Lillian Alling

James W. Wright Talks To Gig Magazine

2010-11-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

News of VO's Lillian Alling, social media and education initiatives reached UK shores last month.

Assistant Editor Clare Wiley of Gig Magazine got to speak with General Director James W. Wright on the happenings at Vancouver Opera.

In October, the Vancouver Opera (VO) premiered Lillian Alling, a newly commissioned work by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell. During the upcoming season, the company will perform Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor,Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, and Verdi’s La Traviata.

"We want to do a post-World War II opera every year,"explains general director James W. Wright. "It’s a risk but it’s important to do more contemporary work."

This contemporary approach is consistent with how the opera markets itself, having invested time and effort in social media over the last couple of years."We were one of the first companies to employ a fulltime social media manager," says Wright. As well as a presence on Facebook and Twitter, the company provides blogs and podcasts for each production.The ‘Opera Live’ section of its website hosts videos of rehearsals, interviews and audience reaction. The site even includes manga comic strips representing each show. Wright reveals that the opera will soon be launching an online tool to allow people to see a view of the stage from the seat they’re planning to buy. He emphasises the importance of targeting spectators through new technology. "Our Facebook fans come at a reduced price and have a reception," he notes. "We want to show them that opera is still meaningful to their contemporary lives. We get people in the door and they tend to stick."

Wright observes, however, that while social media is valuable in terms of forging relationships and spreading the word, it will take time to judge its effectiveness in terms of sales. "We want to continue pushing the social media envelope as much as we can," he says."It’s hard to tell what works and what doesn’t work but if you stuck your head in the door you would be pleased to see it’s by no means all grey hair."

Working with an annual budget of CA$9.5m (€6.7m), another driving force of the VO is its educational work,providing five separate schemes for students across British Columbia. One of these is Music! Words! Opera!, a programme that provides free training for teachers to produce an opera with their students who come up with a story and music, as well as design the set. According to Wright, this particular project is very popular, reaching children in around 23 schools. Wright says the VO would like to develop projects for high schools, where the schemes attract fewer pupils. "We work in certain high schools but we don’t reach the numbers we’d like to," he says.

Saying Goodbye To Lillian Alling

2010-11-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

Sets have been struck and costumes put away. Trucks have been loaded and driven to storage.

As we prep for the upcoming Lucia di Lammermoor, we're officially saying good-bye to Lillian Alling.

And although Lillian Alling has come and gone, we'll always have pictures of all the shiny happy faces to remind us of what a grand experience it all was.

Thank you to everyone who came out and made our world premiere such a success! We couldn't have done it without you!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Giving You More Access

2010-10-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

When you come to Lillian Alling, you may notice a sign in the theatre lobby with 4 QR codes. You may also come across these codes while at your seat, flipping through the house program.

So what's behind these 4 QR codes?

Once scanned with a Smartphone, theatre patrons would be directed to personal video messages from General Director James W. Wright, Lillian Alling librettist John Murrell, composer John Estacio, Director of Production Terry Harper and soprano Frédérique Vézina.

For those who don't have Smartphones, here are the videos:

Kinda like easter eggs in a DVD, but not quite so hidden, we hope these small features help enhance your experience at the opera.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling Set Up In Time Lapse

2010-10-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a neat little time-lapse video of the technical set up for Lillian Alling.

Video credit: Tom Wright, Director of Artistic Planning

Shot during tech week down at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, you can see the staging of props, the different visual projections, the blocking of lights and all the general craziness involved in bringing an opera to the stage.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling: Final Thoughts

2010-10-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

From left: Miranda Lievers, Frances Sprout, Stacey Robinsmith, Nik Belonio

A big thank you to our Bloggers who joined us for the Lillian Alling Blogger Night at the Opera. We were delighted to have you at our world premiere. Thank you for helping us to kick-start the 2010-2011 season in a big way.

So did our bloggers have a good time at Lillian Alling?

This opera, more than any other opera, perhaps because it is the world premiere, but this opera, had me literally on the edge of my seat right until the curtain dropped for the final time. - Stacey Robinsmith

To read more on Stacey's thoughts, click here and here.

All the singers were great. They sung to the top of their game. The highest highs and the lowest lows. Judith Forst is an older woman with a voice as strong as a young woman's. Her character, Irene's, story is achingly told through her eyes. And Frederique Vezina is a young woman from Montreal. She gave me chills with her high on pitch voice. Aaron St. Clair Nicholson did a wonderful job as Scotty. He was believable and touching. And Irene's son, Jimmy, played by Roger Honeywell, was a good counterpart to irene. A loud and barreling voice. - Nik Belonio

To read more on Nik's thoughts, click here.

Lillian Alling is a true Canadian production – commissioned by the Vancouver Opera and produced in conjunction with the Banff Centre, Lillian Alling is a show that takes place across North America. Not to be shy with their world premiere, the Vancouver Opera has pulled all stops to produce a contemporary opera that is both artistically and technically breathtaking. - Miranda Lievers

Wow! That was so stirring, not only the opera with its powerful music or the encompassing scenery, the huge visuals, the love stories and the mysteries revealed, but simply the notion that an opera can be made with the place names I know so well. I love imagining this opera being performed in other cities worldwide -- and Stanley Park and Telegraph Creek, the Skeena River and the Vancouver lights sung into that larger panorama. - Frances Sprout

To read more on Frances' thoughts, click here and here.

What a great start to the brand new season! We look forward to welcoming back our bloggers for the upcoming Lucia di Lammermoor. Stay tuned!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Have You Checked Our QR Code Today?

2010-10-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

Scan our QR code with your Smartphone for a Lillian Alling surprise.

You may need to download a reader for your Smartphone, so click to get your free app from Neo or Mobio.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

An Ambitious World Premiere At Vancouver Opera

2010-10-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

Frédérique Vézina infuses the title role with an intriguing restlessness and confidently follows its varied emotional contours. She has the stamina needed for the sudden upswell of dramatic soprano writing in Lillian’s climactic act-two confession. Aaron St. Clair Nicholson’s mellifluous baritone blends bluster, tenderness, and devotion in his moving portrayal of Scotty, the link between the two stories. Among the other principals, tenor Colin Ainsworth stands out in his memorable cameo as the young Norwegian Kristian who is fired by Lillian’s adventurous example.

The most memorable performance comes from the venerable Judith Forst as the spirited but pained Irene. Hers is a tour de force of dramatic singing, finding nuance in the most offbeat phrase. As her son, Roger Honeywell is given far less musical characterization and is mostly a reactive character, but he invests the stirring quartet of disclosure in the final act with throbbing emotional honesty.

To read more from Crosscut, click here.

Introducing the Lillian Alling Avatar

2010-10-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I was approached by Vancouver Opera to write a series of travel blogs in the voice of Lillian Alling, my first task was to learn as much as I could about the “Mystery Woman” of the Telegraph Trail. Like many before me, I was intrigued by the enigma of this legendary young woman who – for reasons that continue to mystify – traveled across North America from Manhattan to Dawson City largely on foot, by some reports reaching Siberia.

It turns out that very little, in fact, is known about Lillian. What is known is full of hearsay and contradictions. I read Cassandra Pybus’ book, The Woman Who Walked to Russia, an account of the author’s pilgrimage retracing Lillian’s steps through the British Columbian wilderness. I enjoyed the creative license Amy Bloom took with Lillian’s story in her novel, Away. But my assignment was to get inside the head of one particular Lillian, the Lillian imagined by John Estacio and John Murrell in creating the music and libretto for their opera, Lillian Alling.

This Lillian is feisty, obsessive and fiercely independent, driven by a purpose that at first seems girlishly romantic, but is gradually revealed to be anything but. This Lillian is multi-layered and full of secrets, unsophisticated in some respects, but astute, intelligent and fearless as she encounters individuals and challenges along her route that both help and hinder her quest. This Lillian’s personality and perspective are informed equally by the traumas she left behind in Europe and the surprises, good and bad, in store for her in the New World.

In writing Lillian’s travel blogs, it was my turn to imagine what she experienced journeying from New York City to Telegraph Creek, from the United States into Canada, from the suffocating crush of steerage as she crossed the Atlantic, to the startling ruggedness of the BC wilderness – and every point in between.

Nowhere are those experiences more compelling – and better documented – than along British Columbia’s Telegraph Trail. I was fascinated to learn the history of the trail and about the linemen stationed in nine cabins along the telegraph line, between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek. It was these linemen who first brought the real Lillian Alling’s story to light as she stumbled out of the woods one day, exhausted and her clothing in tatters, at Cabin One. In real life, the linemen assisted Lillian on her northward path, telegraphing ahead to alert the next man to watch out for her, and sometimes even escorting her on part of her journey. This is where the legend of Lillian was born.

However obscure the reasons for real Lillian’s trek might be, our Lillian’s reasons are as dramatic and gripping as they come. Putting myself in our Lillian’s well-worn shoes, I tried to feel her blisters and her weariness, to experience her fear and urgency, to imagine her exhilarating rush of freedom as a young woman walking, hitch-hiking and hopping boxcars across a continent, and to share her wonder at the breadth and variety of the landscapes she travels through.

I look forward with great pleasure to experiencing Lillian’s odyssey once again, on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

~ Elizabeth Stewart

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 6)

2010-10-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 6 (final)

What happened to her after that is a matter of conjecture, based on flimsy pieces of conflicting hearsay evidence. Lillian Alling's story quickly became a northern legend, with different versions of the end of her story sworn to by those who said they had met her along the way, or had met someone who had met her, or seen her, or heard of her fate.

One version suggested that she had not gone north at all. A policeman who had met her on her journey said he had received a letter from her, saying she had gone to Telegraph Creek to find her Russian sweetheart. On finding he had departed, she married another man. But there is too much evidence that she did indeed go north; the policeman must have confused her with someone else. Some versions report that she had the stuffed hide of the dog that had been poisoned with her all the way, perhaps at the top of her backpack, perhaps in the cart she was said at one point to have trundled behind her. But her ability to preserve a decaying hide while persisting on her way north must be doubted. Some say that an Inuit man saw her footprints at the edge of a river near the Bering Sea and that she must undoubtedly have drowned there. Others say she found someone to take her across the Bering Sea by boat, then disappeared into Siberia.

We want a happy ending for Lillian Alling. A California man, who visited Siberia in 1965, wrote to a magazine to say he thought he had found one. While in Siberia, he had spoken with a friend there. The friend said that, as a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he lived on the Siberian shore of the Bering Strait. He saw a woman and three Inuit men whom he recognized as being from the Diomede Islands in the strait arrive on the waterfront. The woman said she had come from America, where she had been unable to find friends or make a living. She had decided to walk home to Russia and had done so. On her route, she said, no one had lifted as much as a finger to help her in any way. If this was indeed Lillian Alling, her comments would surely have come as a great disappointment to the many people who had helped her on her journey.

The letter writer said his friend told him all this had happened in the fall of 1930. But neither he nor anyone else living knows for certain how Lillian Alling's odyssey ended.

In The Dark Of The Theatre

2010-10-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

The things people do in the dark of a theatre.

Some people sit riveted and try to taking in everything that is happening on stage. Others glance upwards and down as they read the surtitles. And others may close their eyes and simply let the music and singing overtake them.

Not artist Val Nelson.

Val draws the opera when the lights go down. Ever so discretely and imperceptibly that her fellow seatmates do not even know this was happening. Val first came to our attention when she drew at Madama Butterfly last season.

On opening night, she was once again armed with her drawing pen to help us record the world premiere of Lillian Alling.

Act I

Act II

If you were at opening night, you may even recognize in the drawings the scenes depicted in each act. If you're coming tomorrow, Thursday or Saturday, we won't ruin it for you.

Thanks Val for sharing your wonderful drawings!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Risky Business

2010-10-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

"...Lillian Alling is an exciting, brave production deserving a wide audience and international exposure; as with Nixon in China, this is a modern opera which connects us with people we know, who have lived extraordinary lives. Both its story and its world premiere production make history, and this is one opera not to be missed."

To read more from Coastline Journal, click here.

The World Premiere Of John Estacio And John Murrell’s Lillian Alling

2010-10-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Some of the evening's most exciting singing came from baritone Aaron St.Clair Nicholson as the infatuated suitor, Scotty. Blessed with such a handsome voice, Nicholson was outstanding in every way, conveying the impulsion of a man in pursuit of a cause in his solo aria (in the Stanley Park scene) As one, Lillian Alling, as one.

To read more from Review Vancouver, click here.

The Reviews Are In. Lillian Alling Is A Triumph!

2010-10-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

"There is something inherently optimistic about this music”… "Engaging, accessible, touching and well crafted" – Elissa Poole, Globe and Mail

Read the review

"An enchanting show"… "a visual delight”… "The conspicuous success of Lillian Alling — beyond its intrinsic musical and theatrical worth — is to demonstrate that contemporary opera is alive and thriving at Vancouver Opera." – David Gordon Duke, Vancouver Sun

Read the review

“[Frédérique Vézina has] a voice as rich and warm as the smell of freshly cut cedar”... “[Judith] Forst is... a fiery standout”...

“Vancouver Opera and the Banff Centre (VO’s co-producer on the project) have spared no expense on the production design, which looks consistently handsome.” – Janet Smith, The Georgia Straight

Read the review

HURRY! ONLY 3 MORE PERFORMANCES!

Experience the thrill and beauty of this WORLD PREMIERE opera. There are good seats available for all remaining shows.

Call the VO Ticket Centre at 604.683.0222 or click here to purchase tickets online.

Vancouver Opera's Lillian Alling A Conspicuous Success

2010-10-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Composer Estacio has crafted a solid, sturdy score of unusual tightness: there isn’t a false step in nearly three hours of music. In the first act, the “road opera” conceit tracing Lillian’s cross-continent trek gives a rich complement of charming segments such as a New York street scene (complete with references to '20s pop idioms), a lovely aria for tenor Colin Ainsworth (a male equivalent of Carlisle Floyd’s “Ain’t it A Pretty Night” perhaps?), and a nice “meet cute” for Lillian and her would-be suitor, Scotty MacDonald, sung with easy assurance by baritone Aaron St. Clair Nicholson.

To read more from Vancouver Sun's David Gordon Duke, click here.

Vancouver Opera's Lillian Alling Takes The Art Form To Rugged New Realms

2010-10-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

With a voice as rich and warm as the smell of freshly cut cedar, soprano soprano Frédérique Véniza successfully makes the journey from wide-eyed new immigrant to strong woman on a mission. She really hits her stride in Act 2, with some deeply shaded, anguished solos.

Forst is also a fiery standout as Irene, the old woman who recounts Alling’s story as her son Jimmy (Roger Honeywell) drives her from her beloved cabin in the Interior into Vancouver to a rest home—“a cage in the city”, as she laments. Elsewhere, tenor Colin Ainsworth has a charming solo as a farm boy longing to leave his small town; Aaron St. Clair Nicholson is a charismatic Scotty, the telegraph man who falls for Lillian later in the opera; and tenor Honeywell brings humour and warmth to Jimmy.

For more from the Georgia Straight, click here.

Reimagined Journey Of An Enigmatic Woman Makes For Engaging Opera

2010-10-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

There is something inherently optimistic about this music, especially in the confident reach of Estacio’s vocal writing: big intervals anchored on triads, an old-fashioned, romantic rhetoric, echoes that range from Tchaikovsky to Bernstein, and mellifluous lines that flatter the singers.

In return, the singers flatter Lillian Alling. Soprano Frédérique Vézina was superb in the title role, projecting both strength and mystique in her singing (though somewhat more coquettish in gesture than the character suggests).

Mezzo-soprano Judith Forst was, as ever, emotionally arresting, her performance one long, gradual deepening of Irene’s character.

Click here to read more from the Globe & Mail.

Video: Vancouver Opera Presents Lillian Alling

2010-10-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

A preview of Vancouver Opera's presentation of Lilian Alling,

Click here to see the Vancouver Sun video in full size.

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 5)

2010-10-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 5

The knowledge that death came easily in the north had no more impact on Alling than all the warnings of those who had tried to dissuade her. She was walking to Russia. She would continue unless her own death intervened. Her determination – and her refusal to understand the possible problems – so impressed one of the linesmen that he gave her his black and white husky dog, Bruno, to provide company and to carry her pack. But, insisted the linesman, she must not let Bruno run free near the Iskut River, where poison traps were set for wolverine. It is thought that the dog must have eluded her, for another linesman saw it die near the river.

Alling continued on from Iskut, arriving in Atlin in August, where she bought a pair of shoes so she could walk ever farther northward. At Tagish, in the Yukon, a local resident took her across the river in a boat. At Carcross, she had a meal in a hotel. North of Carcross, a local couple overtook her on the road, and offered her a ride in their car. She rode with them as far as they were going, then resumed her lonely travels. On the last day of August, the Whitehorse Star announced that "a woman giving the name of Lillian Alling walked into town Monday evening and registered at the Regina Hotel. Lillian was not given much to speaking but as near as can be gathered from information she gave at different places she had walked from Hazelton to Whitehorse."

