Weaving together text and music from the 2011 opera, composer Andrew Paul MacDonald and librettist Stephen Massicotte reimagine Mary’s Wedding for narrator, two singers, and piano—an intimate reflection on love and remembrance.
Originally developed and premiered in Victoria, this new presentation returns following last year’s performances.
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.
Last season marked the debut of Remembering Mary’s Wedding, an intimate re-imagining for narrator, two singers, and piano, presented at the Baumann Centre and Royal Roads. This return invites audiences to revisit the story in a more immediate and deeply personal form.
A CTV News highlight about the original premiere of Mary’s Wedding.
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This event is made possible by an extraordinary gift from Robert G. Milne, in honour of Larry Ryan.