EGOYAN’S STUDY OF HUMAN DARKNESS MOVES TO OPERA
by Julie Mollins, Reuters

Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia)
August 27, 2006 Sunday
Final Edition

TORONTO — Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, renowned for award-winning
movies that explore the dark sides of human behaviour, is taking a
turn at helming a grand opera with similar brooding features.

Egoyan, 46, the Egyptian-born son of Armenian immigrants, has examined
incest, the horrors of war and the mysteries of fate in such deeply
psychological films as Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey
and Ararat." He will revisit some of those themes for an upcoming
Canadian Opera Company production of Richard Wagner’s 19th-century
opera Die Walkure (The Valkyrie).

The Wagner classic, the second of the four-part epic cycle Der Ring des
Nibelungen, is a complex tale in which incestuous love, the will of the
gods and fate combine to advance the overall themes of the Ring Cycle.

During an interview at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing
Arts in Toronto, where a production of the entire Ring Cycle will
open for a three-week run on Sept. 12, Egoyan described similarities
in his approach to making movies and opera.

"In my films I am very interested in subtext and what makes people
act the way they do," he said. "I try and bring that detail to the
way I direct the opera but also the way I stage it, the way I create
visual ideas which can reinforce the psychology of the piece."

This is not Egoyan’s first foray into directing opera. He began with
a 1996 Canadian Opera Company production of Salome. He directed an
earlier production of Die Walkure — the source of Wagner’s famous
Ride of the Valkyries — for the company in 2004. He most recently
directed the play Eh Joe in London’s West End.

When the Toronto-based director was first presented with the
opportunity to direct Die Walkure, he was full of doubt, he said,
because he could read music but at the time had no background in opera.

"It’s that doubt and that fear that actually creates an excitement," he
said. "And I think if you don’t feel that, then maybe there’s something
a little bit wrong. You have to be able to rise to the material."

The director cites the central conflict in the Ring as being "the
power of love versus the love of power — that’s the theme that
comes up over and over again because in order to get power you have
to relinquish love."

The narrative of the Ring Cycle, which was written by Wagner between
1848 and 1874, was inspired by a German tale and Norse legends.

An emphasis on the bloodlust and horror of war will be a major focus
in the Egoyan production.

"Wagner was not really criticizing the war machine," Egoyan said,
"and I think this production is showing quite explicitly the horrifying
results of that approach where war becomes an economy unto itself."