The newspaper named her the Mystery Woman, and tracked her further progress. She had, said one of the stories, left Whitehorse carrying a loaf of bread as her only food. As she journeyed on, various locals ferried her across the rivers that barred her way. On one occasion, she stayed through a bad storm with a survey party, then continued on down the Yukon River in a small boat. On October 5, she reached Dawson City, some 5,000 miles (8000 kilometres) from her starting point a year and a half earlier in New York. She stayed there for the winter, working as a waitress and repairing the boat she had bought for her continued journey down the Yukon. When the ice broke up in the spring, she followed the river towards the Bering Sea, steering her small craft through the last remaining floating ice.

Photo: Lillian Alling with Bruno, 1928. Courtesy of the Atlin Historical Society

Forst In The Wilderness

2010-10-16T13:03:00.002-07:00

The renowned mezzo-soprano was a regular at New York's Metropolitan Opera, received the Order of Canada and Order of British Columbia and appeared in dozens of operatic productions worldwide.

At 67, she shows no signs of slowing.

Forst is starring in the Vancouver Opera’s world premiere of Lillian Alling, the opening production for the company’s 51st season.

“It’s a new production, new music, new words – everything,” she said. “It’s very exciting when you start from scratch. There are no footprints ahead of us.”

To read the interview with Judith Forst in 24hrs, click here.

A Journey Of Operatic Proportions

2010-10-16T13:03:00.001-07:00

The production itself promises to be just as grand. Featuring some of Canada’s top opera talent – including mezzo-soprano Judith Forst, Quebec soprano Frédérique Vézina, and Toronto tenor Roger Honeywell – as well as the 60-piece Vancouver Opera Orchestra and a 40-person chorus, the piece not only travels great distances thematically, it also touches on the myriad musical styles that Ms. Alling would have encountered on her journey.

To read more from the Globe and Mail, click here.

Lillian Alling: The Trailer

2010-10-15T22:20:00.002-07:00

Your first look at the world premiere of Lillian Alling!

Press play or double-click the video to see it directly on VO's Youtube channel.

Video credit: Bombshelter Productions

Eight principal singers, 60 orchestra members, 40 chorus members, 175 costumes and stunning visual projections.

Get your tickets today! Call 604.683.0222 or puchase online!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling: Dress Rehearsal

2010-10-15T22:20:00.001-07:00

For your viewing pleasure, here's some fab shots of last night's dress rehearsal of Lillian Alling.

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

More pics to come!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling: Vancouver Opera’s Mystery Woman

2010-10-15T22:19:00.001-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Only bits and pieces about the real Lillian Alling are known: She arrived at New York’s Ellis Island from Eastern Europe; she was reported to be searching for someone; she crossed the continent on foot alone. She was imprisoned for a time in B.C. for vagrancy; some said it was for her own protection. She ultimately disappeared into the north.

For Murrell and Estacio, the unanswered questions were part of the story’s attraction. “We spent a lot of time not just digging for research, but digging into our imaginations, trying to come up with a cohesive storyline that preserved her heroism and her mystery and her determination, but also in some ways solved the mystery,” says Murrell.

To read more from the Globe & Mail, click here.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

2010-10-15T22:18:00.001-07:00

Vancouver Opera lands the cover of this week's Georgia Straight! Check inside for interviews with Lillian Alling's Frédérique Vézina, librettist John Murrell and director Kelly Robinson.

Pick up your copy today!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Rehearsal in Banff

2010-10-15T22:15:00.001-07:00

The Lillian Alling cast and crew spent weeks rehearsing at the Banff Centre before moving into the Queen Elizabeth Theatre last week.

Our Communications Manager, Selina Rajani, flew to Banff to photograph the rehearsal process with singers Judith Forst, Roger Honeywell, Frédérique Vézina, composer John Estacio and director Kelly Robinson.

Press play on the slideshow or click here for our Flickr.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Pin Me, Tuck Me, Shape Me, Fit Me

2010-10-15T13:37:00.001-07:00

Here's some video clips of hands-on designer Sue Lepage from the Lillian Alling wardrobe fitting a couple of weeks ago. She sketches, she designs and she was present for all the fittings.

Oh, and Sue designed the Lillian Alling set and props too. She's creative and multi-talented and we're thankful to have her with us for Lillian Alling.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Climb Every Mountain

2010-10-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of Frédérique Vézina and the production crew in Banff filming the montage sequence that will appear in Act 2 of Lillian Alling. In the sequence, Lillian hikes mountain ridges, scales down a rockface and crosses a bridge over the Skeena River, all in search of Jozef.

Who says opera singers just sing nowadays?

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling -- Road Opera Heroine

2010-10-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

Handout, Photo courtesy of the Atlin Historical Society

"Something in the one 1928 image of her in the wild Northwest of B.C. just grabbed me," says John Murrell. "She has this look about her that just says 'prepared for adventure,' as though she was bred for this kind of thing."

Click here to read more from The Province.

Lillian's Alling's Epic Trek

2010-10-15T11:38:00.001-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Vancouver Opera has upped the spectacle of the production by layering images—both photographic and video-based—over a jaggedy-stepped set. The projections depict everything from rocky rivers seemingly gushing over the stage to the narrow brick streets of old Brooklyn. The score flows with sweeping, multilayered orchestrations and choral crescendos that almost cinematically evoke the old West. “There’s a lot of emotion to the music and a lot of the landscape,” Frédérique Vézina says.

The result will be a multisensory feast, with 60 orchestra members and 40 chorus singers. Opera companies in this country frequently experiment with smaller-scale chamber operas, but few dare to mount something this ambitious.

To read more from The Georgia Straight, click here.

How Lillian Alling's Wild Terrain Comes To Multimedia Life

2010-10-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

“We’re trying to capture the sense of the emotional weight, rather than merely a specific place,” Robinson explains of the multilayered landscape images that evoke the journey from Ellis Island through the North Dakota grasslands and into the Pacific wilderness. “It really has a sense of impressionism and, in some cases, even expressionism.…It’s not just a matter of just selecting photography, it’s really about designing an image and layering imagery.” - Director Kelly Robinson

To read more from The Georgia Straight, click here.

Mystery Surrounds The Real Lillian Alling

2010-10-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Handout, Photo courtesy of the Atlin Historical Society

John Murrell’s Lillian Alling is a poetic and theatrical creation suggested by the life of a remarkable woman. But who was the real Lillian?

Mollie Rolston (Mollie Owens back then) is one of the very few left who know something first hand about this shadowy figure. When she was six she met Lillian on her family’s ranch in Evelyn, just outside Smithers.

To read more of Vancouver Sun's David Gordon Duke interview with Mollie Rolston, click here.

Focus On The Composer: Lillian Alling’s John Estacio

2010-10-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

From left: Librettist John Murrell, Composer John Estacio

This is very much a road opera, so I could hardly ignore the various cultures and musics and communities Lillian encountered as she travelled across North America."

For example, the Scandinavians in North Dakota. And the Ellis Island scene when she arrives from Russia is a fun cacophony of sound and languages. - John Estacio

Composer John Estacio talks to Vancouver Sun's David Gordon Duke. To read more, click here.

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Vancouver Opera World Premiere Depicts An Immigrant's Cross-Continental Odyssey

2010-10-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

"I am excited to be presenting a world premier to both open our 2010-2011 season and close our Golden Anniversary celebrations,” says James Wright, with considerable justification.

“I am especially proud of this VO-commissioned work, created by a team with a proven track record of audience-pleasing new operas. Lillian Alling is filled with tuneful arias, big chorus numbers, and lush orchestration, all in the service of a literate and fascinating libretto based on the true-life experiences of a very mysterious woman.”

To read more from Vancouver Sun's David Gordon Duke, click here.

A World Premiere Blogger Night

2010-10-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

A new season, a world premiere and Blogger Night at the Opera!

We are beyond thrilled that Stacey Robinsmith, Nik Belonio, Miranda Lievers and Frances Sprout will be joining us on Saturday, October 16 for all the excitement.

The quartet will be sharing their thoughts on the entire experience: from hobnobbing with other opera patrons, seeing the set with its wonderful visual projections and hearing the exquisite music and singing for the very first time.

Follow along the sidebar to the right for their weblinks as they blog pre-show and during the intermission. They may even report from the afterparty too.

Clockwise from top left: Stacey Robinsmith, Nik Belonio, Miranda Lievers and Frances Sprout

Don't be shy! Stop by and say hello to our friendly bloggers on opening night in the main lobby of the QET. They can't wait to meet you!

Hotfooting It After Lillian Alling

2010-10-12T12:29:00.001-07:00

Photo credit: I Am The Game

Opera Ninja Kimli is back! This Thursday, October 14, Kimli Welsh will be hot on the heels of Lillian Alling as she traverses the continent in search of the mysterious Jozéf.

Her assignment will be to track Lillian from the tenements of Brooklyn, hop the same trains that will take them both cross-country and follow her into the wilderness of British Columbia. All the while, the Opera Ninja is to remain hidden and observing from afar.

But what will happen when Lillian finds Jozéf? Will the Opera Ninja make herself known?

Follow along Thursday night's dress rehearsal at our Twitter: @Operaninja or along the right side-bar of this blog.

The action begins at 7pm.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

The Sunday Edition With Michael Enright

2010-10-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

Were you listening to CBC's Sunday Edition this past holiday weekend? If you were, you would've heard librettist John Murrell talk about Lillian Alling with host Michael Enright.

If you missed it (being Thanksgiving weekend and all), here's your chance to listen again. Click here to go to The Sunday Edition's website. Under hour three, press play and fast forward to the 26 minute mark for soprano Frédérique Vézina singing The Land is Large and the interview with John Murrell.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Life in Oakalla Prison

2010-10-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

When Judith Forst, performing the role of Irene in our new opera Lillian Alling, sings “God, the tales they used to tell. Oakalla near Vancouver, but much closer to Hell!” we are transported back to the 1920s by the passion in her powerful, compelling voice and the images of Oakalla prison displayed by video designer Tim Matheson.

What would it have been like to be a woman imprisoned in Oakalla Prison Farm?

From the time of Oakalla’s opening in 1912 to its closure seventy-nine years later, the Lower Mainland Regional Correctional Centre (as it was renamed in 1970), served three main functions. First, it was a provincial gaol for men and women serving sentences of less than two years; second, it was a remand centre for those awaiting trial on serious charges or appeal federal convictions; and third, up until the final hanging of Leo Mantha in 1959, Oakalla carried out all death sentences in the province.

Oakalla Prison Farm was built to replace the New Westminster Provincial Gaol which had to serve the entire Lower Mainland with only 77 cells. Burnaby’s District Lot 84, Group 1 – a wooded 185 acre site – was chosen since the prison was to be run as a farm so that all inmate labour could be conducted within the perimeter of the prison property eliminating the need for chain gangs which had proven high escape risks.

The smaller south wing was built for women and had accommodation for just 54 prisoners. All cells, save those for punishment, contained a cold water basin, a toilet, a metal-framed bed hinged to the side wall and an inspection slot in the rear wall.

Oakalla reflected the American ‘Auburn’ model of penology: inmates would be subjected to harsh discipline and strenuous work during the day and segregated in individual cells at night.

To give you a sense of the day-to-day world: silence was strictly enforced, inmates were sentenced to hard labour, and gaolers had complete control over their charges. Those sentenced to hard labour left for work by 7:30am (8:00am during the winter months) and would not return from the fields or workshops until 5:30pm. Dressed in grey denim trousers, tunic and cap, inmates would walk in unison to and from the fields. Clearly marked across the back of their jackets and along one side of their pants were the letters P G (Provincial Gaol). Their uniforms were easily distinguishable to the ever-present armed guards. The prisoners were locked in their cells at 7:00pm and lights-out was at 9:00pm.

It was believed that these controls, strictly enforced, would bring about the reform of every offender. Oakalla was to bring penal practices in BC into a new era. “In 1912, the provincial government saw Oakalla as a godsend to corrections. In the years that followed, it was more often considered the devil’s work.”

I don’t know about you, but being incarcerated in a country where I don’t have a passport nor speak the language would be frightening enough, but once I realized that death sentences were being carried out around me, it would truly become a place of nightmares.

~ Jennifer Lord, Special Projects Manager

Reference material from “Hard Place to do Time: The Story of Oakalla Prison, 1912 – 1991” by Earl Andersen

Heads Up! Parking Advisory!

2010-10-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

TRAFFIC ADVISORY FOR OCTOBER 19, 2010
Please note that the downtown core will be busier than usual on Tuesday, October 19, due to a concert at Rogers Arena. Don't let the crowds of Justin Bieber fans make you late for Lillian Alling! Give yourself plenty of time to get downtown and park.

Remember: doors open at 6:15 pm, free preview talks in the theatre begin at 6:30 pm, and all productions start at 7:30 pm sharp. Latecomers will not be seated until an appropriate break in the performance.

Where to Park

Reduced Capacity in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Lot
With the exception of a limited number of spaces for disabled patrons, there is VERY LIMITED PARKING ON OPERA PERFORMANCE NIGHTS. Please explore other options.Disabled parking reservations - please call 604.665.2193

Parking Meters
City of Vancouver parking meters are now in effect until 10:00 pm. Our performances rarely end by 10:00 pm. Therefore you risk getting a ticket and being towed! You can 'top up' your parking meter by phone - click here to learn about Pay-by-Phone parking.

VO Patrons Park for Only $6 at the BC Hydro Building!
VO has made a special arrangement with Impark to use its 300-stall lot under the BC Hydro Building, just 1 block from the theatre complex. The lot is located at the corner of Homer and Dunsmuir Streets (enter from Homer Street). Park for only $6 for the entire evening.

Other Parking Options Near the Queen Elizabeth Theatre

775 Hamilton Street – Vancouver Public Library – 712 spaces. Entrance from Hamilton just north of Robson.
*Prices have recently gone up substantially at this lot.

520 West Georgia Street – 337 spaces
Southwest corner of West Georgia and Richards with entrances from both West Georgia and Richards.

150 West Pender Street
Southeast corner of West Pender and Cambie. Pay-and-display facility, one block from the theatre complex.

88 Richards Street – 99 spaces
Northeast corner of Richards and Robson with entrance from southbound Richards.

These lots are operated by EasyPark. Please call 604-682-6744 to confirm rates on event nights.

Reserved Parking for Opera Round Table Members
Reserved QET parking is available for Opera Round Table members. Please call Carmen Murphy, Development Manager, Individual Giving at 604-682-2871, Ext 4832 for more information.

Behind VO's QR Code

2010-10-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

So you're walking down the streets of Vancouver, minding your own, when you come across a strange-looking poster that asks "Where is Lillian?"

Upon closer inspection, you realize that this is a QR code. So you whip out your Smartphone to read the QR code and presto, it leads you to a video about our world premiere, Lillian Alling.

The video sets the scene for what it was like for immigrants, like Lillian Alling, coming to America in the 1920s. The video, accompanied by 2 musical pieces from the opera, also illustrates Lillian's journey across North America by foot to return to Siberia. She was briefly incarcerated at Oakalla Prison in British Columbia and after her release, continued travelling north to Alaska. She was never seen or heard from again.

Some of you might be trying to read the above picture with your Smartphone but are not having any success. (picture are funny like that)

So, here is the actual QR code. A brand new Lillian Alling video has been posted up today. You may need to download a reader for your Smartphone, so click to get your free app from Neo or Mobio.

Learn more about Lillian Alling! We'll be posting fresh content (almost daily!) so check back often for your behind-the-scenes look at Lillian Alling.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling Montage Music

2010-10-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

Another preview of the dramatic music you will hear at Lillian Alling. This clip is from Act 2, Scene 4.

From Composer John Estacio: “This excerpt comes from a montage sequence depicting the perils of Lillian's final adventure. It was recorded with a hand-held device during rehearsal. There is still rehearsing to do."

We can't wait to hear it on opening night!

Lillian Alling: Props

2010-10-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Head of Props Valerie Moffat has been sourcing props for Lillian Alling these past few months, while Production Assistant Gregg Steffansen has been building or customizing them.

Working with props, an attention to detail is a must. Everything has to look authentic to the time period being portrayed.

For example, labels on tin cans will be ripped off and photocopies of vintage labels glued on in Lillian Alling. There'll be no Chef Boyardee labels here.

As a goodly portion of the opera takes place in the great outdoors, you'll see pick-axes, canteens, picnic baskets and rucksacks.

What you won't see, however, is Valerie's dog on stage. Rupert, who was visiting that morning, was too adorable for me to pass up on taking a picture. Although the real Lillian Alling may have travelled with a dog, our stage production will not include such a travelling companion.

I am not a prop

To take a look at some more of the Lillian Alling props, press play or click here for our Flickr.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

When Enright Met Murrell

2010-10-06T11:42:00.001-07:00

From left: Michael Enright, John Murrell

Tune in this Sunday to CBC’s The Sunday Edition October 10th!

John Murrell will talk to Michael Enright about the process of writing an opera on CBC’s The Sunday Edition on Radio One. Check airtimes in your area here.

Opera Speaks Tonight @ VPL!

2010-10-06T11:41:00.001-07:00

Alone in a New Land: The Immigrant Experience in Canada

Wednesday, October 6th, 7:00-9:00PM
Alice Mackay Room, Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
Moderated by CBC Radio One’s Mark Forsythe

The title character in Lillian Alling arrives in North America through Ellis Island, in New York, in 1927. Central to her story - a single-minded quest that takes her across the continent by foot and boxcar - is her experience as an immigrant. Alien, ostracized, exposed to danger and taking immense risk, her immigrant experience is a deeply moving undercurrent throughout the opera.

