Richard Burnett on Gay Fringe

Bugs and Mado

Fringing with Richie Bitch 

Some pretty amazing stand-up comics have come out of Montreal over the years and one of the best is legendary drag queen (and Fugues magazine columnist) Mado La Motte, so-called because patrons at Poodles’ nightclub on The Main in Montreal way back in 1987 thought she was so ugly they dubbed her “The Mutt.”

by Richard Burnett (reprinted from Fugues with permission)

Thus, Mado ‘La Motte’ was born.

“She looks like a clown!” my six-year-old brother Skye told me as he pointed to Mado at his first Gay Pride parade in Montreal over a decade ago.

When I told Mado about it afterwards, she replied, “He’s right, I am a clown!”

Mado – a.k.a. former UQÀM theatre student Luc Provost, who quit university two credits shy of a bachelor’s degree – got her start as a shooter bitch and cigarette girl at Poodles and Club Lézard. The rest, as they say, is history (or in Mado’s case, Herstory).

Profile: Soprano Mary Dunleavy

The Big Soprano

Montreal-bound Mary Dunleavy – the internationally-acclaimed American opera singer with the big heart and big voice – learned her chops in the Lone Star State where opera-loving Texans (yes, there is such a thing) love everything big

By Richard Burnett

I’m just back from Texas where they love everything big – their country singers, their strip joints and their opera houses. Texans also love an opera singer with a big heart and a big voice, and few fill that bill as beautifully as Jersey girl Mary Dunleavy.

“It’s really hard for regional opera companies to survive these days but Texas has several thriving opera houses right now,” says Mary Dunleavy, who received a Master’s Degree in Music at the University of Texas at Austin, and was named the Maria Callas Debut Artist of the Year by The Dallas Opera in 2006. “It’s really quite amazing, and has not just to do with how [they] operate their opera company, but with the fact that Texas loves music – and I mean all kinds of music.”

Profile: Rob Roth and Beauty and the Beast

(photo credit: Joan Marcus)

Broadway rocker

Beauty and the Beast’s Tony-nominated director Rob Roth dishes about Elton John, Anne Rice, Jackie Collins and Alice Cooper, as well as his critically-hailed book The Art of Classic Rock and the Tony Awards, as the new slimmed-down Beauty and the Beast touring production headlines Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa

By Richard Burnett

Famed Broadway director Rob Roth remembers the day he first met Elton John back in the mid 1990s before Roth developed and directed the inaugural production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s AÏDA, which debuted at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. 

Roth was then the toast of Broadway, even got a Tony Award nomination for Best Director after Beauty and the Beast premiered on the Great White Way in 1994. 

Review: In Absentia

Paul Hopkins, Jilian Fargay, Jade Hassouné

(photo: lucetg.com)

Who says absence makes the heart grow fonder?

In Absentia at the Centaur Theatre

By Richard Burnett

Hopes were high for Centaur Theatre’s world premiere of In Absentia by Calgary-born Morris Panych, the celebrated playwright and director who has won two Canadian Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama. 

But rest assured, Panych will not win a third for In Absentia.

Review: Il Trovatore

Hiromi Omura (photo credit: Yves Renaud)

Bugs clears the aria

The Remount has arrived

By Richard Burnett

Montreal audiences have been clammering for a remount of  Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) since it was last produced by L’Opéra de Montréal way back in 1998. Even amateur opera fans will recognize many of the songs in Giuseppe Verdi’s classic opera which, since its debut in 1853, has been known as the opera with hits. 

Thus the need for Il Trovatore to be sung by an ensemble of four top-notch leads. So L’Opéra de Montréal evidently spent much of their budget hiring four terrific singers: Canadian baritone Gregory Dahl as the Count di Luna, Italian mezzo Laura Brioli as Azucena, Korean tenor Dongwin Shin as Manrico (and his golden voice really warmed up in the second half), and Japanese soprano Hiromi Omura, making her debut in the role of Leonora.

Profile: Soprano Hiromi Omura

(Photo credit: Yves Renaud)

Hiromi Omura is Not Madama Butterfly

By Richard Burnett

There are not many great opera singers who come out of Japan. And fewer who take the opera world by storm. But Hiromi Omura makes opera aficionados swoon.

“I played the violin when I was child – I wanted to be a great violin player,” Omura tells The Charlebois Post. “But I began too late. And then one day I found my voice.”

Omura became Madama Butterfly.

But Japan’s celebrated soprano has been fighting that stereotype ever since.

Album: Bugs Burnett goes to the MECCAs (All photos by Richard Burnett.)

