By Luca Morgante

On February 3rd, I was graced with a free ticket to the dress rehearsal of The Canadian Opera Company’s new production of Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” (Abduction). Having never been to a production of this rarely staged opera, I took it as a chance to see a production not seen in Canada in 40 years and to get a glimpse of the COC’s big budget shows.

The story takes place in The Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. Two English women are abducted from their lives of nobility (one being of nobility and one being a servant of the nobility) and taken back to the middle east to serve as mistress and slave for the Pasha (Prince) and nobility of Turkey. The Opera tells the story of their fiancés coming to find them and being surprised to learn that the women are not as faithful as they had imagined. The following is a review of that opera.

During the pre-show talk hosted by Wayne Goodings, I was given a glimpse of some scenes in the opera with accompanying explanation and history. After sitting through the talk for only 5 minutes, I was already excited about the opera I was about to see. Beautiful music, large sprawling sets, and costumes seemed to transport me right to the place. Although these were only scenes pulled from the web, I marveled in the grand scale and gusto of the opera as a whole.

After a half hour of backstory and introduction to the opera, I made my way to my seat, which was located on the 4th level, giving me a bird’s eye view of the stage and orchestra pit. After a couple of minutes, the lights dimmed and the opera started. The famous overture of the opera was magnificent, with its crashing cymbals and fast-moving notes. One criticism is that I thought the orchestra was holding back during the piece, which could be attributed to the dress rehearsal, so I won’t get much into that. With the overture concluding, the curtain lifted and the first stars started to go onstage. It was promising at first, as three beautiful chandeliers and a slew of actors dressed in beautiful 18th-century garb were the first things to greet me on stage.

The production decided to tell the story from a different angle. however, making the two fiancés look back on their story instead of experiencing it in the present. This quickly turned into a confusing mess where the audience was left wondering: Are they still looking back, or are they in the story? Do those characters interact in the past or the present? Why is that character talking to the other character whilst one is in the story that the other is telling?

After asking myself these questions many times from the commencement of the opera, I soon gave up on making sense of the convoluted story and decided to soak in the music and production itself. In that regard, I was sorely disappointed as well.

Once the narrative left England and went back to telling the story at the Pasha’s palace, the black chandelier laden backdrop pulled back to reveal a set consisting of 2 moving walls covering some large object within them. The two supposed noble women were wearing plain white dresses, which was a minor disappointment as they took away from the grandness of it all. What had me really reeling, however, were the costumes of the Pasha and his nobility. Instead of wearing gowns of gold and jewels, they were wearing grey onesies that made them look like they just came out of a scene from Grey’s Anatomy on the operating table. This, coupled with the sparse cement grey set consisting of two walls, made the scenes feel like I was in the maze of The Maze Runner and not in the great palace of the Pasha. Despite this, the singing was of a high quality, which is to be expected at the COC. The two Tenors were amazing as well as the bass-baritone who played Osmin, a servant of the Pasha. The main soprano sang her arias very well, although she was sometimes was prone to using a high amount of vibrato (shaking of the voice), which took away from the humble emotions of the arias. The orchestra was great as well which left me with only minor complaints of lack of sound during the supposed fiery pieces.

I was handed my last laugh as the set (2 walls) were pulled away to reveal a massive cement ball at the back. This seemingly useless ball seemed to play no role in the opera as well and just served to “modernize” the production to fit a wider variety of crowds. It looked like I had just stumbled upon Lucasfilm’s replica Death Star used in “A New Hope.”

Despite these failings, I noticed yet another detail which had me asking questions. Why was there so much dialogue? After almost 40 minutes through the opera, only about 25 minutes was devoted to actual singing. This opera had been an opera which contained dialogue in German, but I thought that Mozart couldn’t have written in this much-spoken text, which took away from the opera as a whole. After watching more of the opera and looking into it later, I found the culprit.

The story had originally portrayed the Turks as the bad guys and the English fiancés as the good guys. To change the gender and Islam stereotypes of this original opera, Wajdi Mouawad, a Lebanese director from Paris, was brought in to “advise through directing” regarding the portrayal of the characters within the opera. This meant that a large portion of the story and character arcs were “adjusted” so that the Turks were actually the hidden heroes of the story while the English fiancés were no better in morals than the Turks and were, in fact, worse in their portrayal. This narrative was shoved so hard in my face that one line actually read something akin to: “The Western World is actually no different from the Turkish World” and “Women are treated as horribly back home compared to here in Ottoman land.” I kid you not, these were said as blatantly as I have written them.

So, in conclusion, the audience was given an “adjusted” and convoluted plot, a sparse set consisting of 2 walls and a massive ball,  and costumes that looked like the stars were wearing their pj’s. Although the music was great, it was simply not enough to make the opera worth watching, because good music is expected in opera, and if people wanted only to hear great music, we would go and see a concert. Opera is so much more than just music, and this production represented how great music from one of the best composers ever seen on this planet can be ruined by failed accompaniments. This collection of misdoings had me counting the minutes to intermission, and my relief as I took my coat and walked out of the opera house during the intermission made me question if it was all worth it.