It’s been fifteen years since Oakville tenor Michael Schade first bowed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
There have been many bows since, but none like the one he’s scheduled to take this Saturday afternoon.
That bow won’t be just for the 3,800 seated in the hall, but in front of millions as the Met simulcasts his performance in Massenet’s Thaïs to movie theatres around the globe.
Schade, who watched I Puritani in HD in 2007, is in favour simulcasts. “What I like about what they’re doing here is that they’re showing an opera rather than trying to make a movie,” said Schade over the phone from New York last week.
Massenet’s Thaïs is adapted from the Anatole France novel written in 1890. The action, which takes place in fourth century Egypt, centres round the attempts of a cenobitic monk, Athanaël, to convert Thaïs, a courtesan, from paganism to Christianity. However, Nicias, Athanaël’s wealthy friend from philandering days of old, has enjoyed Thaïs’s pleasures for a week, and has other ideas. Thaïs eventually capitulates to Athanaël, and agrees to enter a convent. Three months later, Athanaël dreams that Thaïs is about to die. He rushes to the convent, where he confesses to her that she converted him to worldly love. But Thaïs, in the throes of death, understands none of it. She dies after seeing a vision of angels greet her into heaven.
Massenet wrote the opera in 1894 as a showcase for his muse, the American soprano Sybil Sanderson. She in turn created a stir at the dress rehearsal when a wardrobe malfunction exposed her upper torso. Ever since, audiences have been coming to see what Thaïs will, or won’t wear. (Relax, the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb has said that HD simulcasts will be family oriented.)
Past the tease, Thaïs has always been a difficult opera to cast. “You really do need a queen of a soprano with a good top (register) that happens to have a great aura about her,” explained Schade. The Thaïs for this production is none other than Renée Fleming, who recorded the role in 2000 for Decca with Canadian conductor Yves Abel at the helm. Her Athanaël, then and now, is baritone Thomas Hampson. “It’s always a great thrill and honour to sing with Renée,” said Schade who appeared opposite Fleming earlier this year in Strauss’s Capriccio in Vienna. “She’s more like an institution than an opera singer. She’s an entire company. She really is a superstar.”
And so too is Schade, a Vienna State Opera Kammersänger, renowned in German repertoire, particularly Mozart and Strauss, plus Lieder. But listening to him sing Nicias at the Met’s première (heard online December 8), Schade sounded like a French tenor to the château born. “I’m using more of my Italianate voice than I would be my Mozart voice,” admitted Schade who prepped for the role with the Met’s French coach, Pierre Vallet.
Schade is, however, no stranger to French music having recorded Soirée française for CBC Records in 1997 with baritone Russell Braun and conductor Richard Bradshaw. Yet, Thaïs has whetted his appetite for more French rep such as Massenet’s Manon which he’ll do in concert in Ottawa in 2010, as well as Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles.
As for Nicias, Schade admits this cameo role is a bit of a switch for him. “He’s a bon vivant. He’s desperately in love with Thaïs. He’s very elegant, well cultured, and mannered. He’s good fun to be around.”
But will John Cox’s production, with its costumes evoking both la Belle Epoque and Byzantine Alexandria, amount to a gaudy mélange reminiscent of Jürgen Flimm’s so lame Salome on HD earlier this fall? Find out this Saturday at 12 p.m. at SilverCity Burlington, 1250 Brant St., 905-319-8677, or SilverCity Ancaster, 771 Golf Links Rd., 905-304-5888. Tickets are $25.25, senior $21.80, child $19.50.
