Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia WhiteMichael Cooper/Supplied
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- Title: Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White
- Written by: HAUI, Sean Mayes
- Director: HAUI
- Actors: Neema Bickersteth, Adrienne Danrich, SATE, Henos Girma
- Company: Canadian Opera Company
- Venue: The Canadian Opera Company Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: June 14-16
A rare world premiere from the Canadian Opera Company has marked a new entry in the country’s essential operatic canon.
This past weekend, the Canadian Opera Company Theatre on Front Street East held the first performances of Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White, written by director, librettist and co-composer HAUI and composer-conductor Sean Mayes. It’s the story of Portia White’s death, but it’s really about her life, as the Black Nova Scotian contralto who earned fame as a concert singer in the 1940s and 1950s.
Set in the Bardo – the transitional space between life and afterlife – the work is a meaningful layering of biographical vignettes, as well as scenes of hope, tragedy and tension. By the end of the sweeping, full-length opera, they up to a completely new picture of White.
HAUI splits White into three: Portia Body, Portia Spirit, and Portia Soul, sung respectively by soprano Neema Bickersteth, soprano Adrienne Danrich and contralto SATE. The three Portias took turns examining moments of White’s life: the loss of family members, the beginnings of her singing career, her professional highs and her personal lows.
The splitting of a character into three is a thoughtful device. When one singer was embodying White, the other two stepped into supporting roles, such as her father, her singing teacher and even the Queen of England.
Neema Bickersteth as Portia Body in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere production of Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White.Michael Cooper/Supplied
There’s much substance in an essentially static show. From this Bardo, there is time to unpack what it felt like for White to go on tour as a concert singer, including to places that wouldn’t let her eat in their restaurants or stay at their hotels because of her skin colour. During an amazing exchange between her and Elizabeth II – set to an excellent gospel vibe – audiences may have pondered which woman is more queenly.
There was space to unload the burden of being a “first:” being a pioneering Black woman singing in a predominantly white space. And the show slowly, almost delicately, revealed White’s deep struggle over Jimmy, the son she gave up to a relative because of what was at the time a binary choice: be a mother or have a singing career.
No doubt, White’s life is a perfect subject for an opera; there’s even some important irony in writing an opera about her, since she was relegated strictly to the concert stage. And the sweeping, chameleonic score by Sean Mayes rose to the occasion, solidifying Aportia Chryptych as a full-sized, big-room opera. Mayes makes ingenious use of existing music, namely the songs, arias and spirituals that White sang on stage.
Tunes such as He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands, I Wander As I Wonder, and O don fatale from Don Carlo get new orchestrations, new harmonies and a new affect as they’re laid on top of the story of White herself. And when it isn’t paying homage to her repertoire, Mayes’s score is evocative: morse code in the oboe part, string sections that soar like a film score, even a soulful sax solo.
Neema Bickersteth as Portia Body, Adrienne Danrich as Portia Spirit, and SATE as Portia Soul in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere production of Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White.Michael Cooper/Supplied
And as three Portias, the three singers were uniquely stunning. SATE sang with a throaty warmth as Portia Soul; not a mimicry of White’s voice, but like a vocal embodiment of her true self. As Portia Body, Bickersteth showed off unreal beauty in her high, floating sound, and had some of the show’s most poised moments of stillness.
Standing out, however, was Danrich, who sounded positively spiritual as Portia Spirit. All of the musical moments that meant the most to me – including the most technically challenging phrases of Mayes’s score – came from her divine soprano.
The end of Act II features a reveal – not necessarily a plot twist, but a clever closing of a loose end – about White’s son, Jimmy. It seemed a very feminist detail to insist on circling back to that life-changing decision put upon a woman who should have had more options. No matter how much fame she ever saw as a singer, White – or anyone who has had a child – wouldn’t have forgotten that moment and the other path that she may have chosen instead.
SATE as Portia Soul and (back, l-r) Adrienne Danrich as Portia Spirit and Neema Bickersteth as Portia Body in the Canadian Opera Company’s world premiere production of Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White.Michael Cooper/Supplied
Aportia Chryptych had a moving first run with this COC production, telling an old Canadian story in a very new way. Like with any freshly premiered Canadian opera, the big test is yet to come: How long before we get to see it again?
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)