Some Enchanted Evening: Veterans of Opera and Musical Theatre On Tour
To those long-time observers of the Canadian music scene, the name Robert Missen likely would be familiar. Hamilton-born Missen is a veteran performer of many years in opera and music theatre. A protégé of the late Nicholas Goldschmidt, who convinced him to consider a career as a singer while still a student at the University of Guelph, Missen took the plunge. He performed with the Festival Singers, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and the Canadian Opera Company. He’s also a founding member of Tapestry Singers, which is now Tapestry Opera. After a twenty-year singing career, Missen moved into artist management, promotion, marketing, and impresario work, producing his own shows. He has worked with many great Canadian artists and organizations, including Maureen Forrester, Veronica Tennant, Stuart McLean, Michael Burgess, Sylvia Tyson, Joe Sealy, the Elmer Iseler Singers and Men of the Deeps.
My first encounter with Missen was in the late 90’s when he was representing contralto Maureen Forrester in the last years of her career. I interviewed Maureen for the tribute article when she became the first recipient of “The Rubies” — also known as the Opera Canada Awards. I needed her newly recorded CD, Interpretations of a Life, with pianist/songwriter David Warrack. Bob was representing both of them. Now, many years later, Bob Missen has remained an active member of the Canadian musical community. So I was not in the least bit surprised when he told me he is organizing an Ontario tour by several very well-known and loved Canadian artists. To celebrate Canada 150, the tour is billed as a Celebration of 150 Years of Operetta and Musical Theatre — how appropriate!
The artists on this tour are tenor Ben Heppner, soprano Rebecca Caine, mezzo Jean Stilwell, and bass Gary Relyea. Joining them is pianist David Warrack. The show will tour to six communities across southern Ontario in January and February 2017 — Kingston (Jan. 27), London (Jan. 29), St. Catharine (Jan. 31), Burlington (Feb. 1), Guelph (Feb. 2), Markham (Feb. 3), and Peterborough (Feb. 5). I’m familiar with the works of all four singers — Heppner, of course, needs no introduction. He’s simply the greatest Wagnerian tenor of our generation. I remember Rebecca Caine’s voice vividly when she sang Lulu at the COC twenty-five years ago, and also the world premiere of The Golden Ass by Randolph Peters, based on the book by Robertson Davies. Jean Stilwell wowed audiences with her 1986 Carmen, and has been hosting a morning arts show on 96.3 FM for years now. Gary Relyea is certainly one of the greatest basses Canada ever produced, and his son John can lay claim to that title as well.
I took this opportunity to ask Bob Missen a few questions about this tour:
JS: Tell us, Bob, how did you come up with the idea of this concert tour?
RM: Some Enchanted Evening has an interesting provenance. I was chatting with my presenting colleague here in Burlington a couple of years ago, who mentioned that an American agent had been pitching to him a Broadway tribute featuring third-tier Broadway singers. I was quite incensed, and said I felt presenters should be presenting topflight Canadians in this repertoire. Why not put together a celebration of 150 years of musical theatre and operetta for Canada’s Sesquicentennial? Presenters agreed, so here we are.
JS: The four singers and the pianists are all very well-known veterans of classical music. Have you worked with all of them before?
RM: I have worked with four of them to quite a considerable extent. Jean Stilwell, I first met in the Festival Singers, Canada’s first professional choir. She was one of the youngest singers that Elmer Iseler ever hired. We were then colleagues in Tapestry Singers for over five years. I represented Jean’s cabaret shows many years later. Gary Relyea was my voice teacher when I was at the Opera School at the University of Toronto. He called me a couple of years into Robert Missen Artists and asked me if I would be interested to represent a new project featuring his talented family. Voices Relyea toured extensively for several years, and gave Gary’s son John a golden opportunity to get a handle on the singing game. He has not done too badly, has he?!
JS: No he hasn’t! John has a great voice and is now in demand all over the world. I’ve heard him everywhere, including Munich and London…
RM: I first met David Warrack when I was a student in the Summer Musical Theatre program at Banff. A number of years later Maureen Forrester’s agent asked me if I would be interested to represent her concert program with David, which led to five wonderful years as Maureen’s last agent. David and I subsequently collaborated on several other projects, the most recent of which, The Dream Tour, featured the late, great musical theatre tenor Michael Burgess and Rebecca Caine. I met Rebecca at the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the legendary Toronto production of Phantom of the Opera. That attraction toured extensively across Canada for several seasons. I first met Ben Heppner when he was singing in the tenor section of Montreal’s Tudor Singers and I was singing with the Elmer Iseler Singers. We sang together in a couple of massed choir concerts, I believe. We ran into one another over the years, but this is the first time we have actually collaborated on one of my attractions.
JS: How did you entice the retired Ben Heppner to come back to perform?
RM: You might recall that we were all quite astonished when we heard that Ben had joined the cast of the Toronto production of the musical Titanic two years ago. After all, hadn’t he announced his retirement?! As he explained to the media, he had retired from opera and symphonic work, but not from singing. When I heard this, I contacted Ben and asked him if Some Enchanted Evening might pique his interest. It did, so here we are.
JS: I understand the repertoire is opera, operetta, Broadway musicals etc. Do you plan to inject a bit of Canadian content into the programming, given that this year marks Canada’s 150th birthday?
RM: A good question. There is no opera in the concert, unless you consider Carmen to be an opera. Technically it is an opera-comique, as you know. The operetta we have here in Canada, works by Calixa Lavallee and the like, would have been interesting to present from a historical perspective, but it hardly compares to the music of Strauss and Lehar. We have some very fine contemporary musical theatre composers in this country, but most of it does not suit these particular singers. I am still hoping that we might be able to present a mini-musical created especially for this quartet by David Warrack in further iterations of this venture.
#LUDWIGVAN
