Art and Politics. Sarah Jennings
by the City of Hull or the CBC. The goal of all these activities was to make Canada’s capital even more attractive during the summer when it was inundated with thousands of visitors from Canada and abroad. The inspiration for the idea was the Edinburgh Festival, and, like it, the key attractions would be the music, dance, and drama performances that, in this case, would be produced at the NAC.
In planning this first projected Festival, Southam had travelled extensively, visiting London and Paris and touring Europe from Paris to Prague to view performances that might find a potential audience in Ottawa, He had laid the groundwork meticulously for what he conceived as a major national and international event in Ottawa based on a suitable theme: “an exploration of the encounter and mutual enrichment of the cultures of the English- and French-speaking worlds.”1 Having ready access at the highest political levels in both France and England, he had met and dined with the most senior cultural figures, including French culture minister André Malraux and the minister for the arts in the United Kingdom, Jennie Lee. As a former diplomat, Southam knew how to pull the ropes, and his formidable and elegant presence made him an excellent envoy on behalf of the arts.
Particularly delicate had been his inquiry in Paris, where the fallout from President Charles de Gaulle’s hasty exit from Quebec during Expo 67 was still fresh in people’s minds. As his report to the board later revealed, he had beguiled the cultural ministers in both of Canada’s founding countries by inviting them to become patrons of such a festival. Malraux, who perhaps saw an opening for further inroads in Canada in these politically volatile times, took special note, indicating that he would pursue it with his government and consider coming to the event himself if that was approved. Jennie Lee wrote Southam a friendly personal letter saying that though she would likely be out of office by the time the Festival happened, she would ensure that it continued to receive full support. She labelled her efforts-to-be “a friendly conspiracy” between the two of them, and assured Southam that he would likely get what he wanted from the British. Just to be sure, Southam had hired Lord Harewood, the former director of the Edinburgh Festival, in London, and Albert Sarfati in Paris as consultants to line up the European talent (see chapter 2). Harewood, one of the Queen’s first cousins, would remain a lifelong friend, becoming godfather to one of Southam’s children.
All these plans came to naught when the 1970 Summer Festival was cancelled, although some of the ideas would resurface in future festivals in Ottawa. In the aftermath of Expo, cultural spending was beginning to slow down, and officials in the Secretary of State’s department and at the Canada Council gave a chilly reception to spending an estimated million dollar budget on bringing largely foreign talent to Ottawa—even if it was “the best.”
Canada passed through a horrific storm in the fall of 1970 with the October Crisis. The imposition of the War Measures Act, which was quickly invoked by the Trudeau government to halt a possible civil insurrection, had seen the leafy streets of Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park, where Southam and many of the country’s leaders and foreign diplomats lived, filled with army personnel in full battle gear. The aftermath of these events would have an impact on the way the national government would conduct its affairs in the future, especially in its deployment of cultural resources. In the immediate term, the crisis forced increased security around the NAC building, at a cost of $1,500 to the budget. More important was a sea change in outlook that Southam articulated later—that “something cracked” in this period.2
Just weeks before the crisis, the trustees had given Southam a cautious green light to explore the Summer Festival concept once again. He lost no time in getting together with Bernardi, and they began to devise a far more modest but still exciting plan that involved using leftover time in the orchestra’s contract and tapping into Bernardi’s wide experience with opera. Their decision was to build the Festival around what would be the NAC’s first opera production. They selected Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, a work that was tailor-made for Bernardi. The maestro, proficient at the keyboard as well as on the podium, agreed to play the harpsichord for the recitatives throughout the opera. Together, they intended this first effort to be the template for bigger Festivals in the future.
Once again, Southam moved carefully to implant the Festival idea in people’s minds, working up the same wave of enthusiasm that had helped to create the Arts Centre. On March 8, 1971, I. Norman Smith, the editor of the Ottawa Journal and a good Southam friend, editorialized that “Ottawa could be the Edinburgh of America” and that Mario Bernardi, as “a director of both music and opera,” was “a man of the future.” “We are young and gay,” he proclaimed, as he urged Ottawans to enter into the spirit of the times and rhapsodized about the possibilities for Ottawa with the Festival. He envisioned activities ranging all the way from classical music at the Arts Centre to the raftsmen’s event on the river, even as he endorsed bus tours and fishing events in the beautiful Gatineau Hills across the river in Quebec. It was not hard to detect the hidden enthusiast behind Smith’s pen.
In April, board chair François Mercier proudly announced the details publicly. The Festival would be a “panoply of the arts,” he said, with five performances of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie and with a Canadian cast that included Claude Corbeil, Allan Monk, Judith Forst, and Heather Thomson.3 Four concerts by the Arts Centre orchestra were planned, featuring four new Canadian works, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet would present a spectacular dance based on George Ryga’s play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. French theatre would be included by a Théâtre Rideau Vert production of Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs, directed by André Brassard. Chanteuse Monique Leyrac and the popular duo Ian & Sylvia would satisfy popular culture fans, and the aboriginal singer, storyteller, and composer Alanis Obomsawin was also booked for her own show. These events were but a taste of the feast planned throughout July, and it was all to be followed by a “Young August” program at the Arts Centre aimed at younger people, featuring young artists, rock bands, and other popular groups.
This clever recipe for programming seemed to cover all the touchstones of a stirring Canadian identity that was receiving growing emphasis within the national government. Some 500,000 brochures were printed and distributed across the country and into the United States to entice would-be visitors. When Southam was asked by the press how much it would cost and who would pay for it all, he airily replied, “We have the money—we had a good year.”
On July 1, 1971, all Southam’s ingenious manoeuvrings to launch the Summer Festival and ensure its development paid off. The Art Centre’s first in-house opera production, The Marriage of Figaro, was an enormous success, even though director Michael Geliot had been forced to step in as stage director at the last minute because of the sudden and unexpected death of Sir Tyrone Guthrie in March. The sterling, almost entirely Canadian cast of singers, Bernardi’s exquisite playing as he conducted the orchestra from the harpsichord during Mozart’s recitatives, and the splendid lavishness of the production combined to make it clear that the overall first-class standards already established at the NAC would also include opera on a grand scale. Designer Brian Jackson, assisted by Suzanne Mess, had created a gorgeous set and magnificent costumes. No expense had been spared. Among the many high points that delighted the audience, none was more exciting than the moment when the curtains parted for the final act to reveal a water-filled pond at centre-stage with an elegant troupe of live swans swimming in it. In later years, singers would recall with horror the menacing hiss of the swans when a performer came too close. A special swan-keeper, dressed as a peasant, remained on stage throughout the act to keep the lovely but threatening creatures under control. “They were vicious!” Bernardi would later recall, but the overall effect was audacious and thrilling.4 Hugh Davidson, who arrived in Ottawa to take up his post assisting the maestro just in time for the opera, remembers it as a “glorious and brilliant production.”5
Claude Corbeil, Gwenlynn Little, and Heather Thomson here performing in The Marriage of Figaro were among the first of many Canadian singers who bloomed in the operas presented in the Summer Festival. Photo © John Evans.
Mozart’s