Ranee Lee (nom, best female actor) arriving at the party

Profile: Tenor Khachatur Badalyan

Jazzman to Divo....via an invisible gun

Khachatur Badalyan stars in L’Opera de Montréal’s production of Rusalka and follows in long line of great Russian tenors

By Richard Burnett

(performance photos by Michael Daniel of the OdeM/Minnesota Opera production)

Russian tenor Khachatur Badalyan was starring in a production of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin at the Novaya Opera in Moscow in 2007 when in the middle of a scene in the third act everything went horribly wrong. “I had just finished a duet with [the character] Elsa and the bad guy is supposed to kill me with a sword,” Badalyan recalls. “So I’m supposed to grab a gun. But the prop guy forgot to put the gun where it was supposed to be onstage and I kept fumbling around for it. Meanwhile, the bad guy is looking at me like, “Are you going to shoot me or what?’ So I pretended to shoot him with magic. The baritone playing the bad guy just about died and the audience, they – they knew!”

But what a wonderfully long strange trip Badalyan’s career has been so far. In Montreal rehearsing for his starring role in Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s masterpiece  Rusalka being presented by L’Opéra de Montréal, Badalyan says, “I studied since childhood to become a painter and I [had] almost finished the school when I decided to become an economst and even got [that] diploma from university. That’s when I decided to become a singer. In my family we always liked to listen to classical music. So I have always  loved opera. But I never imagined it would become my profession.”

Album: Launch - Steve Galluccio's In Piazza San Domenico

Steve Galluccio autographing his book

STEVE GALLUCCIO LAUNCHES PAPERBACK OF HIS HIT PLAY 'IN PIAZZA SAN DOMENICO'

By Richard Burnett (Photos: Richard Burnett)

Montreal playwright Steve Galluccio – best-known for scripting the films Mambo Italiano and Funkytown – launched the paperback version of his hit 2010 play In Piazza San Domenico at Montreal's Centaur Theatre on September 11.

Feature: Nicole Cabell, soprano

(Photo: Devon Cass)

The reluctant diva

American soprano Nicole Cabell brings star-wattage to L’Opera de Montreal’s season-opening production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro

By Richard Burnett

Montreal audiences have been clamouring for American soprano Nicole Cabell since she made her one-shot appearance at L’Opéra de Montreal’s Gala back in 2005 – the same year Cabell won the Cardiff Singer of the World competition.

Cabell now finally makes her company debut as La Contessa Almaviva in Mozart’s masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which originally premiered at Vienna’s Burgtheater in May 1786 and was last produced at L’Opéra de Montréal in 2003.

Review: The Lion King

J. Anthony Crane as “Scar” and Dionne Randolph as “Mufasa” face off in 

THE LION KING National Tour.  ©Disney.  Photo Credit:  Joan Marcus.

Hakuna matata

Montreal production of The Lion King goes off without a hitch

by Richard Burnett

The Sunday Feature: Kendra Moore (The Lion King)

Kendra Moore (photo: John Ballard)

The Lion Queen

Canadian entertainer Kendra Moore’s triumphant return to Montreal with The Lion King

By Richard Burnett

Profile: Puelo Deir (Toronto Fringe)

Puelo Deir in a publicity still from his one-man show You’ve Got to be Kidding!

  

HOLY TRANITY! 

ONE CRANK, A DIRECTOR AND THREE STUDMUFFINS! 

by Richard Burnett (reprinted with permission from Three Dollar Bill)

I call him the Larry Kramer of Montreal because whenever I need a good old-fashioned loudmouth gay activist quote for a news story, I know I can always call Montreal gay living legend Puelo Deir. 

Deir, that fabulous bitch, got her start in Montreal hosting Queer Corps on CKUT two lifetimes ago, produced the benefit at Parc Lafontaine that helped pay the $5,000 in fines of those arrested at Montreal’s Stonewall,  Sex Garage, in the hot summer of 1990. Deir also co-founded Montreal’s world-renowned Divers/Cité Festival with Suzanne Girard; and for years produced the Queer Comics showcase at Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival.

Mado Lamotte Mouths Off (about The Drag Races) (Fringe 2011)

As always...provocative

Scooch over Rupaul

Mado is the world’s REAL Drag Race queen!

By Richard Burnett reprinted from Three Dollar Bill with permission

Few drag queens on Earth are in the same league as Montreal’s famed (and infamous) Mado La Motte, so-called because patrons at Poodles’ nightclub on The Main in Montreal thought she was so ugly they dubbed her “The Mutt.” Thus, Mado ‘La Motte’ was born.

When that other great drag queen, Lady Bunny of New York – who co-founded Wigstock and attended the bastard child of Wigstock, Mascara, the biggest drag show on the planet at Montreal’s Divers/Cite Festival a couple of years ago – she told Mado backstage, “What a fabulous show, darling!"

Fringe 2011 Profile: Hedwig and The Angry Inch

ANTONIO BAVARO GIVES GOOD HED (WIG) AT MONTREAL FRINGE!

“We are staging it to make it truer to Hedwig’s punk roots by having the perfect environment at Katacombes.”

by Richard Burnett (from Three Dollar Bill, with permission)

“I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch in theatres the week it opened on a first date back in 2001,” says actor Antonio Bavaro (a.ka. Montreal drag queen Connie Lingua). “I have no idea where the guy I was with ended up, but I am still in adoration of [Hedwig creator] John Cameron Mitchell.”

