Toronto -
We live in an age of hyper-specialization. At the same time, this is an era in which talent is allowed to express itself across professions and mediums.
After all, baseball celebrates its “five tool” players (hitting for average, hitting for power, speed, fielding, and throwing arm). Hello, Willie Mays and Mike Trout.
Modern journalism routinely expects reporters to write and report across media, photograph and videograph, produce and engineer, and appear real time on television, podcasts, and social media platforms. Hello, PBS, CBS, and New York Times science and technology correspondent David Pogue. He does it all including incorporating his own musical scores into certain pieces.
And speaking of music, enter the rather remarkable Barbara Hannigan. Raised in Nova Scotia, she cut her teeth artistically in this town. Hannigan is a world-class soprano who later in her career entered the fiercely competitive and still all-too-paternalistic world of symphonic conducting. She’s good enough - great enough, really - to be named Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
She has recently taken matters a step further, however, undoubtedly to the consternation of purists, traditionalists, and typecasters. Dance. In her current production of Debussy’s La Mer with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, she is summarily lifted from her conductor’s podium onto the stage where she sings and joins with a chorus of dancers.
Gimmicky? Maybe, but certainly an ode to her talent, sense of adventure, and willingness and ability to break boundaries creatively. The truth is, she could never pull this off without the talent she possesses across singing, conducting, and dancing. Besides, it’s damn interesting, too.
Courtesy of operaactual.com