Early Music Vancouver's Apollo e Dafne traces arc of transformation

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      Not even the greatest gods of antiquity had things all their way, according to mythology. When sun deity Apollo took an unhealthy fancy to the chaste nymph Daphne and started to get physical, she metamorphosed into a laurel tree, instantly and permanently—a transformation devastatingly effective in cooling the god’s ardour and inducing reflection. It marks the dramatic climax of George Frederick Handel’s baroque cantata Apollo e Dafne.

      “The first time I performed the work—in New York with a small company—it was staged,” says Douglas Williams, Apollo in Early Music Vancouver’s production, reached in Berkeley, California. “For her transformation into a tree the soprano took a houseplant, sort of molested it, and covered herself in the potting soil—which was the best they could come up with.”

      No plants are harmed or singers soiled in the Vancouver presentation of Handel’s masterpiece, which he wrote in 1709 at the end of a three-year sojourn in Italy. He travelled to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice, and was exposed to the Italian style of composers such as Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Arcangelo Corelli. The many works Handel created at this time reflect their influence.

      “This is one of Handel’s early pieces and the arias are relatively short compared to what he would be doing 10 or 20 years later,” says Williams. “The florid passagework and coloratura is totally in the Italian style. Handel is starting to show off the virtuosity of the singer just for the beauty of what he or she can do. This continued into his later writing, in big operas such as Orlando. In Apollo e Dafne Handel shows he can compose in a style that serves the story and follows the dramatic flow, writing music to bring the listener through the story. And he’s doing it at a kind of microlevel here.”

      Apollo e Dafne is relatively short for a dramatic musical work and has only two characters, whereas the longer three- to four-hour operas feature many—often with names and story lines that aren’t easy to follow. “This piece contains within it a beautiful arc, starting with Apollo at the extreme of his hubris and pride and ending not only with the transformation of Daphne but Apollo’s own transformation into someone completely vulnerable,” Williams explains. “There’s this tremendous dramatic arc or decrescendo from his two triumphant arias to the final plaintive lament.”

      Bass-baritone Douglas Williams plays Apollo in Early Music Vancouver's presentation of Apollo e Dafne.

      The work poses a series of musical challenges for singers. “The arc for Apollo requires you to use all the vocal colours possible,” says Williams. “Even though at the beginning you’re singing full-on, you have to find that vulnerable colour at the end. It’s tricky to sustain the energy throughout and find all these different vocal colours to show the wide range of emotions.”

      Soprano Yulia Van Doren faces similar demands in the role of Daphne. “Her journey is in a way one-dimensional, because from the moment that she becomes aware of Apollo she spurns him, and she’s a bit angry and scared,” she says, on the line from her home in Chicago. “Daphne starts out with a really lovely pastoral song, unaware that he’s watching her. After that, she’s constantly rejecting. It’s a challenge to make sure you bring in a lot of colours. But the main challenge of the piece is the music itself—Handel is hard to sing and requires a large range. It really stretches the voice.”

      Baroque operas also test the singers’ abilities as musicians, since they have to add their own embellishments. “Almost all Handel’s arias are da capo in the form A-B-A,” says Van Doren, “which means you sing the melody once through, then you sing a little middle part that’s unrelated melodically, then you sing the first part of the music again. This time you have to add in all sorts of these flourishes, which takes work to figure out. They need to fit the specific period, and you have to be aware of the appropriate choice of ornament depending whether you’re singing, say, a Handel aria or a French baroque aria. Even within that, there can be subgenres. But it’s one of the things I love most about singing baroque music—you have the opportunity to add your own colours and ideas.”

      Williams and Van Doren need to do a great deal of preparation for Apollo e Dafne as well as the other vocal piece on the program, Handel’s duet “Tacete, ohimè, tacete”, which dates from the start of his Italian sojourn. “All that work for one night only is a bit of a shame, but that’s in the nature of what I do,” says Van Doren. “I’m not strictly an opera singer, because I focus on concerts rather than staged performances. It means a lot of travel, a lot of loneliness, and a lot of music to learn. But I prefer to do this. The beauty is that, unlike full opera productions, there’s no fourth wall separating me from the audience—I’m acknowledging that the audience is there and we’re having this experience together.”

      Early Music Vancouver presents Apollo e Dafne at the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday (March 18).

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