February 28, 2024 • 25 mins
Embark on a riveting journey with The Opera Glasses Podcast as we host the magnificent Canadian baritone Elliot Madore, who opens up about the nuances of embodying roles in both contemporary and time-honoured operas. Elliot unveils the behind-the-scenes magic of collaborating with composer Matthew Aucoin for his role in Eurydice (Boston Lyric Opera) and contrasts this with his most recent performances with Edmonton Opera in the title role of their Don Giovanni.
He reflects on his long career to-date: the challenges of sustaining a career in opera, and what has given him the focus, and continued drive to deliver consistently fantastic performances.
This conversation delves into Elliot's growing Identity project which explores his own identity in collaboration with creatives including Canadian director Joel Ivany, composer Dinuk Wijeratne and acclaimed poet Shauntay Grant. This project signals the evolving dialogue within the opera community, inviting listeners to contemplate the transformative power of the Performing Arts.
All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by the editor of Opera Canada, currently Michael Jones after Elizabeth Bowman hosted seasons 1 and 2. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Elizabeth Bowman (00:01):
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and this is the
Opera Glasses Podcast.
Today I have Canadian GrammyAward-winning baritone Elliot
Madore with me.
He has sung with major operacompanies and orchestras
throughout Europe, United States, Asia and, of course, Canada.
He's a very interesting artist.
He started very young and he issustaining a wonderful career
(00:25):
for himself.
He is also the cover artist forthe current winter edition of
Opera Canada magazine, which ison newsstands now.
Anyway, excited to have Elliothere today.
Let's get to it, Elliot.
Welcome to the Opera GlassesPodcast.
Thanks so much for being here.
Elliot Madore (00:43):
Thank you for having me.
Elizabeth Bowman (00:44):
So where are we talking to you from?
Elliot Madore (00:46):
I am in Boston right now.
From my hotel room, I'm lookingout the window at Fenway Park.
We're in rehearsals for MattAucoin's Eurydice.
I'm performing the role ofOrpheus and we're going to be
opening in about a week's time.
Elizabeth Bowman (01:03):
How long have you been working on that role?
Have you performed it before?
I mean, it's obviously had itsworld premiere very recently.
Elliot Madore (01:10):
Yeah.
So it had its world premiere inLA and they recently did it at
the Met, and Matt wanted to do achamber version of this opera,
and so Boston Lyric Operacommissioned this chamber
version, which is a lot moreintimate, because Matt really
wanted to explore a much moreclosely knit piece.
(01:32):
I guess you could say.
The version that he's producedis quite beautiful and we've
been working on this now.
We've been in rehearsals forthree weeks now and I've been
working on this piece for but Iwould say, about three months in
total.
It's a tricky piece, I wouldsay rhythmically very difficult.
It's been a joy to work on itand the music itself is truly
(01:55):
very, very beautiful.
Elizabeth Bowman (01:56):
And is Matthew there?
Is he?
Elliot Madore (01:58):
Yeah, he's conducting the piece.
He's conducting it, so it'sbeen really, really great to get
to know him.
I'd never met him before.
Of course, I've been a fan ofhis work, but it's been a joy
working with him.
He's a fantastic conductor,obviously a very gifted composer
as well.
Elizabeth Bowman (02:13):
When you're working with the composer
directly.
In this iteration, is there anyflexibility with what happens
musically with your role, or areyou reading from the score
exactly, or are you able to makesuggestions based on what works
for your voice?
Elliot Madore (02:30):
Matt's been great with everyone.
He's extremely flexible, and ifthere's something that doesn't
quite work, we can certainlytalk to him about that.
And at the same time, he has avery clear idea of what he wants
and how he wants the piece tosound.
And I think the joy of workingwith him is that he's
extraordinarily articulate, andso when you ask him a question
(02:54):
about the character or what hewants musically, he's able to
articulate that in a reallybeautiful artistic way, and so
it's almost kind of poetic,actually, and so it's been a joy
to work with him on that andhe's a great guy.
And so if we do need somethingchanged, yeah, he's definitely
very flexible in that regard.
Elizabeth Bowman (03:13):
Yeah, you've done a fair amount of new music
in your career.
You have a steady diet of it.
I assume that helps with allthe traditional repertoire as
well, like in terms of advisinghow you approach it.
All keeps it fresh, I imagine.
Elliot Madore (03:29):
Yeah, no, I love, I love singing new music.
I think there's somethingwonderful about not having to
carry around the baggage of apiece or having to deal with
preconceived expectations of apiece.
