Hansel and Gretel: COCʼs new Toronto-based staging - University of British ...

Hansel and Gretel: COCʼs new
Toronto-based staging
January 30, 2020

Simone Osborne (Gretel) and Emily Fons (Hansel) in rehearsal for Canadian Opera Company's Hansel and Gretel.
Photo: Canadian Opera Company

Canadian Opera Company is gearing up for their staging of Hansel and
Gretel, a classic German opera that will be given a modern-day Toronto
twist.

The COCʼs production, the fourth in their 2019-2020 season, is set in a

present-day Toronto apartment complex brought to life through large-scale
projections.

“Thereʼs been a lot of talk around the technology that weʼre using and itʼs
exciting,” says director Joel Ivany. “We can do things that we couldnʼt do
before and itʼs really hard to imagine doing it another way.”

Ivany, Founder and Artistic Director of Torontoʼs Against the Grain Theatre,
last directed for the COCʼs mainstage with Bizetʼs Carmen in 2016. He
hopes that audiences both young and old will be enraptured by the youthful
energy of Hansel and Gretel.

“I have a five-year-old child and I get to see life through his eyes now,” said
Ivany. “I see things through his eyes that are second nature for us [adults].”

Director Joel Ivany & COC Music Director Johannes Debus in rehearsal for Canadian Opera Companyʼs Hansel and
Gretel. Photo: Canadian Opera Company

The opera is based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale of the same name,

where brother and sister Hansel (Emily Fons) and Gretel (Simone Osborne)
leave their parents Peter (Russell Braun) and Gertrude (Krisztina Szabó)
and are then kidnapped by a cannibal Witch (Michael Colvin), only to
escape by outwitting their captor. German composer Engelbert
Humperdinck wrote his self-described “fairytale opera” version in the
1890s and since then, itʼs been a favourite at opera companies all around
the world.

“The goal that weʼve had is: how can we make this appeal to a nine or ten
year old but also to a 70 year old,” said Ivany. “Itʼs tough, because itʼs a
huge gap.”

The COCʼs 2020 staging is unique, as the traditional setting of a forest has
been swapped out for a Toronto apartment complex. Multiple apartments
on two different levels make up the set, a design choice Ivany and his team
progressed towards throughout their creative process.

“One theme that is all over the whole opera is poverty,” says Ivany.
“Governments both north and south of the border created government
housing. By creating these big buildings and putting people in them as a
solution. (We) naturally gravitated towards an apartment building and idea
of ‘who are our neighbours?ʼ”

The production features Canadian soprano Simone Osborne as Gretel.
Osborne, whose successful career in Canada and abroad was launched
when she became one of the youngest performers ever to win the
Metropolitan Council National Council Auditions at just 21 years old. She
previously sang Gretel during her time at the University of British Columbia.

“It is a balancing act to find the seven-year-old Toronto kid and then put her
on stage,” says Osborne. “Making a couple thousand people in the
audience feel that in your physicality and voice is tough.”

Osborne insists the process of slipping into the character of Gretel starts

from the moment she enters the rehearsal space in the morning, where she
and Emily Fons (Hansel) start messing around and engaging in horseplay.

“You canʼt act like kids,” Osborne said. “Youʼll never sell it.You have to
completely embody a child and be yourself at seven years old. Anything
else will look like a grown-up pretending to be a kid, and that will not read.”

Also in the cast is the Irish-Canadian tenor Michael Colvin as the Witch.
Ivany explains that the creative team has let him run loose to explore his
over-the-top characterization of the Witch, a role played by both men and
women depending on the production.

“Heʼs really putting himself out [there] vocally and character-wise. Heʼs not
singing it preciously, which is fun.”

Michael Colvin (The Witch) and Simone Osborne (Gretel) in rehearsal for Canadian Opera Companyʼs Hansel and
Gretel. Photo: Canadian Opera Company

Along with the seven subscription performances, there are two English-

language performances starring members of the COC Ensemble Studio and
children from choirs around Toronto. Canadian Opera Company General
Director Alexander Neef told Ivany at the start of the process about his
wishes for the two community-involved performances.

“The big goal of the company was to introduce a community choir to sing
the performance,” says Ivany. “The [community-based] childrenʼs choir
addition helped us make more sense out of the modernization of the piece.”

As for what Ivany wants people to take from this particular staging of Hansel
and Gretel, he hopes patrons both young and old can return to their youth.

“It makes us ask questions like why do we stop, when do we stop [being
kids], when do we become adults. What happens if we take ourselves back
to what it was like to be a kid?”

The COCʼs Hansel and Gretel runs from February 6th to February 21st at
the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.