The Creative Team Behind Lillian Alling

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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