Single tickets of Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary season production of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan went on sale January 13, 2025 and within minutes of the announcement, OA’s Marshall Pynkoski was there in our editorial inbox as well – his enthusiasm even more contagious than usual.
“This is the most significant undertaking in Opera Atelier’s history,” he wrote. “The first time that we are bringing a production that originated in France to Toronto … It’s a historic moment for all of us at Opera Atelier … to be able to present a unique staging of it in Koerner Hall, before returning the production to Versailles where we first staged it. I’m attaching some photographs to give you a sense of what the project looked like and a link to a short video they have just produced, featuring the prologue with Saul and the witch of Endor – referred to as the Pythonisse by Charpentier’s librettist.”
It has taken 14 years for the relationship between Opera Atelier and Royal Opera of Versailles to reach this moment – a de facto co-production between the two companies, with Opera Atelier’s co-directors as the tie that binds.
Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg has no trouble recalling the 2011 first invitation to Versailles and the 2012 tour that followed: “It remains one of our most treasured memories. We had received an email from Laurent Brunner, the visionary director of Château de Versailles Spectacles who had seen our film of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée on the internet. When he heard we were in the theatre preparing a production of Lully’s Armide, he flew to Toronto at once, and after seeing the production, immediately invited us to bring our Armide to the Royal Opera in the Château de Versailles.”
Arriving in Versailles, she says, was like an invasion: “what with all of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, 16 Artists of Atelier Ballet, 12 singers, our entire creative team and stage management, plus tens of thousands of pounds of sets, costumes and machinery.” And along with all that tonnage, they arrived burdened with a weight of trepidation: “Wondering how the French public would receive a Canadian production of such an important piece of their musical heritage.”
It was a trepidation shared by pessimists among Opera Atelier’s hometown supporters, who swore we could hear French critics sharpening their quills clear across the Atlantic. But we needn’t have worried. Pynkowski recalls the overwhelming audience response on opening night “with sustained, rhythmic applause that went on for so long that our curtain calls fell apart entirely …” And Zingg reflects on the impacts of the tour: “Armide went from Versailles to Glimmerglass within the space of one miraculous spring and summer, and these experiences changed our lives.”
Strengths: Stage Door editor (and opera columnist for The WholeNote at the time) Christopher Hoile had not joined the worry worts. He had seen the show in its pre-tour run at the Elgin Theatre, and had already written perceptively about the inherent strength of the company.
“Director Marshall Pynkoski has softened the former rigidity of the stylized gestural language of the period to allow for a greater sense of emotional impulse …. a perfect example of how an allegorical representation of an internal struggle can be absolutely riveting. As well, Armide is a perfect vehicle for OA since it tells its story as much through dance as through song. Music frequently passes back and forth between the singers and the dancers who often share the stage in beautifully integrated passages choreographed for the full corps of sixteen by Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg.”
Turning points: A flurry of further invitations followed: Persée in 2014; Armide again in 2015; Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Médeé in 2017, followed in 2018 by his Acteon, paired with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion… but it was a 2019 invitation to Pynkowski and Zingg, rather than to the company, that laid the groundwork for a potential sea-change in the Atelier-Versailles relationship.
As Zingg explains: “In 2019, Château de Versailles Spectacles, entering a new phase since the theatre’s 2010 restoration, made the decision to create their own opera productions, and Marshall and I were invited to stage and choreograph the theatre’s premiere production of Grétry’s Richard Coeur-de-Lion, including some of our favourite Artists of Atelier Ballet.”
At the close of the opera’s premiere, which took place on Armistice Day, Zingg and Pynkoski were invested as Officers of the Order of Arts and Letters by the government of France.
“It was one of the most thrilling and proudest moments of our lives,” Zingg says.
Since that memorable experience, they have had the privilege of staging Grétry’s La Caravane du Caire in the Royal Opera and, in 2022, Charpentier’s greatest masterpiece, David and Jonathan in the Royal Chapel – the first time in its history it has benn used for a fully staged performance.
And now it comes to Toronto, on April , 10, 12 and 13, the opening production of Opera Atelier’s 40th Anniversary season, after which it goes back home – to Versailles that is – in May.
Versailles to Toronto: A COMPARISON
WN: We’ve been looking at the photos you sent of David and Jonathan at the Versailles Chapelle Royale, and are trying to picture it at Koerner.
OA: Believe it or not, the staging of the Royal Chapel production is identical to the production we will present in Toronto. The venues couldn’t be more different architecturally, but the footprint of the performance area is almost identical, except that in Toronto we actually have greater depth than what we had in Versailles, which gives us the luxury of twelve dancers as opposed to the eight we had at Versailles.
You two directing and choreographing both shows is a big plus in terms of continuity.
There are other things too. In Versailles we always include Artists of Atelier Ballet in addition to our French dancers; Dominic Who is the fight director for Toronto and Versailles; both set designs (Antoine Fontaine for Versailles and Gerard Gauci for Koerner) feature major architectural elements to help define the performing area; and our staging and choreography remain virtually unchanged.
How does an Opera Atelier idea of what constitutes “period performance” align with that of a company embedded in the historical?
For us, these two worlds do not collide so much as merge seamlessly. Our French artists are perhaps more accustomed to the structure and formality of French Baroque repertoire and work beautifully within that structure; and that’s something that OA tends to “push against,” creating a different sort of dramatic tension. So it is a great pleasure to work within the ethos of both companies: it stretches our aesthetic in a variety of directions.
So what is the biggest aesthetic stretch?
The costuming, for sure. The Versailles production features the costumes of the most famous living couturier in France, Christian Lacroix, sumptuous and valuable beyond imagination. Our Toronto production is costumed by one of Canada’s finest young costume designers, Michael Gianfrancesco, who, interestingly enough, has taken a more tailored, strict approach to the line of the costuming and a very different colour palette.
But even there, Koerner and the Royal Chapel are extremely neutral in terms of colour, so create a background in which the actors and their costumes become the major focus. And both venues are superb acoustically. So, as always, it’s a two-way street in terms of learning. Our Canadian performers will learn a great deal from the musical finesse of our French guest stars. Our French designers in turn have grown enormously in terms of physicality and energy in their staging.
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com.
