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Canadian Opera Anthology includes Daisy’s Aria from The Shivaree

Daisy’s Aria from John Beckwith and James Reaney’s 1982 opera The Shivaree is now part of a two-volume anthology of soprano arias from Canadian operas produced by Counterpoint Music Library Services.

Based on the work of soprano Dr. Stephanie Nakagawa, the two-volume anthology is a resource for singers and performance companies and features selections from 21 Canadian operas. 

In collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre, Dr. Nakagawa plans to create anthologies for each voice type. 

UBC Public Scholar Dr. Stephanie Nakagawa performs “I Need You Guillaume” from Victor Davies and Maureen Hunter’s 2007 opera Transit of Venus, one of the arias from her collection of music from Canadian operas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRulssBwJXw

Daisy’s Aria from The Shivaree

Caralyn Tomlin (Daisy) and Avo Kittask (Quartz) in The Shivaree, Comus Music Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto, 1982.

In The Shivaree, Daisy is abandoned by her lover Jonathan and accepts the marriage proposal of a much older man, William Quartz. The story gives a Canadian rural setting to the Greek myth of Persephone borne off by Hades. In the aria, Daisy regrets marrying Mr. Quartz and longs for Jonathan to rescue her.

Daisy: Oh Jonathan, why have you forsaken me? Is there still time – to take me away?

ARIA
Jonathan, you were a strange young man.
You never could decide if I was yours,
So Jonathan, I tried to make you decide
By letting Mr. Quartz keep company with me.
But if flowers and leaves keep company with winter,
They soon find they’re stabbed with an icy splinter.
My heart’s like the lane and the fields in fall,
Rusting and stiffening with cold until all
Lies buried in colourless snow,
Jonathan!
Walk above the snow
Where the garden was —
Walk above the snow
That covers me up,
Jonathan!
That covers me o’er.

Cover for James Reaney’s ibretto for The Shivaree, which premiered at the St. Lawrence Centre on April 3, 1982.
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The John Beckwith Songbook on March 7

Join us on Sunday March 7 for The John Beckwith Songbook — a concert celebrating the music of Canadian composer John Beckwith in honour of his 94th birthday.

Presented on the Confluence Concerts You Tube Channel, this celebration of John Beckwith’s song repertoire features three programs encompassing nearly all of his music for solo voice, including folksongs and songs set to poems by ee cummings, Miriam Waddington, and Colleen Thibaudeau.

The programs premiere at 2:00, 5:00, and 8:00 pm EST on March 7 and will be available on YouTube until March 21: https://www.youtube.com/c/ConfluenceConcerts

John Beckwith also collaborated with James Reaney on four operas: Night Blooming Cereus, The Shivaree, Crazy to Kill, and Taptoo!.

For more about the concert and John Beckwith’s music, see William Littler’s article in The Peterborough Examiner. John Beckwith shared this story about collaborating with James Reaney:

“Jamie lived in London and I lived in Toronto so our collaboration was almost exclusively through correspondence,” he recalls. The composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal carried on their famous collaboration much the same way. And like Strauss and Hofmannsthal, Beckwith and Reaney had their disagreements: “I wanted the leading character in our first opera to have a cat,” recalls Beckwith. Reaney replied tersely: “Cut the cat.”

Advice for potential opera composers? “You have to get a good book or you won’t have an opera. I’ve had students come up to me asking ‘What should I do for words?’ I tell them to get to know some writers.”

( o )  See also John Beckwith’s lecture on “James Reaney and Music” from November 5, 2016: https://jamesreaney.com/gallery/john-beckwith-on-james-reaney-and-music-november-5-2016-at-museum-london/

Page from Reaney’s draft of the libretto for Night Blooming Cereus (see John Beckwith’s 1997 book, Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, page 219)
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“Fifth Letter” from Twelve Letters To A Small Town

FIFTH LETTER
The Cloakroom at the High School

The high school is the palace of Merlin and Cheiron
Where governors and governesses teach
The young Achilles and young Arthurs of the town.