Join esteemed historian Jean Barman, "Canadian Immigrant" magazine's business development manager Alla Gordeeva, and historian John Belshaw, Dean of Social Sciences and Management at Langara College, as they portray the stories of individuals and families, from many lands, who have arrived on our shores.

Lillian Travel Blog, Entry #8

2010-10-06T11:21:00.001-07:00

Photo credit: Lee Russell/Library of Congress

On the Telegraph Trail
May, 1928

I tell Scotty that I have extra shifts at the restaurant and that I can not see him for a few days, hoping this white lie will give me the head start I need to reach Jozéf. For I know Scotty, and I know that he will try to follow me. Everything must be settled before he finds me.

I have money enough to buy a ticket for the train to Hazelton. Riding in comfort, I chide myself that I think I have become a fine lady. I remember back to my ragamuffin self last summer, hopping boxcars across the country, trekking long miles with holes in my boots and my clothing in tatters. I worry that I have become soft since then, unused to long hauls on rugged tracks all the day long. Last year I made it only as far as Scotty’s cabin, Cabin Two along the Telegraph Trail. There are nine linemen’s cabins before Telegraph Creek, before Jozéf – hundreds of miles more to travel through unknown mountains and wilderness. But there is no point in my asking myself whether I am up to the task. I have no choice in the matter. Finding Jozéf is my duty, and my destiny.

I set out from Hazelton, wishing I had more time to prepare for my journey, but time is of the essence. I follow the telegraph line again, this time skirting around the linemen’s cabins, knowing that – should one of the linemen spy me – the telegraph lines will be abuzz with news that the “Mystery Woman” has returned.

I keep walking, through the tall forest, scrambling down into crevasses and struggling up steep slopes, scraping my hands and shins on sharp rocks. Past the spot where the bear ate my food. Past Cabin Two, where fleetingly I think of Scotty, and the happiness we could have shared.

I am in unfamiliar territory now. The telegraph line leads me to a rickety bridge spanning a deep chasm, the waters of the Skeena River crashing below with spring runoff. I take a step or two, and discover that many of the planks are impossibly rotten. But there is no way back for me. I force myself across the bridge, testing each board as I go. I learn something I did not know about myself before. I am afraid of heights!

It is still cold in the night time. I build a fire, taking the chance that if Scotty is following me, he will not see the smoke. As I warm my hands, I hear something in the bushes – something large. Then I see cat eyes glowing in the dark, and hear the cougar snarl. I have grown fearless. I take a burning log from the fire and thrash it wildly, shouting. After a few minutes, all is silent. I stay awake most of that night, feeding the fire.

Then disaster! I am making my way down a steep narrow path, hugging the mountainside, when suddenly from above comes a roar and deluge of tumbling rocks. I flatten myself against the mountain, but a rock strikes my hand – the hand holding my bag. The bag is gone down into the gorge, and with it my food. All I have left is the clothes on my back. But I must press on.

At last I pass the ninth lineman’s cabin. I must be near now, to Telegraph Creek. I come upon a small stream. And at this stream I see the back of a man. He holds a pan in his hand, with which he scoops mud from the creek bed. “Jozéf?” I say to him. “Jozéf Nikitich Lazinsky?” Jozéf turns to me. At long last, I have found you.

Project Unto Me III

2010-10-06T11:20:00.001-07:00

Here are some more visual projection awesomeness from video designer Tim Matheson.

These photos, taken in a couple of weeks ago when the production crew were in Banff, are the first life-sized shots of the projections. Previously, we only had available photos of the projections on model sets, as seen here and here.

Click to see each photo-set.

If you think the projections look good here, just wait until you see it in the theatre!

To see each photo individually, click here for our Flickr.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

Lillian Alling: The Look

2010-10-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

VO's Wardrobe Superviser Parvin Mirhady and her team of 6 have been busy these past few months. The wardrobe department has been cutting and sewing up a storm in order to create 200 the outfits needed for Lillian Alling. Half of the outfits were custom made, while the other half were purchased from second hand stores such as Value Village and then customized for that 1920s era look.

Parvin Mirhady and designer Sue Lepage going over some costume drawings

When asked which was harder, creating costumes for Nixon in China or Lillian Alling, Parvin said Lillian was definitely more challenging. Not only does Lillian have more costumes, but each piece has more individual styling, whereas the uniforms in Nixon were very much identical repeats.

Nixon in China costumes

Lillian Alling costumes

Fittings were held a couple of weeks ago when designer Sue Lepage was in town. Within just 4 days, 40 principals & chorus members, 8 supernumeraries and 4 children were seen for their one-time fitting. That's some heavy traffic going in and out of the wardrobe department.

And if you love vintage-style hats, you're in for a treat as everyone on Lillian Alling will be outfitted in cloche hats, straw hats, homburg hats and flat caps. A profusion of hats everywhere.

From leisure wear, to rugged outdoor clothing and immigrant clothing of that era, Lillian Alling will give you a glimpse of the very diverse styles of the late 1920s.

But if you can't wait until opening night, press play on the slideshow or click here to go to our Flickr.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Opera Speaks: Alone In A New Land

2010-10-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 6
Opera Speaks @ VPL: Alone in a New Land: The Immigrant Experience in Canada
Alice Mackay Room, Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Free admission. Seating is limited; arrive early!

The title character in Lillian Alling arrives in North America through Ellis Island, in New York, in 1927. Central to her story - a single-minded quest that takes her across the continent by foot and boxcar - is her experience as an immigrant. Alien, ostracized, exposed to danger and taking immense risk, her immigrant experience is a deeply moving undercurrent throughout the opera.

Canada's character has been built with the emotional and spiritual fibre of immigrants such as Lillian. Join a panel of experts and historians as they portray the stories of individuals and families, from many lands, who have arrived on our shores. Panelists include esteemed historian Jean Barman, and eminent historian John Belshaw, Dean of Social Sciences and Management at Langara College.

Moderated by CBC Radio One's Mark Forsythe.

Lillian Travel Blog, Entry #7

2010-10-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

Vancouver
April, 1928

It is more than a year since I came to America in search of Jozéf Nikitich Lazinsky. As I followed Jozéf’s path across this continent, I grew to expect freedom, and to nurture hope – until the day I was betrayed by Scotty Macdonald on the Telegraph Trail.

I suppose that Scotty thought he was protecting me by alerting Constable Wyman to my intentions to reach Siberia. A joke in itself! My destination was never Russia. Where I come from, we fear nothing more than the police, so imagine my dread when Wyman arrested me and took me to Hazelton for trial. I could barely understand the judge. I believe he wanted me to promise to give up my plan to walk north, which I could not do, for I have a greater promise to keep. And so he sentenced me to jail, and sent me far to the south, to the Oakalla Prison Farm near Vancouver.

I will not dwell on the indignities I suffered there, for I look forward, never back. It is enough to say they worked me like a peasant, in the kitchen, in the laundry. The hardest part was being hemmed in and constantly around people, when I had found my own kind of happiness in my solitary life of walking. But being around people meant listening to people, and my English improved over those months to the point that, when they released me in the early winter, I was able to find work in Vancouver waiting tables in a café.

I found a bed in a women’s hostel and saved my earnings, thinking only of the spring, when I could set out north again to Telegraph Creek, where Jozéf seeks his fortune looking for gold. I only hope I am not too late. What if he has become wealthy, and moved on? But every day I renew my vow to find him, no matter what it takes.

One day as I am leaving work, a man stops me. “Lillian Alling?” he says. I am taken aback, for no one knows me here. Then I recognize him. Scotty Macdonald! The man who sent me to prison. I stride away, but he stops me. If you knew what I went through to find you, he says. He never intended for me to wind up in prison. All he wanted was to keep me safe. I see in his handsome face that he is sincere. I see more than that. I see that he is in love -- with me. With Lillian Alling! And in that moment I see something else – that I love him, too.

The next weeks are like heaven. We take long walks in Stanley Park, alongside the ocean. We do not care whether it rains, or if the sun shines. We are happy, together. I never knew I could feel such happiness. Such belonging. I find myself daydreaming about a life together, but I stop myself. I know it can not be.

My simple life has become so complicated. I must tell Scotty the truth of the matter. I owe him that much. Then I must leave him, for the final leg of my journey is one I must take alone. I hope Scotty will understand. I hope he can forgive me.

Lillian’s Vancouver: The Chung Collection Tour

2010-09-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 2 from 2 – 3pm
Lillian’s Vancouver: The Chung Collection Tour
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC
1961 Main Mall
Free admission – reservations are required

See a vivid picture of Vancouver as it would have looked to Lillian Alling. Explore the reality of immigrants, especially Chinese, as they arrived and worked here in the early part of the 20th century, with a special guided tour of The Chung Collection by UBC Library Archivist Sarah Romkey.

Click here to register.

A Historic Walk Into Lillian's World

2010-09-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Vancouver Historical Society

Sunday, October 3, 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Saturday, October 9, 10:00am - 12:00pm
Lillian’s world – A Historical Stanley Park Walking Tour
Meet at the Stanley Park Pavilion

Stand where Lillian Alling might have stood when she fell in love with telegraph linesman Scotty Macdonald. Enter Lillian’s world through this historical walking tour of Stanley Park led by historical interpreter Jolene Cumming. Featuring evocative stories and enticing anecdotes, this 2 hour walking tour will focus on the experience of women and will offer rare archival photos of Stanley Park, Vancouver and The Telegraph Trail in the early 1900s.

Historical interpreter Jolene Cumming has been producing and presenting local women’s history programs and special historical events since 2001. A board member of The Friends of the Vancouver Archives and the Women’s History Network of British Columbia, she presents at museums, historical societies, conferences, schools, community and seniors’ centres. Her recent projects include a six-part walking tour series with the Stanley Park Ecology Society and co-founder and coordinator of the monthly Herstory Café.

Two tours will be held: Sunday, October,1:00pm – 3:00pm and Saturday, October 9, 10:00am - 12:00pm, rain or shine. Wear comfortable shoes.

Free admission – limited space. Reservations required. Visit www.vancouveropera.ca for details.

Meet at the Stanley Park Pavilion www.stanleyparkpavilion.com/Pavilion/Welcome.html
Accessible by the #19 bus. Pay parking available.

Lillian Alling: The Manga

2010-09-28T15:04:00.001-07:00

A mysterious woman on a journey across North America, in search of a man who is the key to unlocking her past.

Who was the larger-than-life Lillian Alling?

Here's Lillian Alling as seen through the eyes of manga artist Sarah OuYang and editor Roy Husada.

To supersize, double click on the images.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Opera Speaks: Creating Lillian

2010-09-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

Creating Lillian: Inside the Creative Process of Lillian Alling

Thursday, September 30, 2010 7-9pm
Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free. Seating is limited.

Discover how a large-scale opera is created from scratch. Composer John Estacio, librettist John Murrell, director Kelly Robinson and members of the production team for Vancouver Opera's new commissioned opera Lillian Alling will share their three-year process of writing and producing this dramatic opera that depicts a young Russian woman's epic journey, on foot, across North America in the 1920s. Cast members will perform excerpts from the opera.

Based on a real historical character, Lillian Alling takes us on a journey from Brooklyn, New York to a Norwegian farming community in North Dakota, across the Canadian prairie and into the wilds of northwestern British Columbia. Along the way, Lillian spends time in Vancouver, is jailed in Oakalla Prison Farm, in Burnaby, and walks the famous "Telegraph Trail" to the banks of the Skeena River. Her story is sweeping, personal, romantic, and heart-wrenching. This will be a rare opportunity to get inside the creative process with an extraordinary team of opera artists.

Opera Speaks is an ongoing series of free public events that engage the community in exploring the themes and issues arising from Vancouver Opera's productions. For more information about Opera Speaks, visit www.vancouveropera.ca

Who was Lillian Alling?

2010-09-27T16:40:00.001-07:00

In the early 1920s, a young woman named Lillian Alling arrived in New York City, joining the hordes of people processed through Ellis Island seeking prosperity and a fresh start in the New World.

Soon, for some unknown reason, Lillian decides to return to Russia-by walking across North America to Siberia. Over the next three yeras, Alling was spotted in Fargo, North Dakota and Atlin, BC. By 1927, she had crosed the continent alone and mostly on foot-almost 4,000 km wiht only the clothes on her back and a lead pipe for protection.

She spent the winter on the BC Coast, part of it in Oakalla prison farm. Some say she was imprisoned for vagrancy; others claim the local constable put her in jail because he was concerned she would try to head north during the bitter winter months. When spring arrived, Alling was off again and seen on the treacherous Telegraph Trail - the only land route between Quesnel and Hazelton. There were rumours of love with a linesman and glimpses of her in Northern BC.

What happened to Lillian Alling? Did she walk all the way back to Russia? Or did she perish en route?

We may never know, for nothing more was ever heard of Lillian. Like the mists in the mountain passes or a trail of footprints in the snow, she disappeared, becoming part of the myth of the North.

VO will explore this real-life, larger-than-life mystery with the world premiere of Lillian Alling on October 16.

We hope to see you there!

Ask me anything

Lillian Travel Blog, Entry #6

2010-09-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

Hazelton
October, 1927

I did not think to find myself back in this town again so soon, back at the beginning of the Telegraph Trail – and without my precious freedom. I have been bitterly betrayed, by a man I thought was my friend.

After I bid farewell to Sam at Cabin One, I continue north, following the telegraph line. Sam has replenished my supplies, so I have enough food to keep me strong. I am wary of bears and wolves, but I learn not to jump at every twig breaking, at every rustle of bushes. I begin to enjoy this untamed country, to marvel at its wild beauty and to drink deeply of its moist air. Perhaps this is where I belong. But I must not daydream. I must stay focused on finding Telegraph Creek, and Jozéf.

I count on my map eight more linemen’s cabins I must pass before I reach Telegraph Creek. On the first day I make good progress, but on the second day I am slowed by rain so heavy that I am forced to take shelter. Even so, I am drenched to the skin. My boots take the worst of it. Sodden, they begin to pull apart at the seams when I start walking again.

I drop my pack and fall asleep on the bank of a stream, too chilled and exhausted even to eat. I awake in darkness to the sound of snuffling and grunting nearby. By moonlight, I make out the lumbering shape of a bear. My heart is in my throat, but the bear is too busy eating my food to notice me. I lie perfectly still while he devours the last of my dried salmon. I keep a tight grip on the pistol in my pocket – although I know it would be useless against this giant.

I travel two more days without food. I am hot with fever. At times the trail is overgrown with brambles, and I must fight my way through them. They tear at my clothes, and my skin. At last I reach Cabin Two. The door is open. I am too starving to be polite and knock. Inside the door on a shelf, I see tins of food. Without thinking, I take several. Only then do I see the lineman, sitting at his telegraph machine, his back to me. Then he turns and sees me. I run.

This lineman is young and fit. He catches me in the clearing outside the cabin, holding onto me firmly with his strong hands. I look up expecting anger, but instead I see a broad smile across his handsome face. “I know you!” he says. He calls me the “Mystery Woman”, heading for Siberia, and to my chagrin I remember the small lie I told Sam, now grown into a small legend. I have been invisible for so long that I resent the loss of my anonymity to the telegraph line.

But Scotty Macdonald is a gentleman, and he seems to understand that I do not like questions. He insists that I stay with him until my blisters have healed and my fever is gone. He warns me there will be snow before long, and tries hard to persuade me to turn back and wait out the winter in Hazelton. I wish I could explain to him what drives me to find Jozéf.

On the third day, I prepare to say good-bye. Scotty finds excuses to delay me – cutting down a pair of his pants to fit me, hiding my boots. Like a fool, I think it is because he likes me, but then I find out the real reason. The policeman, Wyman, arrives. He has come for me, because – behind my back -- Scotty has called him on his telegraph. My worst fear comes true. Wyman arrests me, and brings me back here to Hazelton. To jail! Tomorrow I will be brought before a judge. Scotty Macdonald, I will never forgive you.

Sweet Land & Lillian Alling: Parallels

2010-09-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you attended the Sweet Land movie presentation at Vancity Theatre last night, you would've heard UBC professor Jean Barman draw parallels between the movie and our upcoming world premiere opera, Lillian Alling.

If you were unable to make it, here is the compelling speech that preceded the featured movie last night, compliments of Ms. Barman.

"It’s a special pleasure to be invited to introduce Sweet Land and also the upcoming Vancouver Opera production of Lillian Alling. Both are satisfying in themselves, but they are also, from my perspective, even more so when experienced together.

Sweet Land and Lillian Alling give us two opportunities to explore a critical component of ourselves as human beings. We are each born with a longing for an identity of our own.

We meet what we come to consider to be our destiny in various ways. Most of us don’t go to quite such extremes as do the protagonists in Lillian Alling and Sweet Land, which is part of what makes the opera and the movie so compelling.

