Inside Vancouver Opera

Vancouver Opera

Inside Vancouver Opera is a unique backstage glimpse into the world of Vancouver Opera. Join us as we chat with opera experts, artists, Vancouver Opera staff and others to explore the world of opera on and off the stage. This podcast offers an insider’s glimpse into the artistry, experiences, and perspectives of the talent involved in taking breathtaking opera productions from the page to the stage. Find out more at VancouverOpera.ca

  1. The Woman Puccini Erased So You'd Cry Harder

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    The Woman Puccini Erased So You'd Cry Harder

    Mimì is one of opera's most beloved heroines. Gentle. Luminous. Dying beautifully in a Parisian garret while the orchestra swells around her. She was also, in Henri Murger's source novel, a fickle, materialistic flirt her lover described as being "wedded to a thunderstorm." A gadabout. Complicated. Inconvenient. Not particularly easy to mourn. Puccini made a decision. You've been feeling the consequences ever since. In this episode, host Ashley Daniel Foot sits down with Vancouver Opera's researcher and editor Jane Potter — the creative force behind our composer series for the past three years — to pull apart the opera everyone thinks they know. They cover the missing act that explains Rodolfo's jealous rage. The real woman Puccini erased to create his heroine. The two source characters — Francine and Mademoiselle Mimì — whose DNA got merged into the figure we recognize. The Viscount nobody talks about. They also go deep on Kevin Ng's essay Beautiful Deaths: How La Bohème Transformed Tuberculosis into Art — tracking how consumption went from epidemic catastrophe to aristocratic beauty standard, from Lord Byron to Rent to Moulin Rouge!, and how Puccini wrote the disease's physical reality directly into the music itself. Plus: the 1896 premiere critics who called it "a momentary error" and suggested Puccini return to the straight road before further damage was done. The audience that sold out 24 performances that same month. And Benjamin Britten, who in 1951 delivered the greatest backhanded opera critique of the 20th century. La Bohème runs April 25 through May 3 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets at vancouveropera.ca. Kevin Ng's essay Beautiful Deaths is available now on the Inside Vancouver Opera Substack.

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  2. Jonathan Darlington: What Happens Before the Downbeat

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    Jonathan Darlington: What Happens Before the Downbeat

    Maestro Jonathan Darlington on Puccini, broken batons, being mistaken for Richard Gere in Italian lifts, and why La Bohème will undo you — every time. Jonathan Darlington led Vancouver Opera for nearly twenty years. He's since conducted at the Vienna State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Swedish Opera, and the Nürnberger Symphoniker, where he's now Chief Conductor. He lives in Paris — ten minutes from the neighbourhood where La Bohème is actually set. And he keeps coming back to Vancouver. This week he's back in the pit at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for La Bohème — Puccini's love story about young artists in Paris trying to stay warm, fall in love, and stay alive. It's the fastest-selling production in Vancouver Opera's sixty-six year history. In this conversation, Ashley Daniel Foot asks Darlington what's actually going through his mind in the sixteen bars before the curtain rises, how the streets of Vancouver have changed the way he hears Puccini, why he still wants to conduct one specific opera just to erase a humiliation from thirty years ago, and what it felt like to open Sweeney Todd surrounded by a large metal contraption on stage while trying to frighten the audience — a task made easier, he admits, by the fact that he was already terrified himself. Plus: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carlos Kleiber, Mirella Freni, four piccolos playing fortissimo, a Vancouver harpsichord builder who makes his batons by hand, and the pre-show meal of champions. La Bohème runs April 25 to May 3 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets at vancouveropera.ca.

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Inside Vancouver Opera is a unique backstage glimpse into the world of Vancouver Opera. Join us as we chat with opera experts, artists, Vancouver Opera staff and others to explore the world of opera on and off the stage. This podcast offers an insider’s glimpse into the artistry, experiences, and perspectives of the talent involved in taking breathtaking opera productions from the page to the stage. Find out more at VancouverOpera.ca

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