Classical music: Bringing Jonathan Dove's bright, vibrant Flight to Vancouver Opera

Flight

When: Feb. 8 and 13, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 16, 2 p.m

Where: Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton St.

Info: vancouveropera.ca

It is the responsibility of any serious opera company to produce or commission new works that add to the repertoire of a living art form. And over the last quarter century, Vancouver Opera hasn’t done too badly.

Canada’s current most important opera composer, John Estacio, was commissioned to create something for the 2010 Winter Olympics year, his locally set opus Lillian Alling; also on the boards during that special season was John Adams’s Nixon in China. Tan Dun’s Tea: A Mirror of Soul was presented in 2013; Nico Muhly’s Blood Sisters followed in 2015. And as part of the ambitious seasons of the former opera festival back in 2017, there was Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking.

After the travails of the early 2020s, Vancouver Opera returns to the contemporary opera game with Jonathan Dove’s Flight. Why this particular opera?

Flight is a tried and true work. Commissioned by the ultra-prestigious Glyndeborne Opera, it had a very successful premiere in 1998. The piece then saw two dozen subsequent productions in Europe and the U.S., mostly by important companies.The Canadian premiere was snagged by Pacific Opera Victoria back in 2020.

One of the emerging trends in 21st century opera is to craft librettos from movies: Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel was sired by Luis Bu?uel’s surreal 1962 low-budget Mexican production, and Nico Muhly’s Marnie derived from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 flawed psychological thriller. Composer Dove may or may not have been aware of the 1993 French film Lost in Transit, whose plot is a based-on-a-true story proposition: the saga of a man who loses his passport and is forced to camp out indefinitely within an airport terminal. The same story was used for the 2004 Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal.

Born in London in 1959, Dove studied at Cambridge with Robin Holloway, then embarked on a career as a freelance arranger and accompanist until 1987, when he began his long association with Glydebourne. He has since created 18 theatre works, an astonishing record for a contemporary composer.

Not unlike his American counterpart Jake Heggie, Dove is an opera insider with all that implies: he knows operatic voices, opera culture, and the great historical repertoire. All this shows in the construction and content of Flight. The work has a breezy style, unafraid of melody, but with a certain whiff of minimalism; bright, vibrant orchestration; and a sure-footed way with singers. Dove and librettist April De Angelis use the straight-from-the-daily-news story to craft a contemporary opera with serious reminders of our conflicted times, plus an opportunity for comic interactions.

Buzz for the upcoming Vancouver staging suggests that comedy will be foremost. Vancouver theatre legend Morris Paynich has been brought on as director, and his frequent collaborator Ken MacDonald designed the sets. Theatregoers with long memories may recall their joint contributions to the triumphant 1997 The Overcoat, something of a theatrical miracle: a Gogol-derived production mimed to the music of Shostakovich.

Flight is a full-length proposition in three acts.There are eight substantial roles, with the part of The Refugee given pride of place — and it’s a role for counter-tenor. Here it will be sung by Cameron Shahbazi, a Canadian singer and activist making his company debut. Shahbazi is rising fast on the international opera stage: he’s sung at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, and the Dutch National Opera, and took part in the premiere of George Benjamin’s latest opera in Aix en Provence.

Aside from the fun of seeing a highly regarded new work, this is certainly a good chance for Vancouver opera fans to hear Shahbazi in the early stages of what promises to be a major career.