Rob Ford: The Opera (yes, this is real)

Rob Ford: The Opera

To celebrate the 15th successful year of the Student Composer Collective, the Faculty of Music will present Rob Ford, the Opera. The concept and libretto is by the Opera Division’s Resident Stage Director, Michael Patrick Albano with musical contributions by four of the Faculty’s gifted student composers: Massimo Guido, Anna Hostman, Adam Scime and Saman Shah.

In 1997, the Opera Division inaugurated a workshop at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music to allow student composers to gain experience writing opera, following a process of composition, dramaturgy, orchestration and staged public performance. The concept proved so successful that the workshop was ultimately introduced as a formal course in composition at the graduate level.

The opera [approximately an hour in length] is a surrealist fantasy based loosely upon the personality of Toronto’s current and much discussed Mayor. In describing the piece, the librettist writes “I have long been puzzled that one of the most important dramatic movements of the twentieth century, The Theatre of the Absurd - skilfully pioneered by Apollinaire, Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett - has, curiously, not made substantial inroads into opera. Rob Ford, the Opera, corrects that omission and jaunts joyously into the no-holds-barred ring of the ridiculous”

In addition to the GamUT ensemble, Rob Ford, the Opera features singers from the Faculty of Music’s distinguished Opera Division, including Andrew Haji as Rob Ford and Rosanna Murphy as Margaret Atwood. The opera will be conducted by Raphael Luz and directed by Erik Thor.

--

In ‘Rob Ford: The Opera,’ Atwood is God

Michael Patrick Albano, resident stage director at the University of Toronto’s very serious opera program, was sitting in a Starbucks one day this summer doing what he does: work on a very serious opera.

“It was an adaptation of scenes of Antigone — Sophocles — and I thought that was kind of a terrific idea. And then I’m sitting in Starbucks, working on it, and everybody in the line, and everybody around me, is talking about Rob Ford. And I thought: you know, we’re missing the point here,” -- said Tuesday.

Albano’s credits include Debussy’s L’Enfant Prodigue, Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Puccini’s La Bohème. Soon after his Starbucks epiphany, he set to work on a new project: Rob Ford: The Opera.

“A lot of what we now consider classic repertory operatic stories were strongly contemporary at the time they were written. And many of them were edgy, believe it or not,” Albano said. “The course that we have at the university, the Student Composer Collective, is supposed to be expanding the boundaries of the scene, pushing the art form a bit. So I thought: let’s go with something a bit more contemporary.”

Albano, who wrote the libretto, refused to divulge many plot details. He allowed that there is a fantasy sequence in which the mayor goes to heaven and meets God, “who may or may not be Margaret Atwood,” and that there is a trial sequence in which “he is judged by a jury of Toronto librarians.”

The “wonderful veneer of silliness,” Albano said, allows Rob Ford: The Opera to entertainingly explore serious issues. But he vowed that “this is not a piece about trashing Rob Ford.”

“I don’t know him,” he said. “It’s a piece about examining the strong reaction people have to him.” That reaction, he said, makes Ford a natural operatic figure.

“He’s kind of bigger than life. And he generates an awful lot of energy around him from things that he does. So he’s a very interesting catalyst,” he said.

Rob Ford: The Opera will be performed once, on Sunday, Jan. 22, at the -- Albano said he hopes the free admission, the sub-one-hour running length, the subject matter and the absurdism will draw spectators who have never before seen an opera.

Master’s and PhD composition students contributed music. Opera students will do the singing. They are happy about this.

“The young lady who was cast as Margaret Atwood was just delighted — you would have thought it was Madame Butterfly,” Albano said.

In Rob Ford: The Opera - Atwood is God

Rob Ford: The Opera has packed crowd roaring with laughter

Mayor Rob Ford did not attend the world premiere of the opera he inspired.

It’s probably for the best. While it’s safe to assume Ford does not know Puccini’s Madame Butterfly from a Portobello mushroom, he would have understood this production. And as his life story was reimagined inside a packed MacMillan Theatre on Sunday afternoon, there’s a good chance he would have called 911 to demand the immediate arrest of all involved.

Described as a “surrealist fantasy based loosely upon the personality of Toronto’s current and much discussed mayor,” Rob Ford: The Opera is a tragicomic tale about a man who is by turns bumbling, petulant, obtuse, delusional, lonely and ultimately doomed by those he has wronged.

This list includes Toronto librarians, mistreated underlings, his exasperated parents, an injured cyclist, a forlorn seagull and an angelic Margaret Atwood who, at the end in a wacky dream sequence, forces the mayor into judgment day.

In the opening scene, we meet Ford’s parents (played by Eliza Johnson and Fabian Arciniegas). They are presented as Marxist hippies with “optimistic dreams” for their son. As they sing early on: “Our child would end the pain of the world / His smile would raise the spirits of the poor / His touch would heal those who had lost hope.”

But as the second scene begins — with dry ice billowing from Rob’s crib, his outstretched fingers reaching up like a hand from the grave and orchestral flourishes reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith’s score from The Omen — it’s clear something is hilariously wrong.

Ford (Andrew Haji) mounts a red tricycle and breaks into a solipsistic aria in which he bemoans a despised revelation concerning the universe: It does not revolve around him.

Laughter inside the theatre, where the balconies were hastily opened to accommodate more than 800 people who lined up long before show time — was frequent and violently enthusiastic.

Rob Ford is no friend of the arts. But as it turns out, the arts can punch back.

By the fourth scene, Ford is now hunched over his desk inside City Hall, exhausted by all the cuts he’s making to social programs. Three pale secretaries sit on the floor, shackled and in tattered clothes.

They sing about putrid working conditions: “He took away our coffee breaks / He banished words like ‘Equality,’ ‘Competitive wage’ and ‘Union.’”

One by one, as they leave for the night, Ford has another painful epiphany. He swigs a tumbler of scotch, wanders out from his desk and into the spotlight for a soliloquy:

“8 o’clock and I’m still here / I want to share dinner with another / Even my neighbour refuses my invitation / Humiliating, since she’s my mother.”

It’s an oddly touching moment. In fact, composed by University of Toronto students Massimo Guida, Anna Hostman, Adam Scime and Saman Shahi, the music often helps Opera Ford seem far more sympathetic than Mayor Ford. The real fellow might consider digging an orchestra pit at City Hall or hiring a string quartet for future press conferences.

Rob Ford: The Opera ends with our beleaguered hero missing and presumed dead. After stealing the wings on Atwood (Rosanna Murphy), like Icaraus, he flies too close to the sun.

When the show ended, the crowd roared, thundering with applause. If there were any members of Ford Nation present, they were masterfully disguised as people who don’t think very much of the mayor.

Michael Patrick Albano, resident stage director with the university’s opera program, wrote the libretto this summer. This explains why much is made of Ford’s dust-up with Atwood (played by Rosanna Murphy) and why a character named “Josh Colle” never rappels down from the rafters in a mask and cape.

Albano’s goal with Rob Ford: The Opera, a presentation of the school’s Student Composer Collective, was to embrace “the theatre of the absurd.” He succeeded.

“By pushing things to the absolute edge of exaggeration, you actually make a point,” Albano told me Saturday night. “It’s as if Rob Ford had gone in extremis as far as he could go.”

He says a DVD of the performance will be sent to the mayor. And while this was originally billed as a “one-time only” performance, that could change given the blistering interest on display Sunday.

“We had no idea that it would catch fire as it had,” says Albano. “Ford is a lightning rod for political discussion, which is a great thing. I think it’s fantastic that Torontonians are talking about their city and where it’s going.”

Toronto News: Rob Ford: The Opera has packed crowd roaring with laughter