I really enjoy that and, at thesame time, producing something
that's modern and fresh andinteresting and something that's
(03:54):
never been heard before.
To explore that realm is.
It's really artisticallysatisfying.
So I very much enjoy thatprocess.
I've had the pleasure ofworking with, most recently,
John Adams.
We did Girls of the Golden West, his new opera, and we just
recorded that with the LAPhilharmonic, and that process
(04:15):
in general was really reallysatisfying.
Also to work with Peter Sellers, who directed the piece and who
wrote the libretto for thepiece as well.
I enjoy creating something fromscratch.
There's something that youcan't really replicate that, of
course, with traditionalrepertoire.
Elizabeth Bowman (04:35):
You're coming from Edmonton, where you were
singing the title role in DonGiovanni, speaking of
traditional repertoire.
So it's like quite ajuxtaposition from the Mozart
Don Giovanni to this MatthewAucoin.
And how was Edmonton?
Was it freezing?
Elliot Madore (04:54):
Edmonton.
You know what?
The weather wasn't bad.
I was kind of disappointed.
Actually.
When I was performing in Zurich, I had a friend of mine who
actually, strangely enough,lives in Edmonton and he was
singing with me there and hetold me that it was minus 50 or
something, which is pretty crazy.
So that was my expectation.
I thought I was going to gothere and it would be minus 50,
but it was pretty mild actually.
(05:15):
You know, I love working, Joeland I, Joel Ivany.
We have a wonderfulrelationship.
He's a good friend of mine, sowhenever I have the opportunity
to work with him I definitelytry it and make that happen.
And this Giovanni came up and itwas in English and Joel had a
new concept about the piece.
You really wanted to lean intothe comedic side of it, and so
(05:37):
it was, I would say, a lot lessdangerous, I would say maybe,
and just really leaning into,you know, the Bufo aspects of
that piece.
And the audience loved it.
We really enjoyed it.
We had a lot of fun and ofcourse it was a little bit
tricky for my brain to switchfrom Mozart to Matt Aucoin
(06:02):
relatively quickly.
So that was tough, but that wasa challenge, but I enjoyed it.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:08):
So you recently did Don Giovanni with
Joel, with the Banff and theNational Arts Center
collaboration as well, and thatwas obviously in Italian.
Elliot Madore (06:16):
Yes.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:16):
So was there a similar element to how you guys
did it or other than theEnglish translation?
What were the differences?
I'm just curious.
Elliot Madore (06:24):
Well, the main differences in the Edmonton
production.
The rest of the thieves werereplaced by spoken dialogue in
English.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:33):
Interesting yeah.
Elliot Madore (06:35):
And Joel really wanted to lean into the local
aspect of the piece, meaningthere was a lot of Edmonton
slash Alberta references whichthe audience loved.
For example, I referred tomyself as the great one.
Of course, the Wayne Gretzkyreference, which is appropriate,
(06:57):
for anybody who is a hockey fanwouldn't have that one, and so
he really wanted to lean intothat aspect.
And, of course, when we did itin Ottawa and when the young
artists did it in Banff, it wasall Italian, Italian recitative.
I think that lent to a moretraditional rendering of the
piece, even though there was alittle bit more of a modernized
(07:20):
take on it in terms of a set, Ithink all of us.
The portrayals of thecharacters were a little bit
more traditional, I would say.
Elizabeth Bowman (07:30):
Joel is doing really great things for opera
right now.
His attention to his audience,who is coming, who could
possibly come to the opera, isvisible in the projects that he
is executing.
So I'm grateful to him from theindustry standpoint for all the
(07:52):
work that he's been doing.
I mean, the audience enjoymentof Don Giovanni in that way is
just a wonderful thing.
Elliot Madore (07:59):
Yeah, absolutely, I think, joel, one of his
greatest strengths, beyond beinga great director and a great
storyteller, I think one of thethings that he's able to do is
to really, I think, as youalluded to, to really understand
his audience and to know how tobring them to the theater, how
to attract these people to thetheater.
(08:20):
You know he certainly did thatwith ATG and he's doing that
with Edmonton Opera.
When we were there, it waspretty much sold out for both
performances, which was amazingbecause the theater in Edmonton
is quite large, so to have thatbe completely packed was really,
really special, and Joelcertainly knows how to do that.
Elizabeth Bowman (08:40):
That's good news, because that's not
necessarily the overarchingnarrative for our business right
now, so that's really wonderful.
I want to talk to you on a JoelIvany related note about
identity, because I mentioned itin my editor's letter as a
project that I admired and Iunderstand that it's potentially
(09:03):
being expanded uponartistically and I just wanted
to touch on that in ourconversation today.