For some of us, this search never much takes us beyond our roots. We are comfortable from an early age with who and where we are, and build on the world into which we were born. For others of us, it’s not possible or easy to take a chance, as we see tonight and in the upcoming production. So a friend explains to Lillian Alling in the opera:

I cannot leave my father,
Though I dream of it all the time.
You have travelled.
Please let me ask you:
Does it feel lonely,
Or does it feel free?
Does every new day fill you with strength,
Or does it fill you with fear? …
I know everything about here
The here and the now
But I would love to learn about what’s out there

In the present day, the search of identity most often begins with moving away from home to university, in search of a job, or simply to find ourselves, so goes the cliché from the 1960s and 1970s. And along the way we make decisions as to what to hold on to and of what to let go.

At some point in our lives most of us reconcile ourselves to who we are as opposed to who we think we want to be. The very first line of Lillian Alling makes this point. An elderly woman named Irene who has lived much of her life in a cabin, to quote the libretto, “somewhere in the mountains of British Columbia” prepares to leave her longtime home. “My life’s all packed up,” she laments.

Over time most of us accept ourselves for what we are with all of our shortcomings and failings, and come to take pleasure in the every day. We realize that our search for identity – our destiny if you will – lies within ourselves as opposed to being out there in some remote location which we have not yet succeeded in reaching. This too is part of what give Sweet Land and Lillian Alling their appeal.

COMPARISON OF THEMES

The movie and the opera are complements of each other in several ways, all linked to their evocations of the search for self that grounds all our lives. Four of these parallels particularly resonate for me.

TIME PERIOD. The first relates to the time period in which the movie and the opera are set. Both stories take place in the 1920s -- in our parents’ or grandparents’ time. By virtue of the time period, they serve an important function, which is to remind us that the desires we have for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren, are not unique to our own generation.

Both evoke the 1920s as a time of immigration and so of diverse peoples learning to live together. In Lillian Alling we hear a whole number of languages reflecting where it was persons originated and how they still defined themselves, at least linguistically. In Sweet Land it is the protagonist’s initial inability to communicate in English that sets her apart as an outsider who thereby does not belong to the society which an earlier generation of immigrants are attempting to build up around themselves.

One of the strengths of both Sweet Land and Lillian Alling is the way in which they book end the principal story based in the 1920s by moving the time period into the present day. We get to observe not only how identity was pursued in the 1920s, but also how descendants closer to ourselves both fashion their destinies and reflect on their predecessors’ choices. The consequence is much richer productions encouraging us to interrogate our own responses across time even as we observe others’ being played out before us.

GENDER. Secondly, both stories centre on young women, which is a useful reminder that, even though women’s lives were long more constrained than those of men, they nonetheless acted in ways they considered to be in their own best interests.

Thes two female protagonists are counterpoints to each other. Each of their quests we can relate to ourselves, and together they are more powerful than either in isolation.

In Sweet Land, which we are going to see in the next few minutes, Inge Alltenburg seeks her destiny by travelling from Germany to Minnesota as a kind of mail order bride to a Norwegian farmer named Olaf. Her spunk and determination to make things work in adverse circumstances is what gives Sweet Land its power. Despite the local pastor warning her, and I quote, “those who are from outside God judges,” she is not deterred.

In Lillian Alling, which is based on a true story, the central character is also in pursuit of a man, who she must find, for, as she puts it, “my life is bound to his life.” Like Inge, Lillian finds her destiny through surmounting what seem to be at times impossible obstacles. Lillian treks from New York City through Minnesota and eventually through British Columbia on her way to Alaska in her pursuit of a man with whom only an encounter will permit her to become the person she is determined to be.

Lillian’s walking song leave no doubt about her strength of will and the intensity of her search, and likely that of many of us at some point in our lives:

I open my eyes.
I pick up my pack.
I pick out a path.
I never look back.
The answers I lack
Lie further ahead.
I never, I never look back.

Both Inge and Lillian are forced at some points to adapt to circumstances they had not planned on encountering. They have to decide what to hold on to and of what to let go, just as we each do in our lives.

NATURAL WORLD AS FUNDAMENTAL TO OUR DESTINY. The two stories also run parallel in a way we sometimes forgot -- perhaps less so in Vancouver than in many others places in the world -- which is the ways the natural world around us is a fundamental part of the destiny we seek for ourselves. Thus we have the elderly Irene at the beginning of Lillian Alling reminiscing about the beauty of northern British Columbia. Any of us who have lived there or travelled to the north will, I expect, share in what she feels:

The clean cold air
Falling like light through the trees
The winters
When even indoor breath can be seen
The summers
That give new meaning to what we mean by “green.”

Sweet Land similarly draws on the natural world for its authority. As a low-budget independent production, Sweet Land is unequalled for its use of the natural world as its setting. Minnesota farmland across the seasons is front and centre. The amber tones of harvest are particularly striking, so much so they make dialogue gratuitous. Overall, Sweet Land depends more on visuals, principally of the natural world, for its power than it does on words.

METRO VANCOUVER CONNECTIONS. The fourth parallel I want to highlight is the Vancouver connection.

Sweet Land, released in 2005, was financially supported and co-produced by the actor Gil Bellows, who was born and bred in Vancouver and is known, as well as for numerous movies, for his television roles as Ally McBeal’s love interest and as CIA agent Matt Callan in The Agency. While based in Los Angeles, Bellows maintains an ongoing connection with Vancouver and with the Gulf Islands.

Lillian Alling has a multiple Vancouver and also British Columbian and Canadian connection. The Vancouver Opera production opening on October 16 and running to October 23 is the world premier of a consummately Canadian production with a Canadian composer and Canadian librettist. Not only that, much of the action occurs in British Columbia.

The Vancouver region comes to prominence in two important ways. The first is by virtue of Lillian, as pointed out in the promotion for the opera, being “incarcerated in Oakalla Prison Farm near Vancouver.” While this was in the early 1920s, Oakalla, which opened in 1912 only closed in 1991. The site is now condominium development overlooking Deer Lake in Burnaby. The large park like area around Deer Lake includes the Burnaby Art Gallery, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, and Burnaby Village Museum with its excellent demonstration of live blacksmithing, so I urge you the next time you are there to reflect on Lillian Alling’s incarceration.

The second way in which Lillian Alling links into Vancouver is to the city itself. The librettist has Vancouverites alternatively lamenting and rhapsodizing, and I quote:

We have had the rain and the Lord be praised!
But now it is time for a drop of sun,
A week of sunlight,
Two days,
Or even one!
When the sun shines here,
It is like the first day of Creation.
The green reaches up, the green stretches out!
When the sun shines here,
Smell the earth’s fragrant exaltation,
And recall what the Garden of Eden is all about!

Partially in response, Lillian engages in a typical Vancouver activity, so she says:

On Sunday I will go to the Stanley Park,
To look at the water and the trees.

MY OWN LINKAGE

I would like to think we will each see something of ourselves in these diverse aspects of Sweet Land and Lillian Alling. Let me close on a personal note as to how the movie and the opera resonate for me.

Much like the hero in Sweet Land, my father emigrated from Scandinavia – in his case Sweden rather than Norway – to Minnesota to farm. I grew up in a Minnesota farm house that still stands, and is an almost exact replica of the Sweet Land farmhouse, down to the outdoor clothesline with drying garments always seeming to be flapping on the wind and a prairie view that stretched as far as the eye could see. I used to think that the view went as far as the earth’s curvature, and perhaps it did.

While occurring later in time, I found many echoes of my upbringing in Sweet Land. I grew up drinking bland coffee, and like the pastor in the movie got so used to it I recoiled whenever someone, as does Inge to the pastor, offered me what he disparages as “black coffee.” The Lutheran Church I attended as a child was equally set in its ways to the one in Sweet Land, but – all the same – I got goose bumps when I heard in the movie the congregation lustily singing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Wherever our quest to find ourselves takes us in our lives, some things we never forget.

In the opera Lillian Alling the protagonists treks from Russia to British Columbia very much as I did on seeking my destiny. For me this meant in the first instance escaping from the Minnesota evoked in Sweet Land.

I began what I thought would be my career by doing a graduate degree at Harvard in Russian Studies and then writing for a London-based journal analyzing Soviet foreign policy. I can’t tell you the sense of nostalgia I felt on reading the opera’s libretto with its Russian phrases that is for me about the only remnant of my first career. “Boje moi,” my God! – I had not thought about the phrase in years and look forward to hearing it in the opera.

For various reason, my life took a turn, and this first career I surrendered to changing circumstances And so I made my trek similar to Lillian’s from Russia to British Columbia, and refashioned myself as a historian of the very same place where Lillian finds her destiny in the opera.

CONCLUSION

Most of you will likely not see yourselves quite so literally as I did in both Sweet Land and Lillian Alling, but hopefully you will also be reflected in the search for self in which we all participate by virtue of being human. It is through reducing everyday life to its essentials that the movie and the opera permit us to share in a fundamental component of what it is that makes us who we are. Inge Alltenburg and Lillian Alling each take chances and make sacrifices in search of their destinies and, as Inge reminisces in old age in looking back over her actions and their consequences, there are “different kinds of happy.”

Sweet Land and Lillian Alling give each of us an opportunity to consider the path we have taken – and continue to take -- in search of ourselves. One of the satisfying features of both the movie and the opera is that we not only share in the search for meaning but we also come to understand that, at some time in our lives, the quest ends with ourselves. As we share with these two young women their determination to reach their destiny, whatever may be the cost of doing so, we come to realize, as Lillian puts it at one point:

Your journey is yours,
My journey is mine."

~ Jean Barman, Department of Educational Studies, UBC

Culture Days With Lillian Alling

2010-09-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

In celebration of Culture Days, a limited number of guests will be admitted to an open rehearsal of the VO Chorus led by Associate Conductor and Chorus Director Leslie Dala as they prepare for the World Premiere of Lillian Alling.

Space is extremely limited: admission is first-come, first-served. Call 604-683-0222 to make your reservation!

Friday, September 24
Holy Rosary Hall, 650 Richards Street
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Free admission

Lillian Alling Community Event: Sweet Land

2010-09-22T16:45:00.001-07:00

Thursday, September 23
Film Screening: Sweet Land
Vancity Theatre, Vancouver International Film Centre
1181 Seymour Street
7:00pm

Director: Ali Selim // USA 2005 // 110 mins
Cast: Elizabeth Reaser, Patrick Heusinger, Alan Cumming, Alex Kingston, John Heard, Ned Beatty, Tim Guinee, Lois Smith

Sweet Land is a poignant and lyrical celebration of land, love, and the immigrant experience, as recollected in a man’s memory of his grandmother’s stories. Inge arrives in Minnesota in 1920 to marry a young Norwegian farmer named Olaf, but the community is suspicious of this German stranger, and the marriage is forbidden. Alone and adrift, Inge goes to live with Olaf’s friend and neighbor Frandsen and his wife Brownie, where she learns the English language, American ways, and a hard-won independence.

Similar in scope but equally as personal, Vancouver Opera’s world-première production of Lillian Alling, by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell, is a sweeping story embracing the immigrant experience of the 1920s, the history of British Columbia and the journey of a courageous and driven woman who walked from New York City across North America and along BC’s Telegraph Trail. BC historian and author Jean Barman will introduce the film and offer parallels to consider between these two stories.

Visit www.vancouveropera.ca or http://www.viff.org/theatre/ for details and to book your tickets in advance or you can purchase your tickets at the door.

Lillian Alling In Your Glass

2010-09-22T16:18:00.001-07:00

Photo credit: Four Seasons Hotel

A romantic dinner. Drinks after work. A girls night out. A business lunch meeting.

What do they all have in common?

There are all great occasions to try out the new Lillian Alling cocktail drink at YEW Restaurant and Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel!

Heard on last weekend's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, YEW bartender extraordinaire Justin Taylor concocted this utterly original cocktail. FYI, Justin also came up with the 2010 Winter Olympic Cocktails for YEW last winter.

As for the Lillian Alling cocktail, Justin says it's "dramatic looking for the opera crowd and refreshing & delicious for a journey like Lillian's."

Lillian Alling cocktail:

2 oz vodka

1/4 tsp red cayenne pepper sauce

1/4 tsp peach bitters

3/4oz elderflower cordial

1 oz fresh lime juice

1 oz fresh cucumber

pinch of fresh cilantro

Top with seltzer water and serve in an oversized wine goblet with a tied cucumber slice.

YEW Restaurant is open everyday from 5:00 pm - 10:00 pm for dinner.

YEW Bar is open Sunday through Wednesday 11:00am - midnight & Thursday through Saturday 11:00am - 1:00am

Perfect times for a pre-show drink to get you in the mood for Lillian Alling or as a nightcap after our world premiere.

Enjoy. (but please drink responsibly).

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Travel Blog, Entry #5

2010-09-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

On the Telegraph Trail
September, 1927

I spend longer than I intend in Hazelton, but with Jozéf so close, I must make myself ready. I find work cooking at a fishing camp. I am finding English easier to understand, but still difficult to speak. At any rate, I have little to say. I listen, invisible, to the men telling stories around the campfire at night, and I learn.

I learn that thirty years ago, gold fever seized this land. Thousands of men came from all over and traveled even further north in search of wealth. Many died and few grew rich, but still they came to find their fortune – just as Kristian told me that Jozéf has come here to find his. Those were days of big dreams, and one such dream was to build a telegraph line a thousand miles north to Dawson City. I learn that from Hazelton, they built a lineman’s cabin every 32 miles. There are nine cabins between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek – more than 300 miles I must travel by foot, through the wilderness! The men talk of bears and wild cats. I wonder however I shall survive. But survive I must. I must find Jozéf.

I set out at the end of August with as much food as I can carry, the pistol and two ten dollar bills in my pocket – all the money I have in the world. These linemen must have supplies in their cabins. Perhaps I can purchase food from them as I go.

The air is cool, for that I am grateful. But the mountains and trees make me wish for the open plains. I follow the Telegraph Trail along the broad Skeena River, keeping the wire in sight, counting 32 miles to the first lineman’s cabin. In the flat lands of North Dakota, I easily walked 32 miles in a day. But through this thick forest, up hills and down gullies, 32 miles takes me three days. Brambles catch my clothing. Insects plague me. Giant black ravens spy on me from their high perches. Every rustle of leaves is a bear or a wild cat, stalking me.

At last I follow the wire to the first cabin, nothing more than a house of logs. I knock at the door, for despite my ragged appearance after many days in the wilderness, I am still civilized. When there is no reply, I go inside. I find one room – two bunks, a table with the telegraph machine. And food. I have had nothing but berries and stream water today, so I open a tin of beans. I barely have a mouthful when I hear him coming, whistling a tune. He opens the door – a bear of a man -- and I am caught, guilty of theft, trying to explain with my broken English that I will pay him for the food.

But the man is not angry, only surprised to see me, a woman, alone out here. He tells me his name is Sam. He wants to know my name. I tell him I am Lillian Alling. He asks me many more questions. How did I come here? Where am I going? Why am I here? I begin to think this Sam is very nosy. He works for the government. Does he plan to tell the police about me? About Jozéf? So I tell him a story. I tell him I have come from New York City. I tell him I am walking home to Russia, to Siberia. At this, Sam whistles.

Sam wants me to stay. He says it is too dangerous for me, a woman alone. Perhaps if I tell him the truth, he will understand what drives me. As it is, he calls me his “Mystery Woman” as I take my leave, heading north to Jozéf.

Lillian Updates From Banff

2010-09-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

What a fabulous two days of rehearsal we have had as we bring Lillian Alling to life. The work on the set with Stage Director Kelly Robinson and our Irene, Judith Forst and Jimmy, Roger Honeywell has been wonderful.

It is very rare in opera to have a chance to rehearse on the set but with our co-production with The Banff Centre, we are doing just that.

The set is designed by Sue LePage and is full of wonderful levels, stairs, angles and a pick-up truck!

This production incorporates a large video design which local Vancouver designer, Tim Matheson is working on here. Having the chance to look at content and begin to make cues is something we would have had to work into the wee hours of the morning during our tech week in Vancouver to achieve. We are using six projectors for both front and rear projections that will help us tell the journey the Lillian Alling takes.

The exploration and discovery that we have had in these first two days will continue with the rest of the cast until next week. All this will make the world premiere of this wonderful new opera even more special.

~ Tom Wright, Director of Artistic Planning

Photo credit: Tom Wright

A Place Of Pure Delight

2010-09-17T16:12:00.001-07:00

For your listening pleasure, here's the latest Lillian Alling track, I've Found a Place of Pure Delight.

This song is from Scene 9 of the opera and features a sublime chorus.

Enjoy.

Who's That Girl?

2010-09-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

Follow Lillian’s Twitter feed at @whereslillian to receive her updates from the road. Read Lillian's travel blogs here or on the Lillian Alling blog.

But who is the “voice” of Lillian?

All will be revealed on opening night: Saturday, October 16th.

Lillian Travel Blog, Entry #4

2010-09-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hazelton
August, 1927

Kristian Fjeldståd gives me a map that Jozéf left behind, a map of the Telegraph Trail, ending at his destination of Telegraph Creek. But first I must find my west and north, to Hazelton in British Columbia. Kristian thinks there is a railroad in Canada, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Kristian’s father, Karl, is not pleased to have me at their farm, a visible reminder as I am of his resentment towards Jozéf. I am not one to linger where I am not wanted. After two days, I accept Kristian’s kind offer of a little food and new boots – boots that he had outgrown – and I am on my way again.

