violinist and composer Edwin Huizinga. Even in the hands of videographer Marcel Canzona, we still get OA’s wonderfully analog aesthetic – the paper creases in the angel character’s wings, the hand-painted character of Gauci’s set design. It’s an honest adaptation from stage to screen.

The story, loose and non-linear as it is, is about glimpses of perfection: a perfect love, a perfect day, a perfect body. We get a hint of backstory in the black-and-white opening scene, which also holds almost all of the production’s most creatively interesting moments: an angel recounts the time a virgin experienced real ecstasy, and with the bar set extraordinarily high, we act the voyeur for each cast member’s own encounter with perfection.

The faces that enjoy the most screen time are among OA’s preferred group of artists: soprano Mireille Asselin, tenor Colin Ainsworth, dancer Tyler Gledhill and Brueggergosman, the company’s newly announced artist-in-residence. Amid Canada’s opera scene, Opera Atelier perhaps has the closest thing to a cult following in its devoted audience, andis created with those listeners in mind. It’s a thrill to have a closeup view of Asselin and marvel at her acting skills, apparently honed for screen as well as stage. The same can be said for Gledhill, who hurls his body with grace, a not-so-subtle nod to physical perfection.

What’s lacking here, by definition, is tension. Scene after scene of perfection offer little room for conflict, for good to triumph over evil. And so, rather than a fully-fleshed story, even the kind that can come out of a particularly clever pastiche,In this medium, we get to see the artists from a much closer distance than we were ever meant to.

 

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