So can you tell me a bit abouthow that project came to life
and where it's going now?
Elliot Madore (09:14):
I guess I could start with just a little bit of
background on myself that madehelp to bring a little bit of
context to the piece.
So I'm biracial, my father isblack, my mother is white.
I've never met my father, andso I had always, from a young
age, struggled with my identity,with knowing how to identify
(09:38):
and where to identify, and so itwas a little bit of a void that
I had to.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and this is the
Opera Glasses Podcast.
Today I have Canadian GrammyAward-winning baritone Elliot
Madore with me.
He has sung with major operacompanies and orchestras
throughout Europe, United States, Asia and, of course, Canada.
He's a very interesting artist.
He started very young and he issustaining a wonderful career
(00:25):
for himself.
He is also the cover artist forthe current winter edition of
Opera Canada magazine, which ison newsstands now.
Anyway, excited to have Elliothere today.
Let's get to it, Elliot.
Welcome to the Opera GlassesPodcast.
Thanks so much for being here.
Elliot Madore (00:43):
Thank you for having me.
Elizabeth Bowman (00:44):
So where are we talking to you from?
Elliot Madore (00:46):
I am in Boston right now.
From my hotel room, I'm lookingout the window at Fenway Park.
We're in rehearsals for MattAucoin's Eurydice.
I'm performing the role ofOrpheus and we're going to be
opening in about a week's time.
Elizabeth Bowman (01:03):
How long have you been working on that role?
Have you performed it before?
I mean, it's obviously had itsworld premiere very recently.
Elliot Madore (01:10):
Yeah.
So it had its world premiere inLA and they recently did it at
the Met, and Matt wanted to do achamber version of this opera,
and so Boston Lyric Operacommissioned this chamber
version, which is a lot moreintimate, because Matt really
wanted to explore a much moreclosely knit piece.
(01:32):
I guess you could say.
The version that he's producedis quite beautiful and we've
been working on this now.
We've been in rehearsals forthree weeks now and I've been
working on this piece for but Iwould say, about three months in
total.
It's a tricky piece, I wouldsay rhythmically very difficult.
It's been a joy to work on itand the music itself is truly
(01:55):
very, very beautiful.
Elizabeth Bowman (01:56):
And is Matthew there?
Is he?
Elliot Madore (01:58):
Yeah, he's conducting the piece.
He's conducting it, so it'sbeen really, really great to get
to know him.
I'd never met him before.
Of course, I've been a fan ofhis work, but it's been a joy
working with him.
He's a fantastic conductor,obviously a very gifted composer
as well.
Elizabeth Bowman (02:13):
When you're working with the composer
directly.
In this iteration, is there anyflexibility with what happens
musically with your role, or areyou reading from the score
exactly, or are you able to makesuggestions based on what works
for your voice?
Elliot Madore (02:30):
Matt's been great with everyone.
He's extremely flexible, and ifthere's something that doesn't
quite work, we can certainlytalk to him about that.
And at the same time, he has avery clear idea of what he wants
and how he wants the piece tosound.
And I think the joy of workingwith him is that he's
extraordinarily articulate, andso when you ask him a question
(02:54):
about the character or what hewants musically, he's able to
articulate that in a reallybeautiful artistic way, and so
it's almost kind of poetic,actually, and so it's been a joy
to work with him on that andhe's a great guy.
And so if we do need somethingchanged, yeah, he's definitely
very flexible in that regard.
Elizabeth Bowman (03:13):
Yeah, you've done a fair amount of new music
in your career.
You have a steady diet of it.
I assume that helps with allthe traditional repertoire as
well, like in terms of advisinghow you approach it.
All keeps it fresh, I imagine.
Elliot Madore (03:29):
Yeah, no, I love, I love singing new music.
I think there's somethingwonderful about not having to
carry around the baggage of apiece or having to deal with
preconceived expectations of apiece.
I really enjoy that and, at thesame time, producing something
that's modern and fresh andinteresting and something that's
(03:54):
never been heard before.
To explore that realm is.
It's really artisticallysatisfying.
So I very much enjoy thatprocess.
I've had the pleasure ofworking with, most recently,
John Adams.
We did Girls of the Golden West, his new opera, and we just
recorded that with the LAPhilharmonic, and that process
(04:15):
in general was really reallysatisfying.
Also to work with Peter Sellers, who directed the piece and who
wrote the libretto for thepiece as well.
I enjoy creating something fromscratch.
