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.”

Theatre For Thought, November 12, 2011

THE MUSICAL AND MONTREAL

It seems only natural we would question the limits of the musical stage

joel fishbane

Earlier this week, the Gazette’s Pat Donnelly asked my favourite question: “Can musical theatre successfully encompass a full literary range? Or does it automatically trivialize?”. She was writing in reference to In Your Face Entertainment’s production of The Wild Party, to which she gave a (deservedly) mixed review. A question like Ms. Donnelley’s reveals  much about the theatre community in which it is asked. No one would ask this question in New York City or Toronto; but here in Montreal, birthplace of Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus and Schwartz’s: The Musical, it seems only natural that we would question the limits of the musical stage.

Review: (Montreal) God of Carnage

l-r  Mark Camacho, Ellen David, Janine Theriault and Marcel Jeannin

(photo: lucetg.com)

Folie à quatre

Roy Surette’s production is a well-oiled machine. Each actor turns out a character with finely-tuned mannerisms and the propensity to go absolutely nuts. 

by Sarah Deshaies

The lights come up to reveal four people set up in a well-heeled living room. Two couples are both awkwardly hammering out the wording of a statement that will keep them in this living room and in front of us for the next 90 minutes, their flaws and foibles exploited and revealed in minute detail under a microscope.

The Friday Five, November 11, 2011

5 Things That Should Replace The Orchestra Pit. 

The orchestra pit is one of the oldest and flimsiest theatre institutions. An underground stable of men and women with bowties and puffy shirts, stealing the attention away from the actors onstage and keeping us from moving forward into the 21st century. In this day and age, audiences are looking for something more interactive in the theatre, bolder and more inspired. It is time to replace that wasted space underneath the stage with something new...

by Matt G. of Matt and Kyle and Matt 

CharPo's Real Theatre!, November 11, 2011

CharPo's Picture of The Week, November 10, 2011

This cannot end well...

Mark Camacho losing it in Centaur's God of Carnage

(seated Marcel Jeannin and Janine Theriault. Photo: lucetg.com)

Beyond Our Fourth Wall, November 9, 2011

Brassard’s imaginative approaches to memory. 

Nov. 23-26 -  Marie Brassard

Moi qui me parle a moi-mème dans le futur

Theatre…en français

by Estelle Rosen

Museum night guard trying to assemble various parts of his identity; spends nights with Herman Hesse, Augustre Renoir and Chet Baker.

Nov 28 – Dec.17  Gaëtan -  Solo performance by Marcel Pomerlo

Momentum Theatre

Theatre Quat Sous

Historical portrait of 20^th century utopian view 

Dec. 1-17  Pharmak(ha)os

Espace Libre 

After Dark, November 8, 2011

Theatre in Chains
Why aren't we bitchier about our media?
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois

There is a war between the Ceeb and Quebecor. It is an open war. It is an ugly war. It was ratcheted up a notch this last week when Radio-Canada (the French-language CBC) broadcast an hour-long investigation of the Quebecor machine and its abuses.

I don't know in depth how Quebecor works outside of Quebec. I have never watched the Fox News of the North nor read the Sun papers outside of Quebec. But let me paint a portrait of Quebecor and how it works in real terms in one case study.

The Upstage Interview: Vern Thiessen

I thought I’m never going to get away with a 15 minute embalming scene at the end of act one without a couple of yuks.

Upstage Contributor Stephanie Breton spoke with playwright Vern Thiessen about  his play nominated for the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award. Below is an abridged version edited by Estelle Rosen, CharPo editor-in-chief.

UPSTAGE

Congrats on the GG nomination for your play Lenin’s Embalmers. The announcement will take place on Nov. 15. Is it nail biting time?

THIESSEN

I’ve been on both sides of the table. Last year I was on the jury that decided the winner. I’m thrilled to be nominated but the statistical probability of winning that award a second time is unbelievably low. There’s only two people in 50 years that have won it twice in the drama category, so I’m not counting my chickens.

Memoir: David Fennario's Without a Parachute

Playwright and cast in Verdun

(l-r standing: Lucie Beaudoin, designer, Charlebois, Marie-Christine Legault,

Ernest Plitong, Jacoba Knaapen, Fennario, Jim Murchison; Bob Barnard)

Mounting Fennario
A young company makes noise even as it says farewell
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois


[Ed: This is the first of an occasional series of first-person pieces on moments in Canadian Theatre's past. Anyone wishing to write a memoir for The Charlebois Post, please contact us.]

It was the last big hey-day of English-language theatre in Montreal. It was the end of the 70s and we had two major newspapers (therefore two critics who, it was suspected, despised each other), weeklies in every small town on the Island and radio and television was local and covered the arts. The possibilities, for a young theatre company, were enormous and every kid coming out of theatre school had a place to go (if not a salary to live on).