Remembering Mary’s Wedding

Event Description

Weaving together text and music from the 2011 opera of the same name, composer Andrew Paul MacDonald and librettist Stephen Massicotte have created this new interpretation of the Mary’s Wedding story featuring a narrator and two singers with piano, creating an intimate opportunity for remembrance.

Synopsis
In Remembering Mary’s Wedding, a professor’s lecture on World War I in Canada becomes the gateway into another story. Arriving late and unsettled, he begins his talk, but soon memory and imagination take over. The lecture transforms into a frame for select songs and scenes from Mary’s Wedding, evoking a tender love story shaped by the turmoil of war. Blending history with theatre, the piece offers audiences both a glimpse of the classroom and a moving remembrance on stage.

In 2008, Pacific Opera Victoria invited composer Andrew MacDonald and playwright Stephen Massicotte to adapt Stephen’s award-winning play Mary’s Wedding into a new opera. The original play, a poignant story of love and remembrance, moves between the wide-open Prairies, the trenches of France, and the Battle of Moreuil Wood in March 1918. After three years in development, the opera had its world première in Victoria on November 10, 2011 (photo of the original production displayed to the right). In 2015, Mary’s Wedding toured local schools, including Victoria High School and the University of Victoria.

Memories have the ability to shape who we are, but it isn’t only what we remember – it’s also how we remember. In the spirit of remembrance, Pacific Opera Victoria is once again partnering with the University of Victoria Special Collections and Archives. A key element of the production will be content from the archives created by the University for the 2011 world premiere of the production. Using photos and elements from the archives, the fictional story becomes rooted through a visual connection to the reality of that time. The photographs from the archives will make up the visual background of the narrative story unfolding from the performers. The archive is available online for anyone interested seeing more of Victoria’s history in World War I.

This event is made possible by an extraordinary gift from Robert G. Milne, in honour of Larry Ryan.