I walk for days, heading west. The land is flat and open, wilder the further west I go. No welcoming lights of a farmhouse, no shelter from the sun. The boots Kristian gave me are too loose. I stuff them with grass, and keep walking.

Then, good fortune. I come to a broad lake which would have taken a full day to walk around, had it not been for the people I meet there, gathering wild rice. They call themselves Métis, and come from the north, from Canada. They speak mostly French and, I, little English, but we manage to work out that in exchange for helping them harvest rice from the lake, they will transport me north in their canoes.

Somewhere on the lakes and rivers we travel, we leave America behind. I do not know much about Canada, only that it is cold in winter and very large – larger than even the United States. The untamed wilderness of North Dakota gives way to endless fields of golden wheat, rising up from the river to tidy farmhouses. It feels orderly. It feels safe. Daydreaming as the Métis paddle, I picture myself living in one of these houses, working in these fields alongside my man – safe from the soldiers and police back home. I imagine what it would be like to belong here. To belong anywhere.

We part ways at Old Wives Lake. From here I walk to Moose Jaw, a small railway town with fine brick buildings -- mostly banks, it seems to me. I hop the first train I can, westward.

I travel curled in the corner of a freight car. I ration my food and water, for I have no idea how many days it will be to Hazelton. Or will it be weeks? I keep my pistol close at hand, wary of the hungry, ragged men who come and go – arriving with a thump and a fright as they hurl themselves into my car. I am constantly afraid that the railway police will spot them, and my hiding place will be given away.

When the box car is too hot and airless to bear, I take a chance and sit by the open door to feel the wind in my face. I watch the sun-bleached prairie roll by -- wheat, wheat and more wheat! -- until, one day, I see in the distance blue hills. The train stops at a place called Cow Town, according to the hobos. Next we go north to Edmonton, where I must change cars – running to catch the westbound train on legs like rubber from disuse.

This train goes through mountains so high they are capped by snow, even in mid-summer. Then Jasper, then Prince George, then countryside where the trees are as high as the mountains. Until at last we reach Hazelton. When the railway police are not looking, I leave the sanctuary of the box car. I must gather supplies, for it is from here that my most difficult journey begins – north through the wilderness along the Telegraph Trail to Telegraph Creek. To Jozéf.

Opera Speaks: Alone In A New Land

2010-09-15T16:36:00.001-07:00

Alone in a New Land: The Immigrant Experience in Canada

Wednesday, October 6, 2010 7-9pm
Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street
Admission is free. Seating is limited.

The title character in Vancouver Opera's world premiere production of Lillian Alling arrives in North America through Ellis Island, in New York, in 1927. Central to her story - a single-minded quest that takes her across the continent by foot and boxcar, into the wilds of northwestern British Columbia - is her experience as an immigrant. Alien, ostracized, exposed to danger and taking immense risk, her immigrant experience is a deeply moving undercurrent throughout the opera.

Canada's character has been built with the emotional and spiritual fibre of immigrants such as Lillian. Join a panel of experts and historians, as they portray the stories of individuals and families, from many lands, who have arrived on our shores. Panelists include Nick Noorani, prominent social entrepreneur, immigrant advocate and author of the best-selling book Arrival Survival Canada.

Opera Speaks is an ongoing series of free public events that engage the community in exploring the themes and issues arising from Vancouver Opera's productions. For more information about Opera Speaks, visit www.vancouveropera.ca

Project Onto Me II

2010-09-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Lillian Alling production crew is hard at work in Banff right now. Here are more video projection goodness from designer Tim Matheson.

An award-winning projection designer, photographer, videographer, Tim Matheson has used the projection of imagery as an element of the set design in over 100 designs for theatre, opera and dance.

Scene 1: home

Scene 3: tenement stairs

Scene 8: at the park

Scene 8: telegraph wires I

Scene 8: telegraph wires II

Scene 9: Oakalla Prison

Scene 10: Vancouver streets

Scene 13: green screen climb

Scene 14: down by the river

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Photo credit: Tim Matheson

A Postcard From Lillian Alling

2010-09-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

After three weeks in New York, I have not found Jozéf. I have learned only that he went to work on a farm in a place called North DAkota. With no money, I will have to travel by foot. I found a map in the library. I know it will be an arduous journey but I am determined to find him. I must find him.

I will write you again soon. Wish me luck!

Sincerely,

Lillian Alling

Lillian Alling Community Events

2010-09-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

Engage your mind and your imagination in preparation for the world premiere of Lillian Alling, by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell. Explore music, film and BC history through VO’s Lillian Alling Community Events series, organized by Vancouver Opera in collaboration with various partners.

Wednesday, September 22, 10:00am – 11:00am
Saturday, October 2, 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Lillian’s Vancouver: The Chung Collection Tour
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at UBC
1961 Main Mall

See a vivid picture of Vancouver as it would have looked to Lillian Alling. Explore the reality of immigrants, especially Chinese, as they arrived and worked here in the early part of the 20th century, with a special guided tour of The Chung Collection by UBC Library Archivist Sarah Romkey. Two tours will be held: Wednesday, September 22, 10:00am – 11:00am and Saturday, October 2, 2:00pm – 3:00pm.

Free admission – reservations are required for each tour. Visit www.vancouveropera.ca for details.

Presented in partnership with UBC Library Vault. The Chung Collection is the generous gift of Dr. Wallace Chung and Dr. Madeline Chung, longtime patrons of Vancouver Opera.

Thursday, September 23
Film Screening: Sweet Land
Vancity Theatre, Vancouver International Film Centre
1181 Seymour Street
7:00pm

Director: Ali Selim // USA 2005 // 110 mins
Cast: Elizabeth Reaser, Patrick Heusinger, Alan Cumming, Alex Kingston, John Heard, Ned Beatty, Tim Guinee, Lois Smith

Sweet Land is a poignant and lyrical celebration of land, love, and the immigrant experience, as recollected in a man’s memory of his grandmother’s stories. Inge arrives in Minnesota in 1920 to marry a young Norwegian farmer named Olaf, but the community is suspicious of this German stranger, and the marriage is forbidden. Alone and adrift, Inge goes to live with Olaf’s friend and neighbor Frandsen and his wife Brownie, where she learns the English language, American ways, and a hard-won independence.

Similar in scope but equally as personal, Vancouver Opera’s world-première production of Lillian Alling, by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell, is a sweeping story embracing the immigrant experience of the 1920s, the history of British Columbia and the journey of a courageous and driven woman who walked from New York City across North America and along BC’s Telegraph Trail. BC historian and author Jean Barman will introduce the film and offer parallels to consider between these two stories.

Visit www.vancouveropera.ca or http://www.viff.org/theatre/ for details and to book your tickets in advance.

Friday, September 24
Open Chorus Rehearsal
Holy Rosary Hall, 650 Richards Street
7:00pm – 9:00pm

In celebration of Culture Days, a limited number of guests will be admitted to an open rehearsal of the VO Chorus as they prepare for the world premiere of Lillian Alling. Space is extremely limited: admission is first-come, first-served.

Free admission – reservations required. Call 604-683-0222 to make your reservation. Space is limited.

Sunday, September 26
The Word on the Street
Mainstage
Library Square, Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
1:00pm – 1:30pm
Free admission

Where is Lillian? Popping up on the main stage at The Word on the Street, that’s where! Hear excerpts from Lillian Alling. Visit www.vancouveropera.ca or http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/vancouver for more information.

Monday, September 27
Composition Forum with John Estacio
Barnett Hall, UBC
12:00pm – 1:30pm
Free admission

John Estacio, UBC alumnus and internationally acclaimed composer of Lillian Alling, talks about the creation of this new work and the art and craft of composing. Presented in partnership with the UBC School of Music. Visit www.calendar.events.ubc.ca/cal/event/showEventMore.rdo for more information.

Thursday, September 30
Opera Speaks @ VPL: Creating Lillian: Inside the Creative Process of Lillian Alling
Alice Mackay Room, Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Free admission

Discover how a large-scale opera is created from scratch. Composer John Estacio, librettist John Murrell, director Kelly Robinson and members of the production team for Vancouver Opera's new commissioned opera Lillian Alling will share their three year process of writing and producing this dramatic opera that depicts Lillian's epic journey, on foot, across North America in the 1920s.

Cast members will perform excerpts from the opera. This will be a rare opportunity to get inside the creative process with an extraordinary team of opera artists.

Sunday, October 3, 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Saturday, October 9, 10:00am - 12:00pm
Lillian’s world – A Historical Stanley Park Walking Tour
Meet at the Stanley Park Pavilion

Stand where Lillian Alling might have stood when she fell in love with telegraph linesman Scotty Macdonald. Enter Lillian’s world through this historical walking tour of Stanley Park led by historical interpreter Jolene Cumming. Featuring evocative stories and enticing anecdotes, this 2 hour walking tour will focus on the experience of women and will offer rare archival photos of Stanley Park, Vancouver and The Telegraph Trail in the early 1900s. Two tours will be held: Sunday, October,1:00pm – 3:00pm and Saturday, October 9, 10:00am - 12:00pm, rain or shine. Wear comfortable shoes.

Free admission – limited space. Reservations required. Visit www.vancouveropera.ca for details.

Meet at the Stanley Park Pavilion www.stanleyparkpavilion.com/Pavilion/Welcome.html
Accessible by the #19 bus. Pay parking available.

Wednesday, October 6
Opera Speaks @ VPL: Alone in a New Land: The Immigrant Experience in Canada
Alice Mackay Room, Vancouver Public Library Central Branch
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Free admission

The title character in Lillian Alling arrives in North America through Ellis Island, in New York, in 1927. Central to her story - a single-minded quest that takes her across the continent by foot and boxcar - is her experience as an immigrant. Alien, ostracized, exposed to danger and taking immense risk, her immigrant experience is a deeply moving undercurrent throughout the opera.

Canada's character has been built with the emotional and spiritual fibre of immigrants such as Lillian. Join a panel of experts and historians as they portray the stories of individuals and families, from many lands, who have arrived on our shores. Panelists include Nick Noorani, prominent social entrepreneur, immigrant advocate and author of the best-selling book Arrival Survival Canada.

Lillian Alling: The Cast

2010-09-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

Internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Judith Forst joins a stellar cast for Vancouver Opera’s world premiere production of Lillian Alling, the new VO commissioned opera by Canada’s foremost opera-creation team: composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell.

Joining Ms.Forst will be Quebecoise soprano Frédérique Vézina, a singer of “ravishing sensuousness” (The Toronto Star), and “golden-toned Canadian tenor” Roger Honeywell (Opera News). Baritone Aaron St.Clair Nicholson brings his “manly, rolling expressive voice and wonderful stage instincts” (Classical 96.3FM) to the cast.

The opera features four major characters: Lillian Alling, telegraph man Scotty Macdonald, and the present-day characters Irene and her son Jimmy. Here's a look at the players.

Quebecoise soprano Frédérique Vézina will create the title role. Praised for her “dark mahogany tone” (The Globe and Mail), Ms. Vézina has been a First Prize winner at the Concours International de Chant and a finalist at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She returns to VO for the first time since her moving performances as Mimí in 2008’s La Bohème.

International Vancouver-based superstar Judith Forst, OC will create the role of Irene. Ms. Forst’s long and illustrious career includes regular performances with The Metropolitan Opera and the Canadian Opera Company. She has been called “one of the few truly world-class coloratura mezzo sopranos on the operatic stage” (COC Magazine). Ms. Forst is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Order of British Columbia and was last seen in Vancouver in VO’s 2009 production of Salome.

Roger Honeywell returns to Vancouver Opera to create the role of Jimmy. The Toronto-based tenor “with the right kind of heroic mettle to his voice” (Opera Now) returns to Vancouver Opera for this world premiere, having last sung here in 2008’s La Bohème.

Baritone Aaron St.Clair Nicholson, last seen on the VO stage earlier this year as Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, creates the role of Scotty Macdonald. The Abbotsford-based Mr. Nicholson is noted for the dramatic integrity he brings to his performances. He has been highly praised for his signature role, Papageno, which he recently sang at The Metropolitan Opera.

Bass-baritone Thomas Goerz (also seen last year in The Marriage of Figaro as Dr. Bartolo) creates the roles of Constable Wyman, Sergei and the mysterious Jozéf.

Tenor Colin Ainsworth creates the roles of Bobby, Kristian and Billy; baritone Gregory Dahl sings Sam and Karl; Calvin Powell sings Charlie and The Drifter.

Left to right: Colin Ainsworth, Gregory Dahl & Calvin Powell

Lillian Alling is a sweeping and dramatic work in the tradition of operas on a grand scale. It is VO’s most ambitious commission yet, with over two hours of music, 8 principal singers, a chorus of 40, a 60-piece orchestra and more than 175 costumes created for this world premiere.

Get your tickets now!

Single tickets starting at $29 (plus handling fee) are available from the Vancouver Opera Ticket Centre, online at www.vancouveropera.ca, or by phone at 604-683-0222.

Lillian's Travel Blog, Entry #3

2010-09-13T15:58:00.001-07:00

North Dakota
July, 1927

I have been traveling for weeks, but North Dakota is still hundreds of miles ahead of me. At least two more weeks of walking. Then, a stroke of luck. I meet a man who tells me that the train goes to North Dakota. I rub my fingers against my thumb, to say I have no money for a ticket. He laughs, which I take to mean neither does he.

And so with a little instruction I “hop” a train from Chicago as far as Fargo. From there I follow the Red River north to the farm of Karl Fjeldståd. As far as Jozéf’s brother, Sergei, knew, Jozéf was working for this Karl Fjeldståd. I should have had my first inkling of disappointment then. Jozéf, after all, was never given to hard labour in a farmer’s fields.

This landscape feels empty to me – flat and forlorn. The openness I loved in the spring is now punishing under the summer sun. The wind blows ceaselessly, a constant reminder of how small and powerless one is against nature. My thirst is unquenchable and my skin burnt red. I take to traveling in the mornings and evenings, and as far into the night as I dare for fear of walking in circles in the dark. My feet are blistered and I am exhausted, but impatience will not allow me to rest when I am so close to my journey’s end. To Jozéf.

It is night as I near Karl Fjeldståd’s farm. Their barn is visible a mile away, lit by torches and alive with the gay sound of fiddle music. As I draw closer, I hear singing -- the beautiful, spirited singing of many voices together. I see men and women, dancing together. My heart quickens at the thought of Jozéf’s expression when he sees me.

I find Karl Fjeldståd outside the barn, a spry man in his fifties, a little drunk -- no happier to see me than Sergei had been. For one thing, my arrival has interrupted a party. (My appearance must have been frightful compared to the pretty women dancing in fancy dresses inside the barn.) For another, the mere mention of Jozéf’s name sends him into a fury. Jozéf left weeks ago, he says. He ran off with Karl’s best boots and before the planting was done.

I am devastated to have come so close, only to find that Jozéf is gone.

Kristian, Karl’s son, takes pity on me and gives me food. In truth, the handsome young man is taken with me, don’t ask me why. Perhaps because he longs to be a traveler, like me. He is too young, too innocent to imagine what drives me on.

Kristian shares a secret with me, a secret his father does not know. Before he left, Jozéf told Kristian that he was going to find gold, in a place still further west, still further north. In a place called Telegraph Creek, in Canada. A thousand miles away. A thousand miles! My heart sinks. Will this road never end? But there is no question. I will keep going. I will find a way. For at the end of this road, I will find Jozéf.

Lillian Alling Set Models

2010-09-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

Our Director of Production, Terry Harper, came back from Banff a couple of weeks ago and instead of bringing us touristy t-shirts, he bought us pictures of the Lillian Alling set models.

Terry returns to Banff this week and the next time he returns, he'll be bringing the real life sets back with him!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian's Travel Blog, Entry #2

2010-09-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

Chicago
June, 1927

I have lost count of the days since I left New York City behind me. I thought never again to look with such awe upon a place as I did upon that city of towers, but I have discovered that America is full of wonders. And space – America is full of space. Over these last weeks, I have put my sturdy shoes to good use on my way to North Dakota, on my way to Jozéf. Every day, from dawn until dark, I walk. I think of Jozéf, and how my life is bound to his.

I have seen so much I hardly know where to begin. First, everywhere there are good roads. I have marked them on the map I made at the library in New York City, and I follow them west and north to North Dakota, so that I will not get lost. These roads are full of cars, big American cars. Sometimes, these cars stop for me, for I suppose I am a curiosity, a woman, walking alone. Without fail, a man is alone in the car. My English is so poor, I have difficulty understanding their words, but their meaning is clear enough.

I will confess that once I accepted a ride with such a man. He was a salesman, I believe, for when we stopped in a town for hamburgers, he shows me a suitcase full of kitchen wares – along with a pistol he keeps in the glove box of the car. He was showing off, trying to impress me. If only he knew how hated the sight of a gun is to me, with what I have lived through.

This man has trouble keeping his hands to himself. After I finish eating, I tell him I must use the bathroom, and leave through the back door. I stop only to take the pistol from the glove box, fearing he may come after me. I am, after all, a woman alone. For the next few days, I must keep to the woodlots and fields, out of sight of the road. But the hamburger was delicious.