The radiators teach the rule of monotony
Cheep cheep cheeping in the winter classroom
Timid fingers learn to turn a fire on.

A stuffed hummingbird and a stuffed Sandhill Crane.
In the dusty looking glass of grammar,
Number, the young see the shape of their brain.

But what and where did I learn most from?
High, dark, narrow as its single window
In the old high school there was a cloakroom—

A cloakroom! In winter stuffed with cloaks
Soft with outside things inside
Burs, mud, dead leaves on some of the coats.

At four o’clock there are forty-nine bare hooks
As a hundred hands reach up
And I, lingering rearranging my books

See sweeping face peer in of janitor
Alone in the winter twilight
The old janitor! An image to ponder over.

Of course I learnt snow dripping windows
Corridors of words, cobwebs of character,
The ninety-two elements in a long row,
But most I learnt

The insoluble mystery of the cloakroom
And the curious question of the janitor
In some ways so centre and core
January man and cloakroom
From which the moon each month unlocks upon the wave
A white bird.

James Reaney, 1962

James Reaney at home, age 1 1/2 years, January 1928.

“Fifth Letter” is from Twelve Letters To A Small Town, a suite of poems commissioned by CBC Radio about the poet’s hometown, Stratford, Ontario, with music by John Beckwith. See also “The Music Lesson from Colours in the Dark”, “Sixth Letter: A House on King WIlliam Street” and “Eleventh Letter: Shakespearean Gardens”.

( ( 0 ) ) For more about James Reaney’s work with composer John Beckwith, see “James Reaney and Music” from November 5, 2016: https://jamesreaney.com/gallery/john-beckwith-on-james-reaney-and-music-november-5-2016-at-museum-london/

( ( 0 ) ) To listen to an archived sound recording of Twelve Letters To A Small Town from 1961, visit the Composers Showcase at the Canadian Music Centre.


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James Reaney: Words and Music with Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead

Sunday November 15, 2020 – Thank you all for joining us at Wordsfest via Zoom for James Reaney: Words & Music. You can view an archived version of the event here: https://fb.watch/1NryVbGfTv/

Stephen Holowitz, Sonja Gustafson, Oliver Whitehead, and Ingrid Crozman at Aeolian Hall, October 18, 2020

A big thank you to Sonja Gustafson (soprano), Ingrid Crozman (flute), Stephen Holowitz (piano), and Oliver Whitehead (guitar) for your wonderful performances of selections from James Reaney’s poem “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan” and Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems “Watermelon Summer” and “Lullaby of the Child for the Mother.”

Sonja Gustafson performs “Ernie’s Barber Salon Near the College” from “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan”

And thank you, Carolyn Doyle, for being an excellent moderator and drawing forth the stories and recollections behind the music. Composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead first got the idea to set music to James Reaney’s “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan” when they were asked to perform at his 81st birthday party on September 1, 2007. Their success with James Reaney’s work led to an appreciation for Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry and composing the music for Adam Corrigan Holowitz‘s 2013 play Colleening.

Our grateful thanks to Joshua Lambier and Gregory De Souza at Wordsfest for helping us put James Reaney: Words & Music together. 

About the composers: Composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead are members of the London jazz group The Antler River Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hteyhpy3gcM

James Reaney’s Souwesto Home (2005) and Colleen Thibaudeau’s The Artemesia Book (1991) are available from Brick Books.

James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau at the farmhouse near Stratford in 1982.
Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney at the University of Toronto, 1950

Earlier Wordsfest lectures on James Reaney:

2016: John Beckwith on James Reaney and Music 
2017: Tom Smart on James Reaney: The Iconography of His Imagination 
2018: James Stewart Reaney on James Reaney’s Plays for Children
2019: Stan Dragland on James Reaney on the grid

The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario.

Our thanks to Wordsfest and the London Public Library for their support of the lecture series, and to Poetry Stratford and the Stratford Public Library for their support in hosting the earlier lectures (2010-2015).

