ON STAGE
What: Pacifc Opera Victoria’s Solatium
Where: pacificopera.ca
When: April 16, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: By donation
Colin Ainsworth was in Victoria last week to film a presentation of Solatium, a song cycle he based on themes associated with the pandemic — darkness, light and recompense among them.
Ainsworth said he was motivated by a desire to help audiences overcome the hurdles of the past year. “I wanted to have this theme of coming through darkness, like a phoenix coming out of the ashes, in a sense,” he said from Toronto, where he was rehearsing for Opera Atelier’s filmed production of Handel’s The Resurrection.
“I wanted something that conveyed giving back, after either physical or emotional loss.”
The Ontario-born tenor created the program with help from Pacific Opera, which is producing a series of recitals filmed at the Wingate Studio of the Baumann Centre.
He was joined during the taping, which will air Friday on the Pacific Opera website, by violinist Terence Tam and pianist Kimberley-Ann Bartczak. The program includes the world première of The Length of Day, a new composition with poems by Victoria’s Michelle Poirier Brown and music by local composer Jeffrey Ryan.
Ainsworth credits the forward-thinking company for giving him complete freedom with which to create Solatium. Audiences will benefit from work being commissioned during the pandemic, which differs in tone and content from traditional opera programming, he said. “Because of the unique situation we’re in, we have to revamp our ways of doing things. There is a lot of repertoire we can do now that we would not have been able to do otherwise.”
That includes Solatium, which showcases works by Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, two British composers whose careers were greatly affected by struggle. Williams served in the British Army and wrote extensively about the First World War, while Britten was profoundly affected by the Second World War, and the events stemming from his 1945 recital in Germany with Yehudi Menuhin for survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Solatium is defined as a form of emotional compensation, said Ainsworth, who used that as a guide. “It is about giving you back something, though it is not financial compensation. We’ve all lost something in this pandemic. We’ve lost a sense of community, we’ve lost family and friends, we’ve lost a connection with people or work or health. In a small sort of way, I wanted to heal, to give a little bit of hope and comfort musically.”
Ainsworth is a big believer in the effect music has on one’s development, having been born to deaf parents in a house where music “was not really a thing.” He wasn’t introduced to music until his teens, but soon found his groove as an adult, studying music at Western University and the University of Toronto, where he graduated from the school’s opera program.
Ainsworth has performed with opera companies across the world, and in concert with symphonies in Montreal, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles. He counts previous performances with Pacific Opera among highlights, including starring as Alfredo Germont in the 2019 production of La Traviata. The company’s 2010 staging of The Rake’s Progress in 2009 was another memorable production, he said.
“It’s one of my favourite companies. They do such great productions.”
Solatium may well join his own best-of list. Ainsworth said he enjoyed working in a new medium, especially with the veteran guidance of Glynis Leyshon, who was brought on board as a film coach. He wanted to give the theatrical side of his program its best chance of success.
“Normally, recitals aren’t filmed. And normally, recitals aren’t staged. My original plan, when I brought it to [founding artistic director Timothy Vernon] was to do it as stand-and-deliver. A recital is a big task in itself — it’s a lot of music — but I really enjoyed the way we did it.”
