Vancouver Opera takes off it to 2025 with its production of Jonathan Dove’s acclaimed contemporary opera, Flight, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for two more shows February 13 & 16.
Directed by Morris Panych with Conductor Leslie Dala, Flight was composed by Dove with a Libretto by April de Angelis and is loosely inspired by the true-life story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for 18 years. Audiences may also find a similar story in the 2004 Steven Spielberg film The Terminal, which premiered 6 years after the opera’s 1998 debut.
Flight takes place in in the fictional airport lounge of Tristar Airline, where The Refugee, beautifully sung by Cameron Shahbazzi, has made his makeshift home. Evading the Immigration Officer (Henry Chen) and looking up (literally) longingly to the terminal controller (Caitlin Wood). Like a heavenly muse, The Controller spends most of the time in her control tower high above the terminal, observing everything and everyone. An all-seeing observer and disembodied voice in the terming she is at times bemused, bothered and bewildered by The Refugee, but other times offering sympathy and alerting him of the Immigration Officer. Set Designer Ken MacDonald creatively constructed tower rotates at the centre of the stage allowing it to represent the passage of time as the action unfolds like hands from the timepiece.
Like any terminal, the population represents a cross section of society but all with the communal purpose of travel, making a change from their current grounded situation. In this case we find Bill (Asitha Tennekoon) & Tina (Andriana Chuchman) a married couple seeking to get out of a rut with a holiday getaway. Another couple are destined for a new life in Minsk for the husband’s (Neil Craighead) new job posting, while his heavily pregnant wife (Stephanie Tritchew) has reservations about bring uprooted. A mysterious older woman is also at the terminal, what is her destiny? A pair of flight stewards (Alex Hetherington and Clarence Frazer) are making the most of their time waiting for their flights with quick -not-so discrete rendezvouses any chance they get.
The audience gets to play the part of observer while eavesdropping on the various conversations and connections happening around them. Similar to the cacophony of a waiting room, the sung conversations are happening at the same time in Flight. The cast’s powerful voices regularly overlap and compete with the orchestra to be picked up by our ears. Even though the opera is sung in English the surtitles are much needed to keep some sense of the cross-talk and stories. When the individuals sing about their own backgrounds or group in unison, the music and lyrics soar together like the calm of blue skies but other times the sounds mirror the thunderous storm disrupting the precision of the terminal.
When inclement weather (the bane of any airport) cancels their flights, how will they cope? Tempted by the calming compassion, or is it a con-job, of The Refugee and already heightened by travel anxiety and fueled by alcohol will the trapped travellers descend to a “Lord of the Flies” mentality or find other ways to amuse themselves. Here Dove creates an interesting swap of gender roles and has the characters react in ways that may not have fit a stereotype. When the skies clear, minds follow and the characters find their way back to a refreshed outlook and set off with their plans ready to take Flight.
The Vancouver Opera presentation of Jonathan Dove’s Flight plays two more performance; February 13 @ 7:30pm and February 16, 2025 @ 2pm at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 630 Hamilton Street. Visit vancouveropera.ca for show details and tickets.