03.20.2010 – Shannon Mercer Stars In One-Woman Opera Love Songs at the prestigious Holland Festival
May 20, 2010… One of Canada’s hottest young sopranos, Shannon Mercer makes her Netherlands debut in Ana Sokolovic’s Love Songs, a one-woman virtuosic tour-de-force at the world-renowned Holland Festival on June 15 and 17. The presentation of Love Songs by one of Canada’s premier contemporary opera companies, Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, marks the first time a Canadian opera company has staged a work at the prestigious and trend-setting performing arts festival.
Love Songs takes the audience on a whirlwind tour of love from sublime tenderness to the final profound, wild and cathartic Balkan keening. Love is explored in all its states and in many different languages — love for one’s mother, love between children, love for a daughter, love shattered by grief and most harrowingly, love for a lost brother.
Premiered by the innovative Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Love Songs is written by award-winning Montréal composer Ana Sokolovic whose music goes far beyond traditional operatic use of the voice. Interspersed with the love songs are four extraordinary movements that Sokolovic calls ‘doves’, in which the performer sings, whispers or speaks the phrase ‘I love you’ in a total of 100 languages. Poets include Michael Hartnett, Paul Éluard, Émile Nelligan, Vasko Popa, Miroslav Antic, Laza Kostic, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shakespeare, Catulle, Walt Whitman and Amarusataka.
Love Songs was first presented in Toronto in March 2008 by Lauren Phillips to great acclaim, the Globe & Mail called it “a magnificent work” and continued “Sokolovic has touched the primeval heart of civilization …(and) breathes new life into Canadian music theatre”. It has been seen at the Montréal Nouvelle Musique Festival, the Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana, the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and the Zagreb International Contemporary Music Biennale where it created a sensation and was declared the best production of the festival.
Love Songs will be presented by the Holland Festival on June 15 and 17. For more details, please consult www.hollandfestival.nl.
Biographical Information:
Shannon Mercer
Her voice has been described as luminous and her acting witty and feisty — Shannon Mercer embraces the challenge of maintaining a wide-ranging vocal career featuring concerts, recitals, and operas spanning five centuries: from her recently released O Viva Rosa by Francesca Caccini (1587- c.1641), to Purcell, Handel, Mozart to music of her contemporaries such as Ana Sokolovic. Her award-winning discography includes Wales ~ The Land of Song, the 2009 JUNO Award-winning Gloria!: Vivaldi’s Angels, Bach and the Liturgical Year, Mondonville, English Fancy, (Analekta) and Marin Marais’s Sémélé (Glossa). She also starred the comic opera Burnt Toast, now on DVD. Already a hit in movie theatres across Europe, on June 8 the film version of Monty Python funny-man Eric Idle’s Not the Messiah starring Shannon as Judith, will be released on DVD.
Ana Sokolovic
Born in 1968 in Belgrade, Serbia, Ana Sokolovic studied composition with Dusan Radic and with Zoran Eric before completing her master’s degree at Université de Montréal under the direction of José Evangelista. Her repertoire consists of works for soloists, for voice, for orchestra and several pieces of chamber music. An award-winning composer, she has received commissions from major orchestras and ensembles, dance and opera companies and has had works performed in North America and Europe.
Queen of Puddings Music Theatre
Toronto’s award winning Queen of Puddings Music Theatre burst onto the arts scene in 1995. The company creates, develops and produces original Canadian chamber opera/music-theatre works and was founded by musicians John Hess and Dáirine Ní Mheadhra. Major company successes include Beatrice Chancy, which toured across Canada and was broadcast coast to coast on CBC television, and The Midnight Court which toured to the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London.
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For more information about Shannon Mercer, please contact:
Moira Johnson Consulting (+1) 613 565 0666 Email: moira@moirajohnson.com
For more information about Queen of Puddings Music Theatre and Ana Sokolovic, please contact:
Nathalie Bonjour (+1) 416 203 4149 Email: queenofpuddings2@bellnet.ca
