Features

Music was what brought them together when, as eager young members of the gifted program at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto in the early 1980s, Richard Herriott and Winona Zelenka found themselves part of a hand-picked cadre of budding musicians. And music is what reunites them, after years apart and careers on opposite sides of the pond.

Zelenka is well known to readers of The WholeNote as a chamber and orchestral musician. Herriott is less so, although some will remember his November 6, 2011 appearance at Walter Hall in a moving tribute concert to the memory of Antonin Kubalek.

Both will be performing in the intimate surroundings of St. Stephen in-the-Fields Anglican Church on November 29 in a program featuring Benjamin Britten’s Cello Sonata (beloved by Zelenka), folk song settings by Vaughan Williams and the Canadian premiere of Herriott’s Rock Piano Concerto without Orchestra, subtitled “An Electric Organ, a Ladder and a Persian Rug.”

Koerner Hall is celebrating its fifth anniversary this season. During these years, the beautiful recital hall has become an integral part of Toronto’s cultural life. The man who oversaw the launch of the hall, and who is responsible for its programming, is Mervon Mehta, the Royal Conservatory’s executive director of performing arts.

Mehta, 53, comes from music royalty. He’s the son of famed conductor Zubin Mehta and soprano/voice teacher Carmen Lasky Mehta. Grandfather/conductor/violinist Mehli Mehta was the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, uncle Zarin Mehta was executive director of the Montreal Symphony, Ravinia Festival and the New York Philharmonic, while cousin Bejun Mehta is an internationally acclaimed countertenor. There are also many Mehta cousins scattered around the world who are engaged in music activity of some sort. Mervon Mehta himself is a man of many talents, first as an actor and later as an arts administrator.

Mehta sat down with Paula Citron for a wide-ranging and candid interview that lasted for over two hours. The following Q&A reflects the who, what and where of Mervon Mehta.

You certainly had a peripatetic early life that included Vienna, Liverpool, Saskatoon and Philadelphia, before finally settling in Montreal where you grew up. Why all the travelling? My parents met as music students at Vienna’s Hochschule. We left when I was six months old. My dad was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic after winning an international conducting competition there. Because my parents had no job prospects and no money when that appointment ended, we went to live with my mother’s parents in Saskatoon. When it was clear that Saskatoon wasn’t going to jumpstart a career, we moved to Philadelphia to be with my father’s parents. We slept on their couch. My grandfather was a member of the Curtis String Quartet and taught at the University of the Arts. My dad got a lucky break when he was called to replace a conductor at the Montreal Symphony, which led directly to his becoming the music director of the MSO. Maybe the board thought that an Indian conductor was exotic and sexy.

Who was Giuseppe Verdi and what makes him unique and different from that other fellow born in the same year of 1813 — Richard Wagner? Verdi was from Italian peasant stock and therefore strong, healthy, tough and stubborn, and lived a long life of 88 years (unlike Wagner who was plagued with ill health throughout his life and died before the age of 70). This toughness, coupled with great ambition, enormous talent, almost boundless energy and shrewd business acumen, enabled him to write ten operas in just seven years, one for each major opera house in Italy; and by the age of 40 he became the talk of his nation, rich and respected. He was also a pleasant man who was kind to his parents and his wife, but also a bit shy and wary of publicity. He was no egotist, womanizer or debt-ridden spendthrift like Wagner, but rather a patriot and great supporter of a unified Italy who shared his wealth generously and was charitable to the less fortunate.

Born october 10, 1813, Verdi was, in a word, the right man for the right time. Italy had been a very musical nation from time immemorial. As early as the 16th century opera was “invented” by an Italian, Monteverdi, albeit in a primitive form, but it continued to be developed by a succession of composers who glorified the singing voice through a style called “bel canto.” By the early 19th century there were masters like Bellini and Donizetti and countless lesser composers, now forgotten, who became great celebrities providing the finest musical theatre entertainment the Italian public craved. They were followed by Gioachino Rossini, a musical wunderkind who took the helm and became enormously rich with some 60 very successful operas. However, after the death of his wife in 1845, Rossini retired from the opera scene, Bellini was dead and Donizetti in an insane asylum, so there was a vacuum ready to be filled. And it was this country boy, this Giuseppe Verdi who filled it.

Lotfi Mansouri, who led the Canadian Opera Company from 1976 until 1988, died in San Francisco on August 31 of this year. He left an indelible mark on the COC. When I interviewed him for The WholeNote seven years ago, he said right at the start of our conversation, “Opera really is the most wonderful art form in the world!”. That passion for opera shaped his work, and his life.

In the international opera world Mansouri will be best remembered for inventing Surtitles. The idea of projecting a translation of the libretto during an opera performance, like subtitles on a television broadcast, came to him while he was at home in Toronto with his wife Midge, watching an opera on TV. His idea revolutionized opera-going. It allowed audiences to understand what singers were singing while they were singing. The first outing for Surtitles was on January 21, 1983, during Mansouri’s staging of Elektra for the COC, when they appeared on a screen above the proscenium at the O’Keefe Centre (later renamed the Hummingbird Centre, now the Sony Centre). Opera history was made in Toronto that evening. 

What does Benjamin Britten’s opera Noye’s Fludde set in South Africa and sung in Xhosa have in common with the story of a young Québécois woman blessed with perfect pitch but afflicted with a learning disability? Or the return of the team behind the cult classic Koyaanisqatsi with a new film premiering to a live accompaniment by the TSO? Or with Jim Jarmusch’s vampire lovebirds who live like glam rockers? Or Mychael Danna’s first score since winning the Oscar earlier this year? They’re just a few of the films in the 2013 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that appear to be of particular interest to The Whole­Note readers. Yes, we’ve scoured the list of 288 features in this year’s festival and noted a number that look appealing.

Visitors marks Godfrey Reggio’s first film in ten years and his fourth collaboration with Philip Glass. Its world premiere takes place at the Elgin Theatre Sunday evening, September 8, when members of the TSO will provide a live score. Judging by the hypnotic trailer on the film’s inscrutable website, this black-and-white digital 4K projection could be the musical highlight of TIFF. The subtlety and restraint of the haunting score evident in the trailer finds Glass’ repetitive pulse backgrounded in the strings to allow precise woodwind tunes to come to the fore.