MID-WINTER CHARMER

UBC Opera plays Rota rarity

Nancy Hermiston's UBC Opera Ensemble presents Nino Rota's too rarely heard The Florentine Straw Hat as its latest offering, today through Sunday, in a fully staged run at the Chan Centre.

Jonathan Girard, director of orchestral activities and associate professor, conducting and ensembles, leads the student cast and orchestra in what is sure to be a mid-winter charmer.

Nino Rota (1911-79) is perhaps best remembered as Federico Fellini's preferred composer of film scores; he also worked with Luchino Visconti and on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. A child prodigy, Rota became astonishingly prolific; in his prime he could come up with multiple movie scores each year, while writing music in every other genre of the classical repertoire.

Rewarding and profitable as all that film work might have been, to some extent it has overshadowed his manifest gifts as a composer.

“Rota is extraordinarily undervalued as a concert writer,” says Girard. “He is especially noted for his chamber work and concertos. The trombone concerto especially comes to mind.”

Un chapeau de paille d'Italie started out as an 1851 French stage farce by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel and has been a hit ever since, known variously as The Italian — or Florentine — Straw Hat, or, in a memorable 1936 production by 21-year-old Orson Welles, Horse Eats Hat. French director René Clair's 1928 film version (available on YouTube) is still regarded as one of the most ingenious of silent film comedies. Girard has unbridled enthusiasm for Rota's operatic treatment, which combines remarkable skill with a light touch.

“His genius is that he is able to combine all these motifs in an extraordinary, almost Mozartian way. Rota and his mother wrote the libretto together, which in itself is pretty unusual. The work has many individual roles, the music is lively and charming, and there's something in it for everybody. It's a fantastic opera for students to really embody and enjoy.”

The production marks Girard's post-sabbatical return to active university life. He came to UBC just over a decade ago, and has been redefining the university orchestra's role while burnishing its reputation. Though technically away from Point Grey this summer and fall he was, in the traditional manner of many academics, hard at work on a number of other projects.

With a flair for working with young people, he's been guest conducting the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra.

In a few weeks Girard is off to another important gig. “In March I'm going to conduct Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet in Boston's Symphony Hall,” he said.