A local man’s opera was one of nine one-person Canadian pieces accepted into the international United Solo Theatre Festival in New York City.
Peter Skoggard originally wrote La Voix Perdue in 2007, his second opera ever, as a commission for Christopher Burton. It took him almost a year to compose and David Macfarlane wrote the libretto. However, last year Bridget Hogan, the soprano for whom Skoggard wrote his opera, suggested he enter the United Solo Theatre Festival – and he was accepted.
On Oct. 4 the opera will be one of over 100 one-person pieces performed at the festival at 410 West 42nd Street, New York City from September to October.
La Voix Perdue tells the real life story of Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas, though her name is never used, and her journey from a poor immigrant family living in Toronto to her rise in the world of opera to a backpacking trip across India and working with Mother Teresa.
Stratas experienced opera for the first time at Maple Leaf Gardens when she was just 14 years old, Skoggard explained.
“By the age of 21 she’s singing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and she is one of the great opera singers of the 20th century,” he said.
Skoggard said when Stratas was world renowned she did the unexpected.
“So there she is, at the prime of her career but then she takes a year off and she goes backpacking alone in India,” he said.
“Across India and ends up in Kolkata with Mother Teresa’s the house of the dying … you know picking people off the street and she worked in the little school there and worked a little bit with the dying.”
The opera tells Skoggard and Macfarlane’s interpretation of Stratas’ life through a journalist’s interview.
The opening of the opera explains that a young journalist is interviewing the soprano and the opera that follows is the soprano’s response to his questions and her personal reminiscing, Skoggard explained.
When the opera was originally written in 2007 it was performed in Toronto, Elora and a few universities throughout Ontario, however, nothing on the scale of the New York City festival.
“There might be some very interesting people there and we would also be filming the performance and we’re going to make a kind of a teaser for it and we’ll be sending it to different people and so this thing could have legs and that’s very exciting too,” Skoggard said. “There might be somebody who’s interested.
“So to have somebody walk in there and say, ‘yes, we’ll take it and I’ll give you money for it too,’ would be fantastic.”
Though the opera was originally written for Hogan, Skoggard said the score was transferable to another soprano of a similar skill level.
A solo piano will accompanying the piece, although it was written for a full orchestra.
“A piano can sound like an orchestra, it’s of course a very versatile instrument,” Skoggard said.
Though the United Solo Festival is Skoggard’s first festival of this magnitude, he is no stranger to seeing his work performed for an audience.
“I did have a piece that was performed at the River Run Centre in 2004 but that again was self-produced and then I did have a piece that I was commissioned to write for the Glen Gould Studio in Toronto …,” he explained.
For the New York City festival, Skoggard said he has a group of about eight Elora citizens making the trip on Oct. 4 for the performance.