There's something that youcan't really replicate that, of
course, with traditionalrepertoire.
Elizabeth Bowman (04:35):
You're coming from Edmonton, where you were
singing the title role in DonGiovanni, speaking of
traditional repertoire.
So it's like quite ajuxtaposition from the Mozart
Don Giovanni to this MatthewAucoin.
And how was Edmonton?
Was it freezing?
Elliot Madore (04:54):
Edmonton.
You know what?
The weather wasn't bad.
I was kind of disappointed.
Actually.
When I was performing in Zurich, I had a friend of mine who
actually, strangely enough,lives in Edmonton and he was
singing with me there and hetold me that it was minus 50 or
something, which is pretty crazy.
So that was my expectation.
I thought I was going to gothere and it would be minus 50,
but it was pretty mild actually.
(05:15):
You know, I love working, Joeland I, Joel Ivany.
We have a wonderfulrelationship.
He's a good friend of mine, sowhenever I have the opportunity
to work with him I definitelytry it and make that happen.
And this Giovanni came up and itwas in English and Joel had a
new concept about the piece.
You really wanted to lean intothe comedic side of it, and so
(05:37):
it was, I would say, a lot lessdangerous, I would say maybe,
and just really leaning into,you know, the Bufo aspects of
that piece.
And the audience loved it.
We really enjoyed it.
We had a lot of fun and ofcourse it was a little bit
tricky for my brain to switchfrom Mozart to Matt Aucoin
(06:02):
relatively quickly.
So that was tough, but that wasa challenge, but I enjoyed it.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:08):
So you recently did Don Giovanni with
Joel, with the Banff and theNational Arts Center
collaboration as well, and thatwas obviously in Italian.
Elliot Madore (06:16):
Yes.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:16):
So was there a similar element to how you guys
did it or other than theEnglish translation?
What were the differences?
I'm just curious.
Elliot Madore (06:24):
Well, the main differences in the Edmonton
production.
The rest of the thieves werereplaced by spoken dialogue in
English.
Elizabeth Bowman (06:33):
Interesting yeah.
Elliot Madore (06:35):
And Joel really wanted to lean into the local
aspect of the piece, meaningthere was a lot of Edmonton
slash Alberta references whichthe audience loved.
For example, I referred tomyself as the great one.
Of course, the Wayne Gretzkyreference, which is appropriate,
(06:57):
for anybody who is a hockey fanwouldn't have that one, and so
he really wanted to lean intothat aspect.
And, of course, when we did itin Ottawa and when the young
artists did it in Banff, it wasall Italian, Italian recitative.
I think that lent to a moretraditional rendering of the
piece, even though there was alittle bit more of a modernized
(07:20):
take on it in terms of a set, Ithink all of us.
The portrayals of thecharacters were a little bit
more traditional, I would say.
Elizabeth Bowman (07:30):
Joel is doing really great things for opera
right now.
His attention to his audience,who is coming, who could
possibly come to the opera, isvisible in the projects that he
is executing.
So I'm grateful to him from theindustry standpoint for all the
(07:52):
work that he's been doing.
I mean, the audience enjoymentof Don Giovanni in that way is
just a wonderful thing.
Elliot Madore (07:59):
Yeah, absolutely, I think, joel, one of his
greatest strengths, beyond beinga great director and a great
storyteller, I think one of thethings that he's able to do is
to really, I think, as youalluded to, to really understand
his audience and to know how tobring them to the theater, how
to attract these people to thetheater.
(08:20):
You know he certainly did thatwith ATG and he's doing that
with Edmonton Opera.
When we were there, it waspretty much sold out for both
performances, which was amazingbecause the theater in Edmonton
is quite large, so to have thatbe completely packed was really,
really special, and Joelcertainly knows how to do that.
Elizabeth Bowman (08:40):
That's good news, because that's not
necessarily the overarchingnarrative for our business right
now, so that's really wonderful.
I want to talk to you on a JoelIvany related note about
identity, because I mentioned itin my editor's letter as a
project that I admired and Iunderstand that it's potentially
(09:03):
being expanded uponartistically and I just wanted
to touch on that in ourconversation today.
So can you tell me a bit abouthow that project came to life
and where it's going now?
Elliot Madore (09:14):
I guess I could start with just a little bit of
background on myself that madehelp to bring a little bit of
context to the piece.
So I'm biracial, my father isblack, my mother is white.
I've never met my father, andso I had always, from a young
age, struggled with my identity,with knowing how to identify
(09:38):
and where to identify, and so itwas a little bit of a void that
I had to.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.