Bavaro stars in the upcoming Montreal production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Montreal Fringe Festival that will be performed beginning June 12 at local punk-rock club Katacombes on The Main.

Feature: The Gay Fringe

Top Gay Picks at the 2011 Montreal Fringe Festival

By Richard Burnett (Reprinted from Three Dollar Bill by permission)

Few know more than Steve Galluccio how incredible a launching pad the Fringe Festival is. The openly-gay Galluccio launched his career at the Fringe two decades ago with She's The Queen in 1991, and has since gone on to fame and glory. His 2003 play Mambo Italiano – a poignant comedy about two closeted gay Italian lovers – was translated into French by none other than Michel Tremblay, has been performed on stages around the world, been adapted into a successful movie co-starring Ginette Reno and Paul Sorvino, and will soon become a Broadway musical. 

But it all started at the Montreal Fringe. So Galluccio agreed to be their festival spokesperson this year. 

Review: La Bohème

Marianne Fiset as Mimi (Photo: Yves Renaud)

Bugs clears the aria

L’Opera de Montreal’s new million-dollar La Boheme doesn’t quite make the cut

By Richard “Bugs” Burnett

 Man, I had such high hopes for L’Opera de Montreal’s brand-new season-closing production of Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème. As its talented director Alain Gauthier told The Charlebois Post in a preview feature story last week, “It’s pretty hard to do a shitty La Bohème… I’m not straying far from the original production of La Bohème, which is beloved by audiences who don’t like it when you mess around with a classic.”

Gauthier didn’t stray far from the original script at all. Problem is, this production – budgeted at a whopping $1.15 million – spent a ton of cash on a new set that never properly served the plot. The central new piece is a factory-window-like backdrop that also doubled as a cheesy silhouette of the 19th-century Paris skyline as seen from dirt-poor bohemian Rodolfo’s unbelievably huge Attic apartment. The rest of the set was essentially made up of steps and several multi-purpose chimneys that made this reporter wonder where all the money was spent.

The Sunday Feature: Gardenia (FTA, 2011)

(Gardenia, Photo credit: Luc Monsaert)

The Art of Drag

Gardenia is poignant meditation on beauty and age

By Richard Burnett (printed from Fugues with permission)

I have been to just about every major drag event in London, Sydney, Paris, New York, New Orleans, Vegas and Montreal, and as drag culture has morphed into a universal phenomenon, it is evident it has also become increasingly homogenous and mainstream. There are no longer any great differences between, for instance, French and English drag performers (if there ever were), except for perhaps in Quebec where audiences still really love their clown-like drag queens like Montreal icon Mado La Motte  – so-called when she started her career at Poodles nightclub on the Main back in 1987 because patrons there thought she looked like a mutt.

“She looks like a clown!” my six-year-old brother Skye told me as he pointed to Mado at his first Gay Pride parade in Montreal over a decade ago. When I told Mado about it afterwards, she replied, “He’s right, I am a clown!”

Feature: Backstage at L'Opéra de Montréal

Antoine Bélanger and Marianne Fiset rehearse the death scene

A Day at the Opera

The Charlebois Post goes backstage for the making of L’Opéra de Montréal’s all-new million-dollar La Boheme

A CharPo exclusive by Richard Burnett

(Photos by Richard Burnett)

Even out of costume, rehearsing Mimi’s death scene in Act 4 of Puccini’s masterpiece La Bohème, the two stars of L’Opera de Montreal’s brand-new production of La Bohème are riveting. Canadian soprano Marianne Fiset, who plays Mimi, and Canadian tenor Antoine Bélanger, who plays Rodolfo, do the scene over and over, in the enormous basement rehearsal studio at Place des Arts. They are accompanied by a pianist, as well as by conductor Giuseppe Petraroia of the Victoria Symphony and La Bohème director Alain Gauthier.

Fiset interrupts the scene and asks the director, “If Rodolfo is telling me he loves me, shouldn’t he be looking at me?” 

Alain Gauthier then takes the place of Antoine Belanger and shows his stars how to do the scene.

Advance: Equus

Lamont with horses from Equus (photo: Village Scene)

It Ain't Harry Potter Nekkid

by Richard Burnett (from Hour, with permission)

Most folks know the play Equus because it starred that kid from Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, stripping buck naked onstage in both London’s West End and on Broadway. All in the name of art, of course, for Playwright Peter Shaffer’s famed 1973 play, which tells the psychodrama (inspired by a real-life incident) of psychiatrist Martin Dysart uncovering why 17-year-old Alan Strang – sexually obsessed with horses – deliberately blinds six horses.

Strang is portrayed in the Montreal production by local actor Bobby Lamont, who doesn’t have a problem stripping for the stage. “To be honest, I haven’t spent any time worrying about how my own particular naked body will look in the context of our production of Equus,” says the handsome Lamont. “I don’t think any amount of worry would help to make the performances any more real for our audiences. It is not my body that is the story, after all, either. And it would be vain of me to attribute it much importance by worrying about it. My concern is entirely with making sure I give every ounce of my energy to inhabiting the heart and mind of a beautiful and tragic character.”