Geoffrey Butler, Artistic Director, The Marriage of Figaro  
in Conversation with Karen Dempster

KD: You have been the Artistic Director for the Toronto Choral Society for the past 12 years where you conduct 125 voices and you will once again be the Artistic Director for Opera York’s Marriage of Figaro.  How are the two roles different and similar?

GB: The Chorale Society is more long term whereas Opera York is more project oriented. With the Chorale Society I am able to create and implement a vision for the Society. For example, I have just completed a 5 year plan. With Opera York I go in and meet with the team and we know what we’re dealing with and we go to work.  In getting ready for the performance it is different too. The Chorale Society are amateur voices and it takes much longer to get to that point when you’re ready for performance – we have to polish, polish, polish.  With Opera York, I am working with professionals with trained voices who come with their own ideas and you have to be open to more of a collaborative effort.

KD:  I believe that Opera York’s production of The Magic Flute was your first attempt at directing an Opera.  You did a great job. What challenges were there? What would you do different this time if anything?

GB: No, actually I did La Bohème for Opera York in the spring of 2005 and that was my first time directing an opera. Phil Trow came to me in January and we opened on April 1^st. I’ve had the privilege of working with Penny Cookson both times before as my Stage Director and the principal casts were very strong. For Magic Flute there was the challenge of the new St. Elizabeth Theatre which didn’t come with an owner’s manual.  so we had to hold the curtain open but overall I was very pleased with the production. I had the idea to add the Chinese dancer to the scene where Tamino was being chased which gave me a chance to liaise with the Chinese community in Markham. I thought the cast’s ensemble singing was very strong. The only thing I would improve would be to have a longer run. You put so much into the production and then you perform and it’s over.

KD: Marriage of Figaro was considered to be a very political opera in its time because the count is a rival to a servant and loses to him. How do you see the Marriage of Figaro? What are its themes to you?

GB: The music in The Marriage of Figaro is sublime. This is an opera that contains all aspects of society and everything you can do on a stage is in that opera from dramatic tension, to realism to humour. When it comes down to the last scene where all the trickery and confusion is exposed and the Count is stripped of everything and the Countess forgives him – it’s one of the most powerful scenes in opera.  I see The Marriage of Figaro as more about redemption than politics. Beaumarchais’ play on which the libretto was based was written at a time when France was about to be turned on its head. But Vienna was a very different place when Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro, a much more enlightened city.  To me The Marriage of Figaro is one of the big three operas of Mozart along with Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. 

KD:  You’ve cast Lucia Cesaroni in the big role of Susanna. What was it that you saw in her that made her the right choice for the part?

GB: I heard Lucia sing at the Opera York Gala and heard her wonderful voice and saw that she had lots of energy and that she was smart. Suzanna needs all of those things as she is on the stage a lot and her character has to be smart. Also, this will be a good thing for Lucia’s career at this stage.

KD: How do you enjoy working with Opera York?

I’m very grateful to Opera York for giving me the chance to immerse myself in an opera and play with it. It starts out slowly and then you find you are living with Mozart for months.