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Words and Music: James Reaney Memorial Lecture November 15 at Wordsfest

Sunday November 15 at 3:00 pm EST — Join us at Wordsfest via Zoom to hear James Reaney’s and Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems set to music by London composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead. Soprano Sonja Gustafson and flautist Ingrid Crozman are among the performers recorded earlier at Aeolian Hall for this online presentation.

Stephen Holowitz, Sonja Gustafson, Oliver Whitehead, and Ingrid Crozman at Aeolian Hall, October 18, 2020

Following the music, host Carolyn Doyle of the London Public Library will lead a discussion about the relationship between Words and Music, and the stories behind the poems. The theme of Words and Music plays off “Words & Music”, an old downtown London cultural outpost beloved by Colleen and Jamie when they moved to London in 1960.

((o)) Register here for the Zoom Webinar: 

https://westernuniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EqVD_KYHRq6bq2yHHg9myg

The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario. 

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“Sixth Letter” from Twelve Letters To A Small Town

Illustration by James Reaney, 1962

SIXTH LETTER
A House on King William Street

Like the life here
The wallpaper repeats itself
Up and down go the roses
Similar blows struck out
By air-banging green fists:
A bright rose and a blue one
A pink blow and a blue one

The years have not changed their likeness
Except that those behind the sofa
Have kept their original blaze
And those opposite the window
Have turned yellow.

Aunt Henny says to Aunt Penny,
“Have you read She? Oh, a terrible book,
An awful book! Yes, it’s by
Haggard Rider Haggard.”

Aunt Lurkey says to Aunt Turkey:
“I nearly slipped today, I nearly
Slipped today.
We should put a piece of carpet
On that particular step
We should,”
Says Aunt Lurkey taking another should
Off the would pile.

No one remembers when
The wallpaper was new, except
The wallpaper itself
In the green smothered darkness behind 
The sofa and the cupboard.

And I, I their awkward fool
Board there while I go to school.

James Reaney, 1962

“Sixth Letter” is from Twelve Letters To A Small Town, a suite of poems commissioned by CBC Radio about the poet’s hometown, Stratford, Ontario, with music by John Beckwith. See also “The Music Lesson from Colours in the Dark” and “Eleventh Letter: Shakespearean Gardens”.

( ( 0 ) ) For more about James Reaney’s work with composer John Beckwith, see “James Reaney and Music” from November 5, 2016: https://jamesreaney.com/gallery/john-beckwith-on-james-reaney-and-music-november-5-2016-at-museum-london/

( ( 0 ) ) To listen to an archived sound recording of Twelve Letters To A Small Town from July 1961, visit the Composers Showcase at the Canadian Music Centre.

Illustration by E.K. Johnson from Rider Haggard’s She (1887) courtesy wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She:_A_History_of_Adventure
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Songs of London Poetry and Painting with Serenata Music on January 18

Join us on Saturday January 18 at 8:00 pm at Western’s von Kuster Auditorium for a musical evening of “Songs of London Poetry and Painting” by local composers Oliver Whitehead (guitar) and Steve Holowitz (piano). 

Inspired by poems and art with a Southwestern Ontario connection, Whitehead and Holowitz have set to music poems from James Reaney’s Souwesto Home and Colleen Thibaudeau’s The Artemesia Book.

The performers are London musicians Sonja Gustafson, soprano, and Adam Iannetta, baritone, along with  Ingrid Crozman on flute and Patrick Theriault on cello (replacing Christine Newland). 

When & Where: Saturday January 18, 8:00 pm, von Kuster Auditorium, Don Wright Faculty of Music, Western University

Tickets are available at the door or online from the Grand Theatre Box Office and OnStageDirect. Students $20 and Adults $40

For more about upcoming concerts and events, visit Serenata Music: http://serenatamusic.com

Souwesto Home, Brick Books 2005
James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau near Stratford, Ontario, 1982.