BARBARA HANNIGAN & BERTRAND CHAMAYOU
Where: McPherson Playhouse, 3 Centennial Square, Victoria
When: Monday, Dec. 2, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $65-$130 from the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121) or
Barbara Hannigan’s previous recital tour of North America took place seven years ago, and did not include stops in Western sa国际传媒 on the itinerary.
Hannigan said she prioritized visiting Victoria and Vancouver on her current 10-city tour of the U.S. and sa国际传媒, which includes a McPherson Playhouse recital Monday with pianist Bertrand Chamayou of Toulouse. Not only does her twin brother, Brian, live in Surrey, the operatic soprano and classical conductor has many friends and colleagues on Vancouver Island — Victoria tenor Benjamin Butterfield included.
“Ben has been asking me to come out for a while and do something at the University of Victoria,” Hannigan said during an interview with the sa国际传媒. “So we added a date in Victoria, and a day at the university.”
Butterfield, who heads the voice program at UVic, is a longtime friend. They met when she was a young singer working in Toronto, and Hannigan said she later performed with both Butterfield and his wife, soprano Anne Grimm. “We go back 25 years, maybe more.”
At Butterfield’s request, Hannigan and Chamayou will lead masterclasses with UVic students at the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall on Dec. 3, from 2:30 p.m. until 5 p.m. Hannigan was happy to oblige: At this stage in her career, she’s more interested in the who and the why than the where and the when of a performance, she said.
“That’s how everything comes about. I’m more responsive to a personal invitation, because at a certain point you get a lot of invitations. You have to make decisions based on where you want to go and why you want to go there. sa国际传媒ions have a resonance.”
Hannigan, 53, was born near Halifax, Nova Scotia and currently lives in the countryside in Finistère, on the northwest coast of France.
She will be making her debut in five of the 10 cities on her current tour, including Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, San Diego, California, and Rochester, New York.
And she is still searching for that intangible magic, regardless of where she lands, be it performances with the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra or the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (where she will begin her tenure as chief conductor and artistic director in 2026.)
She has lived in Europe for the better part of 30 years, and because she traverses the world as one of the most in-demand singers and conductors in the world of opera, she puts a premium on rest.
Hannigan’s performances are more adventurous than most in her field, which begets a long post-concert recovery period. “Sleep is our best recovery tool,” she said. “You need to galvanize. You need your strength.”
Her adventurous spirit — described by The New York Times as a combination of “uncanny command, wild-eyed deliberateness, spot-on pitch and eerily alluring beauty” — is matched by the quality of her artistic pursuits.
She won a Grammy Award for best classical solo vocal album in 2018, and Juno Awards in 2018 and 2019 in the same genre; she was also made a member of the Order of sa国际传媒 in 2016, for her contributions to singing and conducting.
Hannigan said she loves being challenged, even if that means she ends up pushing the limits on occasion. Her upcoming performance in Victoria marks the arrival of Pacific Opera’s Luminary Series, which will get off on the right foot with what Hannigan calls a “virtuosic” program of works by Olivier Messiaen, Alexander Scriabin and John Zorn, composers whose repertoire could hardly be classified as straightforward.
“It shows everything I’ve got,” Hannigan said of the 70-minute recital, which includes Zorn’s especially daunting Jumalattaret, once considered by some an impossible piece to be performed live. “It’s a real powerhouse.”