Lucia Cesaroni comes from Richmond Hill/Gormley area of York Region and went to school at Holy Trinity High School in Richmond Hill.  She caught the opera bug at the young age of 8 years old when her father, who is a tenor that studied at the Royal Conservatory and her mother, who has a great love of opera took her to her first performance at the Canadian Opera Company. The opera was Tosca and her mother, Suzanne says she will never forget the look on little Lucia’s face when she heard her first opera. “She was totally taken with this world”, says Mrs. Cesaroni, “ she knew right then that this is what she wanted.”
Once in high school at Holy Trinity, Lucia cut her acting teeth from teacher, Kate Greenaway, who was a former stage manager at the Stratford Theatre.   Over those five years, Lucia had parts in many shows including Shakespeare and learned a lot about performance.
Lucia always sang. As a child she would perform Italian folk songs and in her late teens took lessons from the Royal Conservatory and then went on to the Opera Program at the University of Toronto where she is currently completing her Masters.  She credits her father Tony, for always being an inspiration to her. “Both my parents always supported me in Opera”, Lucia says, “I’m an only child and we go to the Opera together all the time.” Other inspirations for Lucia include Mirella Mrena and  Joan Sutherland and a newer singer, Cecilia Bartoli.
Also, there is her Italian heritage.  “My family comes from a little town called Raino in Abruzzi. It’s just a little town and I go back every year. My uncle and aunt can sing  you Verdi choruses. It’s an honour to have this career in Opera as an Italian.” says Cesaroni.
Lucia will play the lead role of Susanna in Opera York’s November production of “The Marriage of Figaro”.  The character Susanna is on the stage more than Figaro and it is Lucia’s first time in such a big part.  “The role of Suzanna is the second biggest role in all of opera in terms of stage time, next to Isolde in Tristan and Isolde,” says Cesaroni. “Someone actually counted the notes and found that Suzanna has 1/3 more notes than Figaro.” “Mozart understood women and the character of Susanna is so honest and funny and flirty and she is desperately in love with Figaro.”
When asked about performing Mozart, Lucia was empassioned, “ If only we all could have the sense of wonderment and beauty and excitement and naughtiness that Mozart had.  Marriage of Figaro is a perfect opera. There is no tune that is not hummable. 
What’s next for Lucia after Opera York? “I’ll be playing the role of Lucia, the sister in the Rape of Lucretia in early March at University of Toronto.”
Karen Dempster

Stage Designer Frank Pasian has been creating  sets for Opera York for almost a decade.  He was working on a show at the Vaughan City Playhouse for the Community Hebrew Academy when Opera York board member Heather Heagle asked if he’d like to work for the company.  Frank had retired  by then from a 42 year career teaching high school history and economics in French and was busy pursuing the things he loves to do – namely travel, opera, set design and painting. Shortly after Frank began to work with Phil Trow and Joan Sax they discovered that the person that had got Frank into theatrical set design and production while working as a teacher at Nelson A. Boylen High School had been a teacher of Joan Sax. His name was Peter Purvis and he and Frank put together eight school productions with Frank handling everything from publicity to building the sets with the industrial arts students.  Basically self-taught in set design, Frank learned by doing and cultivating a natural eye for visual symmetry and staging with frequent trips to world opera productions in Toronto, Santa Fe, New York, and Europe where he  studied the way the productions were mounted. Coming from an Italian home with parents from Friuli and growing up in Timmins and Hamilton with older siblings who played La Traviata to the point where he couldn’t stand to hear the opera for years, Frank developed a wide-ranging taste in both contemporary and traditional opera. Of the traditional operas, Mozart is one of his favourites and with contemporary opera he has been known to sit through the six hour production of St. Francis of Assisi in Paris much to the chagrin of his usually supportive wife Diane.  As an artist, Frank is the real thing. His home is filled with modern and post-modernist art that has been collected from all over the world.  His prize possessions are some drawings from one of his favourite artists, Frank Auerbach. Frank’s own paintings are often people, portraits of some of his artist friends  in Montreal and Toronto and many of himself since as he puts it, “as a model, I’m always available.”.  His paintings are full of the kind of energy and warmth Frank greets you with in person. As a set designer, he prefers a minimalist approach. “In designing for opera, everything is important”, says Frank, “but not equally important.” “The lighting is critical and you have to produce a setting for the show that  is dramatic.  But the jewel of the opera is the voice. The set has got to be good, meaningful, and appropriate, but it can’t be a show-stopper.” When asked about having to design a set that will suit both the intimate St. Elizabeth Theatre and the much larger Markham Theatre stages, Frank has it all figured out. “The solution is to make everything in modules, so they can be taken apart and moved from one theatre to another.” There are some challenges with the size of the stages however. “Magic Flute worked well on both stages because the set was minimalist and had the big sun but Gianni Schicchi needed bigger furniture on the Markham Theatre stage.”  Now with The Marriage of Figaro coming up in November, Frank is already sketching and imagining his next creation. His wife Diane is his best critic, “You can’t put anything by her, she won’t say it’s good if she doesn’t think it is”, he smiles, knowing how obsessive and focussed he can be and how she is always there to enjoy his passions.

Karen Dempster

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