I have seen farmlands so vast and so fertile that the young wheat flows in the wind as far as the eye can see. I laugh to myself, in a place called Pennsylvania, to see wealthy farmers who could afford to buy many trucks using wagons and horses instead, just like the peasants back home. In the towns, I am struck my how people walk down the street smiling. Where I come from, only idiots smile so much. But like everything else in America, happiness is plentiful. I suppose it is easy to smile here.

Not everything in America is beautiful. In Ohio, the factories and steel mills make the air foul and choke the rivers. In Chicago, I see magnificent buildings like in New York City, but also newcomers from many countries, pressed together in tight quarters – like in New York City. Everyone struggles to be successful, to be American. They see my worn shoes and my dusty clothes, and they think I am a peasant – like they used to be, before they became Americans. Now, they want only Americans for friends. I hear Yiddish in the streets, but I pretend not to understand. For as much as I want to belong, I want just as much to be invisible, anonymous.

I am discovering what freedom feels like, and space to oneself. I keep away from the cities, preferring the openness of the countryside. Most nights I sleep under the stars and wake to the gentle dawn – knowing that each day brings me closer to Jozéf. America is hope, and I hope that soon I will find him. Tomorrow I set out again, north and west to North Dakota.

A Special Afternoon With VO’s General Director

2010-09-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

Join the Opera Club on Sunday September 26th from 2-4pm at the Fletcher Challenge Theatre in the SFU Harbour Centre for a look into the process of bringing a world premiere to the stage! The Opera Club charges a drop-in fee of $10 per lecture, or you can purchase a yearly membership! For more information, visit their website here.

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 4)

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 4

Service decided that he would arrest Alling for her own protection. She was searched; she carried two ten-dollar bills, a reasonably sure defence against any charge of vagrancy. Arraigned before a justice of the peace on September 21, she was convicted instead of carrying an offensive weapon, the eighteen-inch (half-metre) metal bar she had with her to protect herself, not against wild animals, but against men. One account suggests that she was asked four times if she had anything to say. At the fourth, she let fly four obscene expletives. The justice of the peace fined her twenty-five dollars, a sum she did not have. In lieu of payment, she was sentenced to two months in Oakalla Prison, near Vancouver, a ruling that would accomplish the lawmen's objective of keeping her off the trail in winter.

She duly served her time. Once she was released, prison staff found her a job for the rest of the winter at a Vancouver restaurant, where she saved as much money as she could. Come spring, she set out once more. On July 19, she arrived at Smithers, where a policeman again tried to dissuade her from her trek. She declined, but she did promise that she would check in at each of the cabins on the Telegraph Trail. This she did. Several weeks later, linesmen Jim Christie and Charlie Janze watched in amazement as she walked into the clearing where their two small cabins stood, her face badly swollen from insect bites, windburned and sunburned, slumping from exhaustion and lack of food, her clothes almost in tatters. Yet she would not turn back.

Since they knew they could not dissuade her, they tried to help. Christie gave her his cabin. Over the next three days and nights, she ate well, slept indoors and began to recuperate. Janze gave her a pair of breeches and two shirts, a felt hat and a pair of boots that would fit her smaller feet with the aid of two pairs of woollen socks. Then Christie set out with Alling towards the Nass summit and Cabin 9 on the trail. Meanwhile, linesman Scotty Ogilvie left Cabin 9 to come south to meet her. He never arrived. Trying to cross a river in flood, he tumbled in, hit his head on a snag and drowned. His fellow linesman at Cabin 9 found him the next day, his body wedged against a waterlogged cottonwood tree. Ogilvie was buried nearby. When Aliing passed this way the next day, it is said that she left behind a small bunch of wildflowers.

Lillian’s Travel Blog, Entry #1

2010-09-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

New York City
May, 1927

Never did I think to feel the firm land under my feet again. For twelve days, my stomach tossed with the ocean. We were packed below decks like pickles in a jar, just as tight and just as stinky. There were families from many shtetls – Slonim, Motol, Pinsk – but none from Hrodna. I listened to their stories and their dreams, especially the young girls. They saw themselves in jewels and furs, married to rich Americans. But I kept my dream to myself. Jozéf is here, I know he is. Just as I know I must find him.

At last we left the ocean behind and followed the shoreline of skyscrapers, so tall that they make your neck ache just looking up at them. The ship docked to let the first and second class passengers disembark, but not us below decks. Us they put on a smaller boat, and ferried us past the Lady Liberty (she is magnificent) to Ellis Island. I will not dwell on the indignities I suffered there, for I have sworn never to look back. Only forwards. After two days, they declared me fit to begin my new life in America.

I soon discover that the people back home were wrong about one thing: the streets of New York are not paved with gold. They are crowded and noisy, with a hundred different languages that make my poor ears ring. Everyone is in a hurry to make it big, too busy to notice a poor girl like me – unless it is an oafish flirt who thinks that because my English is poor, I am too stupid to see through his charming lies.

I find a bed to share with another girl in the small apartment of a family from Gdansk. For this honour I pay them ten dollars a month, and even so they treat me like a servant. I bite my tongue and keep to myself, taking comfort from my dream of finding Jozéf. As I fall asleep at night, I try to imagine the expression on his face when he sees me.

It takes many days, but at last I find Sergei Nikitich Lazinsky, Jozéf’s brother, in Brooklyn. I walk there across a beautiful bridge that is very famous. But I find out that Jozéf exaggerated when he told us of Sergei’s success. He is living with his wife and children in a rundown tenement building, no better than the one in which I have found a shared bed in the city. I suppose that life here has hardened him, for he is suspicious and ill-tempered, and does not believe me when I tell him that I am Jozéf’s betrothed. But I am not so easily put off, and refuse to leave without an address for Jozéf. At last Sergei tells me he is working for a man in North Dakota.

I am happy, until I go to the big library and discover that North Dakota is 1500 miles from New York City. Back home, we never imagined how big America is. I do not know how I will travel there, but I will not stop. I must find Jozéf. My life is bound to his.

From the books in the library, I have drawn a map to guide my way to North Dakota. I have found work stitching hems and have saved as much money as I can – except for what I spent on new shoes. As I set out on this journey across this strange land, all I know for certain is that I will need sturdy shoes.

Lillian Blogs!

2010-09-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

Not only does Lillian Alling tweet, she also blogs! Starting tomorrow, we'll be posting Lillian's journal entries as she walks across North America and into the treacherous foothills of Telegraph Creek, in search of a mysterious man named Jozéf.

Go behind the scenes and into the mind of Lillian Alling. She will be blogging about arriving amidst the chaos of Ellis Island in the 1920s, hopping trains, befriending Norwegians in the North Dakota prairies, spending time in Oakalla Prison Farm and her hopes and dreams of a new life.

Follow Lillian's adventures on Twitter and here for weekly journal updates.

*journal entries may not reflect what will be seen onstage.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Opera Speaks: Creating Lillian

2010-09-01T16:07:00.001-07:00

Lillian Alling Idea Boards

2010-09-01T12:06:00.001-07:00

Here's a couple of idea boards sketched by Lillian Alling designer Sue LePage.

The first illustration shows Act 1, Scene 8: Scotty Macdonald appears in his cabin on Telegraph Trail tapping out messages to his fellow linemen.

The second illustration depicts Act 2, Scene 1: Vancouver waterfront, spring 1928. Vancouverites take shelter under umbrellas and awnings.

Double click image for full-size drawing.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Tweets!

2010-08-31T12:05:00.000-07:00

Follow Lillian Alling on Twitter as she makes her journey from the shores of Ellis Island to the mountain peaks of Telegraph Hill. Lillian will be tweeting her thoughts and observations as she makes the perilous trek across North America in search of a man named Jozéf.

What was she thinking? How did she feel? Was she scared? Who does she encounter?

Follow along to find out!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

John Murrell on Lillian Alling

2010-08-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

"Lillian Alling is a story of a journey, right across the phenomenal breadth of the North American landscape and beyond. Somehow our words and music will have to convey the madness but also the majesty of one woman's dream of walking home to Russia." - John Murrell, Librettist

Props For Lillian Alling

2010-08-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here's an initial sketch by designer Sue LePage of the props in the upcoming Lillian Alling opera.

Props will include:

* A truck & luggage tarps
* Ellis Island furniture on a dolly
* Canteens & hurricane lanterns
* Telegraph keys
* Canvas packs
* A rain barrel
* Kites
* Burlap prison sacks
* Gold pans
* 3 babies

Sue is working with VO's Head of Props, Valerie Moffat, on figuring out what might already be in our prop shop, what needs to be made and what needs to be purchased.

Valerie thinks the hardest things to find will be the telegraph keys. Also, guns are always a challenge and the rifles used for the Oakalla Prison scene may end up being rented from elsewhere.

For Lillian's ubiquitous backpack, Valerie is on the hunt to find one from that time period (the 1920s) and make replicas, as we will need several of them backstage. Lillian's backpack is an important prop as it speaks of the journey, of packing up and going, and the circumstances that change her along her journey. When Lillian begins her trek, the backpack is almost empty. Like any traveller, as she moves westward, she slowly adds items to her pack. By the time Lillian arrives in Vancouver, it includes a bedroll and camping equipment.

The Lillian Alling prop list is pages long because of the number of scenes and the constant switching of time periods (present day, and flashbacks to 1927, the 1970s, the 1980s). The scenes are also set in different locations: farms, prison, downtown Vancouver and BC's Telegraph Trails.

While it may sound daunting to provide set dressing, accessories and furniture when the sets themselves are not even here (they are currently being built in Banff), it is a challenge that our imaginative and resourceful Valerie Moffat is up for.

Stay tuned for pictures as Valerie sleuths, shops and builds all the little details you will see on the Lillian Alling stage.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

From New York to Telegraph Creek

2010-08-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Lillian arrives in Brooklyn, as did so many immigrants in the 1920s, only to discover that Jozéf has left for the farmland of North Dakota, in search of better prospects. Having no money, she finds a map at the New York Public Library and decides she will walk to meet him. But as she pursues Jozéf, he is always one step ahead of her. She walks and rides the rails across the vast prairies to the west coast and, ultimately, northward along British Columbia's Telegraph Trail.

"I open my eyes. I pick up my pack. I pick out a path. I never look back. The answers I lack lie further ahead. I never look back." - Lillian Alling

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 3)

2010-08-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 3

Amazed at the story he heard, in awe of her tenacity in reaching this far, he was nonetheless quickly convinced that she would die if she continued her journey north into the rapidly approaching winter weather. He telegraphed the provincial police officer in Hazelton, some sixty miles (ninety-five kilometres) south, and asked for advice. George Wyman, a young police constable, set out immediately for Blackstock's Cabin 2. There, he found a woman about five foot five (165 centimetres) and "thin as a wisp," wearing running shoes and carrying a knapsack that contained sandwiches, tea, a comb, and a few other personal effects.

Guy Lawrence, a forty-year veteran of life on the Telegraph Trail, later described this section of the trail in winter: "Sudden heavy falls of snow would bring the line down in several places, over perhaps a seventy-mile stretch. Between Hazelton and Telegraph Creek, some sections were subjected to phenomenal precipitation during the long winter months. Crews at stations at fairly high altitudes made a habit of erecting long poles beside their small refuge cabins to help find them. Many of the mountain passes were subject to snowslides, which snapped poles and buried the wire under sixty feet of snow for the remainder of the winter." Yet, underequipped as she was, as ignorant as she could be of the hazards that faced her, Alling told Wyman she was absolutely determined to continue north.

Wyman would not let her go to what he thought was certain death. He decided to take her with him to Hazelton. Surprisingly, she put up no fight, turning back dumbly to accompany him. Once back in Hazelton, she told Wyman the bare bones of her story, and declared that she would, somehow, continue. Said Wyman many years later, "She was the most determined person I'd ever met." He conferred with his superior officer, Sgt. W.]. Service, who also warned Alling of the severe winter conditions ahead and told her she would in all probability freeze to death. She was not dissuaded. The men knew that the moment that she was released, she would be back on the Telegraph Trail.

Linesman Charlie Janze and his fellow telegraph workers knew what they were talking about when they warned Lillian Alling of the dangers that could be expected by anyone walking the Telegraph Trail. Here, Janze is shown near the Nass-Skeena divide, on the trail in winter. (LANCE BURDON, PHOTOGRAPHER; BCA D-07630)

The Creative Team Behind Lillian Alling

2010-08-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

John Estacio has served as Composer in Residence for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Pro Coro Canada, the Calgary Philharmonic and Calgary Opera. His opera, Frobisher, wish libretto by John Murrell, premiered in 2007. Filumena, also with Murrell, premiered in 2003 and was again produced in 2005.

John Murrell is one of the most frequently produced of all Canadian playwrights. His plays have been translated into 15 languages and performed in more than 30 countries. In addition to Filumena and Frobisher with music by John Estacio, Murrell will be the librettist for a new opera commissioned by composer/conductor Bramwell Tovey, to receive its premiere in Calgary Opera's 2010-11 season.

Kelly Robinson is a director and choreographer whose career spans opera, theatre, film and television. In Canada, he has presented new productions of works for opera audiences in Edmonton, Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver. He was director fo both world premieres of Estacio/Murrell's Filumena and Frobisher.

Winner of two Dora Mavor Awards, Toronto-based designer Sue LePage has worked on more than 100 productions in theatre and opera. Recent opera credits include Frobisher and Filumena for Calgary Opera and The Banff Centre.

An acclaimed lighting designer for more than two and a half decades, Harry Frehner has designed more than 250 productions, including works for theatre, opera and dance companies throughout Canada and the US.

An award-winning projection designer, photographer, videographer, Tim Matheson has used the projection of imagery as an element of the set design in over 100 designs for theatre, opera and dance.

An Excerpt From Lillian Alling: Oakalla

2010-08-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

The entrance to Oakalla Prison Farm

Act 1 | Scene 9

Jimmy and Irene are packed in his truck on the side of the road:

Jimmy: They put her in jail? After all she's been through?

Irene: It was prison, not jail. Oakalla, near Vancouver.

Jimmy: For what?

Irene: Vagrancy and an unlicensed firearm.

Jimmy: Didn't Dad speak up for her?

Irene: He tried to, though I don't know why. He didn't ower that woman anything.

Jimmy: She was trying to get on with her life, and they threw her in jail?

Irene: It was prison!

Irene looks past Jimmy - where a vast field at Oakalla Prison gradually appears: male and female prisoners at hard labour, harvesting or cleaning up after harvest. Lillian is among them as armed guards patrol.

Irene: Oakalla Prison Farm. God, the tales they used to tell...

Male and Female Prisoners: (Chanting as they work) Oakalla...

Irene: Oakalla - near Vancouver - but much closer to Hell.

Male and Female Prisoners: (As they work) Oakalla...

Irene moves away from Jimmy, watching Lillian in her imagination. Action continues in both settings:

Jimmy: Mom, what happened to her? You said Dad turned his back on you, risked his own life?...

Irene: Leave it alone, son. It's too complicated. I'm too old. But I've started it now - and it has to be told.

Male and Female Prisoners: (wearily) Mmmm....Mmmm...

Irene: We think we lay the past to rest, but the past lives on...!

It grows darker. Jimmy watches his mother, and she watches Lillian, as prisoners at Oakalla launch into a work song which they've adapted from a hymn. Lillian doesn't join in.

Prisoners:
I've found a place of pure delight
Where mercy makes all burdens light
The warden growls from dawn to dark
The guards may bite, the dog's may bark
But, oh, what lovely rags we wear!
They'd be in fashion anywhere!
Oakalla is Paradise!
If Heaven's only half as nice,
I'll whistle through Eternity,
The angels will dance jigs with me!
I'd love to do my time here twice:
Oakalla is Paradise!
Paradise...
(Growning at their work) Aaaah....Ooooo...Mmmmm...

Lillian moves away from the other, closer to Irene, who watches her intently.

Lillian: (to herself)
I wait and I wait...
The answers I lack
Lie further ahead...
I never, I never look back.

The past lives on.
It's beside me,
Here and now...
He has to be told -
But - God help me - how?

Lillian Alling Podcast

2010-08-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Wanna know more about Lillian Alling opera?

Our podcasts are now up!

With music recorded at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, General Director James W. Wright talks about the upcoming world premiere, Lillian Alling.

We are very proud to present the world premiere of our new commissioned opera Lillian Alling, by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell. This is the largest and most ambitious production in Vancouver Opera’s 50-year history, and I hope you’ll join us for the excitement of seeing and hearing this important new work for the first time.

Lillian Alling is a Canadian opera through-and-through. All of the creative team and all of the singers are Canadian. The story is rooted in Canadian history and local legend, and its themes connect with our experience. Lillian Alling was a woman who left her homeland in search of a new life, just as so many Canadians have done.

The opera is about quest, courage, and adventure. Its music and words are inspired by the broad and wild landscape of this country.

And it wouldn’t be an opera without high emotion and high drama: an intriguing love interest, treachery and danger!

Click here to listen!

A Film Score Sound

2010-08-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

Are you a fan of film scores? Opera is not all about high-hitting arias, recitatives and big showy choral numbers (as opposed to big showy chorus numbers which would include dancing showgirls). Also enjoyable are the overtures and intermezzos where only the orchestra is playing. No voices, no sound effects.

For your listening pleasure, here's a snippet of the orchestral music in Scene 10 of Lillian Alling by John Estacio, libretto by John Murrell. This electronic arrangment is by Emmy nominated composer and conductor Hal Beckett, who turned Estacio's MIDI composition into a realistic orchestral sound.

Beckett has worked on both Bryan Adams and Michael Bublé's albums, as well as produced the 102 national anthems for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Beckett's also conducted and produced music for Universal, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, Disney and Miramax Studios.

This synthesizer arrangement of We Have Had The Rain sounds like it can be found in a big budget Hollywood movie.

If you're digging this clip, just wait to you hear it played by a 60 piece orchestra.

Stay tuned! We'll have another excerpt from the lush and lyrical Lillian Alling score next week.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

An Excerpt From Lillian Alling: Ellis Island

2010-08-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

Registry Hall, Ellis Island

Act 1 | Scene 2

Irene:
Like thousands and thousands and thousands of others
She came with hope
But no real plan,
Following a man
And the promises he made
The promises of the New World...

VOICES are heard, offstage and overlapping, but ringing clear:

Italian Voice: Il nome? (My name?)

German Voice: Mein name? (My name?)

Spanish Voice: Me llamo (I am called-)

Another Italian Voice: Mastrangelo!

Another German Voice: Edelssohn!

Another Spanish Voice: Ortega!

Lillian: Mee-nya zah-voot Lillian Alling! (My name is Lillian Alling!)

Jimmy puts the truck in gear and backs out. Irene watches Lillian as long as she can.

Irene:

Like thousands of others she said to herself,
"I will never again live like before-
Will not be ashamed,
Will not be poor,
Will not be afraid anymore!"

The truck disappears from view.

A swarm of immigrants suddenly surges forward, all around Lillian. It is early spring 1927 on Ellis Island in New York City harbour.

Lillian: Pah-zhal-stuh - Pah-zhal-stuh! (Please - Please!)

All Italians (shouting) / All Germans (at the same time):
Siamo qui (We are here)
Wir suchen (We are seeking)
Per lavoro (For work)
nur Arbeit (Only work)
E Liberta! (And freedom!)
und Freiheit! (And freedom!)

All Spaniards & All Greeks (at the same time):
Venimos (We come)
Ee-ma-steh el-tho (We are here)
Por trabajo (For work)
yia thu-leh-ah (For work)
Y libertad! (And freedom!)
keh eh-lef-the-ria! (And freedom!)

Lillian: (her voice rising above the others, as she pushes forward)
Mee-nya zah-voot Lillian Alling!
And yes, I can speak almost English
I come for to be with Jozef Nikitich
He is here now three yeras,
Work in a factory,
I will work too,
We will be married,
Have money for everything.
I will find him,
No matter how long it takes me,
I will find him,
No matter how far...
My life is bound to his life!
And I will never again live like before,
Will not be ashamed,
Will not be poor,
Will not be afraid any more!

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian (part 2)

2010-08-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred
Part 2

Alling is one of a handful of western women whose legends grow with time, and whose stories are still told around the coffee cups and beer glasses of the regions where they lived or travelled. These women lived lives of pure determination, often in almost total isolation from other people. Some called them eccentric; some called them crazy. They were as little interested in such judgements as they were in other people's advice on what they should do or how they should live. Regardless of the cost, they lived as they wished.

Lillian Alling worked as a maid in New York, a job that did not allow her to save enough money to buy a ticket aboard a ship returning to Europe. Blocked from the simplest way home, she began to develop another plan. In the New York Public Library, she spread out on the table in front of her maps of the United States, Canada and Siberia. She decided she would walk home, north through British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska, somehow across the Bering Strait, then through Siberia, the Ural Mountains and home.

The small hill of information available about Lillian Alling's odyssey is dwarfed by the mountain that is unknown. Probably in the spring of1927, she set out on foot from New York, dressed in a stout skirt and shod in sturdy shoes. She seems to have aroused no particular comment among the many who travelled the highways newly built for the ever more popular automobile, or on the old wagon roads or railway tracks, though many must have wondered about this woman who walked alone and steadily west. Later, she said that she had been through Winnipeg, which suggests that she followed a Canadian route along the transcontinental train tracks across the prairies and perhaps through Jasper to Prince George and Smithers, in British Columbia's northwest.

The first absolute fact in the trek of Lillian Alling is that on September 10, 1927, she walked up to a lonely cabin north of Hazelton, the home of Yukon telegraph lineman Bill Blackstock.

Photo credit: Gregory Melle

This photo shows the Telegraph Trail snaking up the hill from the Sheep Creek Cabin, on Lillian Alling's route north. Alling refused to let the rough trail, the weather or the possibility of starvation deter her from her trek. (BCA A-04962)

Project Onto Me

2010-08-06T13:30:00.001-07:00

Tim Matheson is an award-winning projection designer, photographer, videographer and multi-media producer. His first foray into live theatre was in 1987 with Vancouver's Fringe Festival. It was at that festival that Tim first used projections as an element of set design. Since then, Tim has been much in demand, having worked over 100 performances in theatre, dance and opera.

And we have him for Lillian Alling.

Here's your first peek at Tim's projections on designer Sue Lepage's set.

The Land is Large

The Land is Large

Ellis Island

Ellis Island

Landscape

Map set

Inverted map

New York Street

New York Street

Vancouver Street

Vancouver Stanley Park

Does it make you feel like you've traveled back to 1927?

More projections to come. Stay tuned.

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Blogging From Banff

2010-07-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

In Banff to check up on the status of the set build and scenic painting.

The production is taking shape and it is very exciting to be here to see it.

The carpenters, welders and painters are all working very hard.

In this new opera, a large part of the story is told in and around a pick-up truck.

As you see in the picture the truck is being mounted onto a mechanism that will allow the truck to make it’s stage entrance and exit without too much difficulty and will be controlled by the crew. The singers will not need to worry about the truck at all.

The scenic paint crew is busy working on the large deck. It is being textured by rolling on a thick paste similar to flexible roof compound, over top of burlap. The burlap is removed and it leaves a rippled texture. Then scenic painter can begin painting over top of the dried board.

We are luck that the Banff Centre has joined VO in co-producing this great new opera. Our relationship with Banff is allowing us to rehearse for a short time on the set in the Eric Harvie Theatre at the Banff Centre. This will give the singers a wonderful chance to get used to the set before we get into the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

~ Tom Wright, Director of Artistic Planning

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

2010-07-21T12:08:00.001-07:00

Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to...

Earworm! Ok, time to stop humming TLC in my head and focus on what's at hand.

Taken by our projectionist Tim Matheson, this model is your first peep at what one of our Lillian Alling scenes will look like. Keep in mind, it's a work in progress, but there's no doubt our world premiere will induce all sorts of "wow!"

Doesn't this make you want to head to a lake right now?

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Why A Lillian Alling Book Club?

2010-07-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

Odysseus, Marlowe, Bilbo Baggins. Not characters that are often compared in the same sentence, but they share one important attribute: each of them undertakes a great quest. The objects of their quests are different, but all three eventually find themselves driven to obsession by their quarry.

Lillian Alling also embarked on a quest, but unlike these three, no one knows why. And, also unlike these three, Lillian Alling was female, twentieth century, and actually existed.

Lillian was a real person and really did undertake an epic journey alone into an unforgiving landscape with no experience and no supplies. Her story is quite literally of mythic proportions – so much so that it’s no wonder that it has been the inspiration for fiction and non-fiction books, graphic novels, movie scripts, and now an opera.

Lillian’s remarkable journey and the scope of her influence led VO to work with VPL to compile this list of suggested reading. This book list is not so much an introduction to the Lillian Alling opera, but more of a companion.

In this list you will find books about the immigrant experience; true stories of women adventurers; historical works about BC; and of course, books about Lillian Alling herself. Through these titles, you’ll learn what life was like in a New York City tenement in the early 20th century, and understand how difficult it really was to live in BC’s untamed wilderness. You’ll also encounter such personalities as Ida Pfeiffer, described as “a little lady among cannibals”; Ada Blackjack, the “female Robinson Crusoe”; and Beryl Markham, a 1930s bush pilot who was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west – and could “write rings around” Hemingway, as Hemingway himself admitted.

Reading these titles has given us at VO a greater appreciation of exactly what Lillian Alling went through as she made her way from crowded, noisy Ellis Island, across the continent and into the wilds of the Telegraph Trail. We hope it will do the same for you!

Have a look at:

The Immigrant Experience

Between Two Worlds: The Canadian Immigrant Experience - Edited by Milly Charon (1988)
This collection of Canadian immigrant experience biographies are the search for a better life and a place to belong. It is a testament to the courage and perseverance of those who resettled here and the hardships they faced. The voices are genuine and honest throughout.

Land Newly Found: Eyewitness Accounts of the Canadian Immigrant Experience - Norman Hillmer (2006)
No one expects stories of tragedy and genocide to be a part of the Canadian immigrant experience, but that is what we discover from the accounts of some well-known and lesser known Canadians dating back to the early 19th century.

Shutting out the sky: life in the tenements of New York, 1880-1924 - Deborah Hopkinson (2003)
Photographs and text document the experiences of five young people who arrived in America from Belarus, Italy, Lithuania, and Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and came to live in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Through their stories, a rich portrait of why immigrants left their homelands and how they dealt with life in a new and strange country is revealed including a number of Jacob Riis’ famous images.

Shutting Out the Sky was a 2004 International Reading Association's Teachers' Choice and will appeal to both children (grade 5-12) and their parents.

Women Travelers on a Quest

Women of Discovery: A Celebration of Intrepid Women who Explored the World - Milbry Polk & Mary Tiegreen (2001)
Women of Discovery… is truly a gathering of heroines, documenting more than 80 extraordinary explorers and adventurers filled with courage, talent, intelligence and sheer determination. These women visionaries expanded the world’s body of knowledge.

Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers - Jane Robinson (1990)
This is an essential reference work for armchair explorers who will appreciate the list of first hand travel accounts of three hundred and fifty, known and unknown women travelers, spanning sixteen centuries. The guide includes appendixes, maps and geographical indexes.

Women Travellers: A Century of Trailblazing Adventures 1850-1950 - Christel Mounchard (2007)
From Ida Pfeiffer, described as “a little lady among cannibals”, to Fanny Bullock Workman, who attempted cycling around the world in 1889, comes a collection of unconventional women adventurers from five continents, which will surely inspire.

The Mapmaker’s Wife - Robert Whitaker (2004)
In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth.

This is the story of Isabel Grames, who became stranded in the Amazon--an epic love story that unfolds against the backdrop of the greatest expedition the world has ever known.

Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic - Jennifer Niven (2003)
In 1923 controversial explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson sent four young men and Ada Blackjack into the far North to colonize uninhabited Wrangel Island. They took with them six months' worth of supplies but as winter set in, they were struck by hardship and tragedy.

Upon Ada's miraculous return after two years on the island, the international press heralded her as the female Robinson Crusoe, but she refused to talk to anyone about her harrowing experiences. Only on one occasion -- after being accused of a horrible crime she did not commit -- did she speak up for herself. Jennifer Niven narrates this remarkable true story filled with adventure and fascinating history.

Women as Solo Travellers; Explorers; Adventurers

The Curve of Time - M. Wylie Blanchet (1990)
M. Wylie Blanchet has accompanied many a seafarer on the B.C. coast with this bestselling book which introduces us to a resilient, adventurous, and enigmatic woman ahead of her time. Widowed in 1926, Blanchet cruised the coast in her 25-foot boat, the Caprice, with her five children and their dog.

Blanchet’s lyrically written account reads like fantastic fiction but her adventures are all very real. There are dangers—rough water, bad weather, wild animals—but there is also the quiet respect and deep peace of a woman teaching her children the wonder and depth of the natural world.

West with the Night - Beryl Markham (1942)
A beautifully crafted book, with some of the most poetic prose passages imaginable, resonating with a stately and timeless quality so absent in our modern life. Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906.

In the 1930s she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true . . . I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."--Ernest Hemingway

Winter Shoes in Springtime - Beryl Smeeton
Beryl Smeeton was a rare combination of intrepid traveler and entertaining writer, and she made astonishing journeys as a young woman in the 1930s. After the restrictions of an Edwardian girlhood, she cherished the freedom to travel alone and became a globetrotter on an epic scale.

Just before the Second World War, she completed two remarkable journeys: a thousand-mile trek on horseback in the eastern foothills of the Andes; and a hike through the hilly jungles of Burma and Thailand. This is the first book about her travels.

No Place for a lady: Tales of adventurous Women Travellers - Barbara Hodgson (2003)
Centuries of intrepid women who ventured away from home, tell their tales, highlighting the era’s travel literature and guides with period illustrations that add flavour to narratives that are already riveting. Each tale is supported with additional notes and bibliography.

Tamara: Memoirs of St. Petersburg, Paris, Oxford and Byzantium - Tamara Talbot Rice (1996)
This autobiography charts Tamara Talbot Rice’s travels over a lifetime; a dazzlingly privileged childhood in St. Petersburg during pre-revolutionary Russia; an émigré penury in London and Paris; Oxford in the Brideshead… years; pioneering digs in Istanbul and academic life in Edinburgh.

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach (2000) Boston Sun journalist, Alice Steinbach, uses self-addressed postcards to capture and preserve her spontaneous impressions of her travels throughout Europe. Connecting emotionally with the cities that she visits allows for self-discovery along the way.

Legend of Lillian Alling

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers, and Rebels - Rosemary Neering (2000)
Recently awarded the 2001 Van City Book Prize, this book proves how the west was really won - through the strength and determination of women.

From the introduction: “Living in New York and hating it, Lillian Alling decided to walk home to Russia via British Columbia, Alaska and Siberia, and nothing – not exhaustion, not hunger, not a jail term – could deter her.” See pp 210 – 218 Chapter: The Most Determined Person I’d Ever Met: Women Not to be Deterred

Away - Amy Bloom (2007)
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land.

When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humour and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

The woman who walked to Russia - Cassandra Pybus (2002)
Desperate with homesickness, Lillian Alling haunted the New York Public Library studying maps to establish the most direct route home to her native Russia. Her English was poor, but she understood cartography. In the spring of 1927, aided only by a hand-drawn map, she started to walk..."From the moment Cassandra Pybus heard of Alling's incredible trek, she could not get the story out of her mind.

Was it possible that this young immigrant woman had walked thousands of kilometers across America?” Pybus, an award-winning Australian writer, searched for clues about this enigmatic pedestrian but when her sleuthing yielded little, she set out to trace Lillian's route. The delightful result is a frank and entertaining travel narrative as the author and her reluctant travel companion embark on an adventure through the wilderness and rich history of B.C. piecing together Alling's journey.

BC Connections

Cougar Annie's Garden - Margaret Horsfield (1999)
Surrounded by tall trees and taller tales, Cougar Annie’s garden is a legend on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In 1915, the tough, wily pioneer known as Cougar Annie arrived on the coast. The five-acre garden she cleared in the rainforest became her lifeblood, her burden, her passion.

Here she bore eight children, outlived four husbands and may even have shot one of them. As she grew old, Cougar Annie’s garden became radically overgrown; it seemed doomed to die with her. Against all odds, it has been restored, and blooms again in the wilderness. Margaret Horsfield’s book is a heart-lifting story of stubborn achievement and of an enduring love of the land.

The Concubine’s Children: Portrait of a Family Divided - Denise Chong (1994)This superbly told saga of family loyalties and disaffections reads more like a novel than an actual chronicle of Chan Sam, a Chinese peasant who left his family in 1913 to seek his fortune in the "Gold Mountain" of western Canada. There, though always planning to return to them, he set up a second family with the beautiful, headstrong concubine he brought with him from China. The story is narrated in the third person by his granddaughter, a Canadian economist, who creates an unsentimental portrait of both families.

Although Chan Sam never fulfilled his dream of returning to his home-family, after his death, the author made the pilgrimage to China to embrace the relatives she had never known.

Swamp Angel - Ethel Wilson (1954)
Ethel Wilson's finest novel follows Maggie Vardoe's movement from an unhappy marriage toward the vision she gains by re-establishing her own identity. Maggie's flight from Vancouver into the BC interior symbolizes her return to the natural world of time, change and mortality. Through serene passages of natural description and quiet evocations of Maggie's strength, Wilson makes her character's transformation seem to arise naturally but also dramatically out of her circumstances; like its protagonist, Swamp Angel moves quietly but with assurance toward its realization.

Frontier Spirit - The Brave Women of the Klondike - Jennifer Duncan (2004)She may have been holding a gun, or an axe, or her hiked-up skirts, but she was there, in the Klondike of the Gold Rush. And her decision to venture everything on the dream of northern gold was in every way bolder and riskier than any man’s.

In Frontier Spirit, Jennifer Duncan celebrates the lives of women who, in defiance of traditional expectations, left their homes, their families, and their professions, to make the arduous journey through a punishing climate and unfamiliar wilderness to seek their fortunes in the Klondike.

Many tender ties: women in fur-trade society in western Canada, 1670 – 1870 - Sylvia van Kirk (1980)
Now nearly thirty years old, Sylvia Van Kirk's Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 represents one of the first, and arguably still one of the best, of its period's numerous attempts to "recover" the lost, forgotten, or slighted history of North American women.

Sexual encounters between Indian women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature. This illuminating book reveals instead that Indian-white marriages, sanctioned "after the custom of the country," resulted in many warm and enduring family unions. These were profoundly altered by the coming of the white women in the 1820s and 1830s.

Historical References

Gateway to Liberty: the Story of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island - Mary J. Shapiro (1986)
This documentary record of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, standing side by side in New York’s harbour for more than a century recounts Liberty, unveiled on Bedloe’s Island, in 1886, and six years later, the first federal landing depot for immigrants opened on Ellis Island.

A Short History of Oakalla, 1912-1991 - Earl Andersen (1992)
This is a small and richly illustrated history of a BC provincial detention centre, Oakalla, originally known as the Oakalla Prison Farm which opened on September 2, 1912 with 23 inmates, and eventually peaked at 1,269 prisoners in 1962-63.

Hard Place to do Time - Earl Andersen (1993)
Once a gaol, a remand centre, and an execution chamber, the Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, BC served multiple roles. This account traces the historical facts of the many dramatic incidents that occurred throughout its seventy nine year history.

Alex Lord's British Columbia: Recollections of a Rural School Inspector, 1915-36 - Edited by John Calam (1991)
Alex Lord, a pioneer inspector of rural BC schools, shares in these recollections his experiences in a province barely out of the stage coach era. Travelling through vast northern territory, utilizing unreliable transportation, and enduring climatic extremes, Lord became familiar with the aspiration of remote communities and their faith in the humanizing effects of tiny assisted schools. John Calam has organized the memoirs according to the regions through which Lord travelled.

Flapjacks and Photographs: A History of Mattie Gunterman, Camp Cook and Photographer - Henri Robideau (1995)
A chronicler of the early 1900’s, Mattie’s lively photos of mining and logging camps, staged shots and panoramas are reminders of a bygone era in rural British Columbia.

From Riverboats to Railroads - Emma Bateman Lindstrom (1992)
Riverboats on the Skeena River, building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, and the men responsible for the telegraph line, frame this memoir of an early settler west of Terrace, British Columbia, from 1905 to 1948.

Pioneer Legacy: Chronicles of the Lower Skeena River - Norma V Bennett (1997 – 2000)
Celebrating the Skeena, a grand and dangerous river, this book pays tribute to the rugged individuals, native peoples, settlers, and adventurers, who travelled, explored, lived and died along its turbulent 350-mile length.

~ Jennifer Lord, Special Projects Manager

Lillian Alling Set Build

2010-07-13T16:01:00.001-07:00

Our heroine Lillian Alling covers a lot of ground in our upcoming opera of the same name, from Ellis Island to North Dakota to Vancouver to the Telegraph Trail. So how are we going to reveal this journey on stage? That’s where our ingenious set designer Sue LePage comes in!

Sue first joined the creative team in May 2009 and attended our fourth creation workshop to get a feel for the libretto and music. Following much research, design meetings with the creative team, and attending further workshops in Banff that summer and Vancouver in December, she presented this preliminary set model.

Each of the stair units move, allowing for the creation of new looks to transport us, the audience, to a multitude of locations. A key component of the design includes multiple video screens that will dramatically deliver us from the streets of New York City in the 1920s to the vast prairies and beyond.

Once the preliminary set design and build budget were approved by VO’s production team, Sue met again with stage director Kelly Robinson, videographer Tim Matheson and Director of Production Terry Harper in March 2010 to run through the opera scene by scene and start fine tuning each look.

In July, the build began in Banff! Which elements of the set do you think they are building first? Your guess is as good as mine…

~ Jennifer Lord, Special Projects Manager

Dressing Lillian Alling: The Sketches

2010-07-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

You got your first look a couple of weeks ago and we know you've been chomping at the bit...

Here's the complete costume sketches for the world premiere of Lillian Alling by award-winning set & costume designer Sue Lepage.

Winner of two Dora Mavor Awards, Toronto-based designer Sue LePage has worked on more than 100 productions in theatre and opera. Recent credits include Frobisher and Filumena for Calgary Opera and The Banff Centre. LePage has worked on productions with the Shaw Festival, Stratford Festival, CanStage, Charlottetown Festival, Citadel Theatre, The Grand Theatre, National Arts Centre, Native Earth, Neptune Theatre, Theatre Calgary and the Vancouver Playhouse.

Images by Sue LePage, all rights reserved

Stay tuned! We'll be posting pictures of the costumes from the wardrobe department soon!

~ Ling Chan, Social Media Manager

Lillian Alling: The Real Lillian Arrives in NYC

2010-07-07T12:53:00.001-07:00

Excerpted with permission from:

Wild West Women: Travellers, Adventurers and Rebels
Written by Rosemary Neering
Published by Whitecap Books Ltd.

THE MOST DETERMINED PERSON I'D EVER MET: Women Not to Be Deterred

Part 1

New York City in the 1920s hummed with the comings and goings of four million residents, three-quarters of them immigrants or the children of immigrants. Men, women and children crowded the streets of the east side, rode the newly built subways, lived in the tenements and worked in rapidly growing industries, many slaving in sweatshops.

More than a third of the 17 million people who arrived at the American immigration centre on Ellis Island between 1890 and 1930 came from central and eastern Europe to swell rapidly growing Russian, Polish and other immigrant communities. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war chased many Russians from their homes and native land; New York was the destination for a large number of these émigrés. Though they had little to do with the roar of the twenties – the speakeasies and jazz clubs that were part of the fast life of the cities – most were reasonably content with their new country.

Lillian Alling was not. Like much about Alling's life, the facts of her birth and childhood are unconfirmed. She was probably born shortly after 1900 in Russia, or possibly Poland. She came to the United States after the revolution, probably entering with thousands of her fellow Russians at Ellis Island. Some say she was one of the many upper-class and aristocratic Russians who fled Russia at that time; descriptions of her suggest she was well educated and well spoken. One report suggested that she had been sent by her family to find them all a new home, and that, while she was travelling, her family was thrown into exile in Siberia – but this report may have been romantic invention.

Whoever she was, however she arrived in America, she was soon convinced that she did not want to stay. Somehow, she would return to Russia. She never told anyone who recorded her response why she wanted to return, other than to say that she felt alone and unwelcome, despite the large numbers of people in her same circumstances. Perhaps it was the bustle and strangeness of the city. Perhaps it was some more compelling or frightening incident. Perhaps she yearned to rejoin a sweetheart or her family. Whatever impelled her, though, must have been strong motivation indeed, for it drove her to undertake an almost impossible trek, to brave hardship and jail and to continue on when saner heads urged caution.

buy a copy of Wild West Women today

Lillian Alling: Tenament Life in 1920s NYC

2010-06-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

When Lillian Alling arrived on the east coast of North America in the 1920s she was part of the post-war crush of immigrants from Europe. She joined the hordes of people processed through Ellis Island seeking prosperity, a new world, or just a fresh start. Many of these newcomers would end up living in Manhatten’s Lower East Side, in what would become known as the tenements of New York.

As immigrants flowed into New York City, builders rushed to construct housing quickly and cheaply. The most cost-effective way to meet the demand for housing was to put many families in the same building. Usually made of bricks, early tenements were built side by side on narrow lots. The law defined a tenement as any house occupied by three or more families living independently and doing their own cooking on the premises. Similar to a very small apartment, a tenement flat was usually no more than two rooms with shared toilets in the hallway. One room typically served as kitchen and living space, and the other as a bedroom. Families often set up one of these rooms as a workshop as well where they laboured for long hours, sewing clothes, rolling cigars or as in the photo below, making artificial flowers for ladies’ hats.

Many of the cramped rooms lacked fresh air and light until 1901 when new laws required landlords to construct narrow airshafts between the tightly packed buildings. Strung between the tenements, clotheslines reflected the lively spirit of the poor immigrants who inhabited the neighbourhood.

The sights, sounds, and smells of many cultures blended into a dynamic and vibrant part of New York City that was composed of several neighbourhoods, notably the East Village, Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), Five Points, Little Italy and the Bowery. All these neighbourhoods were squeezed together on a section of land in lower Manhattan just fourteen miles square.

With this snapshot into the maze of the tenements of New York City, Irene’s explanation to her son Jimmy of Lillian’s arrival suddenly makes sense:

Jimmy: Where did she go? What did she do?
Irene: “I come for to be with Jozéf Nikitich!”
Jimmy: So she found him?
Irene: The address she had was “Brooklyn, USA”. It only took her a week.
Jimmy: Holy God!

Take a tour into this world by clicking on www.tenement.org

Lillian Alling: The Land Is Large

2010-06-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

Lillian Alling is the story of a woman who walks from New York City to Vancouver and beyond, alone and driven by a motive shrouded in mystery. In John Estacio's original score for the work, we hear the chaos of Ellis Island, the jump and sway of New York City, and in a key piece of music we'll discuss today, the joy and wonder of the wide open land.

"With 'The Land Is Large', I wanted to convey Lillian's enjoyment of the countryside. Despite the fact that she is all alone on her journey and with the fear and trepidation that accompanies undertaking such a trek, she still marvels at her surroundings," says Estacio.

"Having composed a few operas already, I've learned that the scenic design in my mind always ends up costing ten times more than the budget allows," says Estacio. "So instead of imagining what the scene will look like on stage, I focus on the emotions and the motivations of the characters -- what is going on inside of these individuals while they're on stage as opposed to what the scenery looks like around them."

The land is large and smooth and green.
I hear many birds, I hear no war.
Such quiet I have not heard before…
A place of questions, not answers,
Of mistakes they do not call sins.
Here nothing,
Nothing is ending.
Everything,
Everything begins!

The sample attached to this post is from a recording made early in the composition process with just a piano. So how do we get from this simple piano and vocal version to the final product we'll hear at the world premiere?

"Once I've finished the piano/vocal score, I start at the beginning again and write all the orchestral music. It's probably not the most efficient way to write an opera, but it works for me," smiles Estacio. The additional material in the score are the orchestral 'sound effects' and new rhythmic figures that enhance the sense of Lillian's motion as she walks along her path.

"What you do hear in the sample already is a moment when Lillian refers to the telegraph wires that she is following on her journey," he points out, "At that point there is a quick little burst of telegraphic rhythms from the piano (2:45) -- a short foreshadowing to the music that occurs later in Act 1 when we meet the telegraph operators, including Scotty Macdonald."

We've just received the first act score from John with all the orchestration and we are thrilled and excited by what we see and can hear in our mind's ear as we gather around the table to read over it. We think you will be too. So please have a listen to this sneak sample of 'The Land Is Large' from our upcoming world premiere opera Lillian Alling, music by John Estacio and libretto by John Murrell.

Please join us in October to see how it all comes together.

~ Image Source

Lillian Alling: Trainspotting

2010-06-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

In the opera Lillian Alling, Lillian finds herself somewhere in the great expanse of the midwest in the summertime, and encounters another traveller on her trip to "North of Dakota". Asking how she might get there and how far it might be, he replies that she might want to hop a freight train passing by to speed her journey.

How are we going to get a freight train on stage? Just you wait and see...

In the 1920's it would not have been unusual to find a person riding the rails by illegially and secretly jumping onto a passing train and hiding in or on the freight cars. It had been a common practice as far back as the Civil War and would rise dramatically with the onset of the Great Depression (1929-1939).

Our opera takes place before the Great Depression, but at a time when cross country travel was mostly via train, rather than automobile, bus or certainly air travel. At the time, rail travel would not have been cheap (comparatively) and it would be very unlikely that Lillian could have afforded it. However, it would not have been uncommon for a number of itinerant workers to "hop a freight" while trying to make it from one job to another, often following the harvest cycles. These travellers were often known as "hobos".

Hobos, tramps and bums - there's a difference!
There's actually a hierarchy of nomenclature for the itinerant worker of no fixed address. A Hobo is a travelling worker of no fixed address outside of a work camp associated with a job (usually agricultural). A Tramp is a travelling homeless person who will work if forced to gain food or shelter. A Bum is a person with neither home nor intention to work who will rely on handouts to get by. All three would commonlly ride the rails from place to place during the time period of the opera. It's estimated that at the time of our opera there would have been between 500,000 and 700,000 hobos on the rails, making Lillian's fictional encounter a very likely one in real life. Even today, it is believed that at least 20,000 people still live the hobo lifestyle, and in Britt, Iowa there is an annual National Hobo Convention to celebrate and assist those who have chosen to "decide your own life".

How to hop a freight
First of all -- don't. It's illegal and very dangerous. The days of slow moving, open sided covered box cars are long gone. Today's trains are faster, heavier, intermodal containers or lorries with open bottoms. Hopping a freight is illegal in all states (and presumably all provinces) and trespassing on rail property carries a heavy fine and/or jail time. Many a hobo lost life or limb falling under the wheels of a train car, getting smashed between cars or their couplings, or ending up dead from hypothermia or suffocation after getting trapped inside a car.

But if you simply must try it - check here for some tips

Hobo Lingo
Over the decades a colourful slang of its own developed amongst those riding the rails. Here's some fun ones you might want to learn (full list here):

Angellina - an inexperienced kid
Bull - a rail officer, to be avoided at all costs
Cannonball - a fast train
Flip - to board a moving train
Grease the Track - to be run over by a train
Reefer - a contraction of "refrigerated car"
Catch the Westbound - to die

"That Angellina tried to flip a cannonball to get away from that bull, but instead he greased the tracks under the reefer and caught the westbound."

"Trainspotting"
As a headline for this post, it makes a great word, especially since the film. However, strictly speaking, what Lillian does in the opera is "freight hopping" and not "trainspotting", which is the practice of documenting sightings of trains as a hobby.

Homework
Watch a fantastic film called Emperor of the North, starring Lee Marvin, Earnest Borgnine and a young Keith Carradine. In it, Lee Marvin tries to ride Earnest Borgnine's train all the way to Portland to win a bet, all the while trying to shake young Carradine, a wannabe hobo. It's got fightin' and cussin' and a good deal of silliness, plus a fantastic climactic fight at the very end. Directed by Robert Aldrich in 1973, it is a gem and well worth seeking out. (In Vancouver you can get it a Happy Bats Cinema)

~ all images from Emperor of the North, Lee Marvin, Lee Marvin (again), and a really scary looking Ernest Borgnine

Lillian Alling: Ellis Island Memory

2010-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

I visited Ellis Island 30 years ago and I still vividly remember the feeling of the huge central arrival hall. It’s a very powerful place.

Everyone who passed through Ellis Island first had to climb a staircase that emerged in the middle of the hall. Exhausted from a long sea voyage, often in deplorable conditions, and entering a new country, it’s not difficult to imagine their fear and disorientation as they trudged down their ship’s gangplank, entered the imposing brick building, and approached the top of the stairs.

Eyeing them was a team of medical officers who were trained to recognize serious communicable diseases in the few seconds of time that elapsed as each new arrival passed by. Those who showed symptoms were ushered into observation rooms that ringed the great hall, and then on to confinement in a hospital ward on the island, or to another ship, to be sent back home. Those who passed the initial cursory inspection moved on to the next stage: interrogation, identification and, possibly, approval for entry into the United States of America.

I remember the metal staircase and its railing, the clinical white paint, the frosted glass windows, the containment pens, the sad wooden benches, the hollow sounds of human voices against hard surfaces. I remember thinking that this was what a 19th century sanitarium would feel like.

Thirty years later, I imagine Lillian Alling climbing the stairs, surrounded by hundreds of other haggard souls, speaking countless languages she cannot understand. Perhaps she has a fever or bronchitis, acquired during her voyage from Russia. Perhaps she has heard from fellow passengers that you must hide your symptoms, or you might be rejected. By the time Lillian arrived in New York, in the 1927, Ellis Island had become primarily a detention and deportation centre, and had earned its reputation as the “Island of Tears”. But Lillian is fierce, determined, and strong. She makes it onto the mainland and into Brooklyn, to begin her search for Josèf, a man to whom she is bound by family and history.

In the opera Lillian Alling, we’ll get to see how John Estacio and John Murrell, along with set and costume designer Sue LePage and projection designer Tim Matheson, depict Lillian’s experience on Ellis Island. It’s the first big chorus number in the opera, and it’s sure to be evocative and very emotional.

~ Doug Tuck, Dir. of Marketing and Community Programs

Lillian Alling: Fashion Shock

2010-06-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

In sharp contrast to the traditional dress of the many newcomers to North America, Lillian Alling, the title character of our new opera, would be introduced to the image of the ‘new woman’ on the streets of Brooklyn.

Costume designer Sue LePage has captured this distinction in her depiction of the passerby Lillian runs into on the streets of Brooklyn (seen above) with the men and women at Ellis Island (seen below).

Representing the dress of 1920s North America is the job of designer Sue LePage from the fashion of New York City to mid-west farming communities to early Vancouver.

Following her research of the period, she created a series of sketches that are now being interpreted by VO’s wardrobe team and transformed into the costumes on stage.

Keep checking in here as we take you from concept to final realization on this and many other aspects of the design for our world premiere opera Lillian Alling, opening our new season on Oct. 16, 2010.

~images by Sue LePage, all rights reserved