The Opera Glasses Podcast

Baritone Elliot Madore: Identity and Career

• Elizabeth Bowman • Season 2 • Episode 4

Share episode

Embark on a riveting journey with The Opera Glasses Podcast as we host the magnificent Canadian baritone Elliot Madore, who opens up about the nuances of embodying roles in both contemporary and time-honoured operas. Elliot unveils the behind-the-scenes magic of collaborating with composer Matthew Aucoin for his role in Eurydice (Boston Lyric Opera) and contrasts this with his most recent performances with Edmonton Opera in the title role of their Don Giovanni.

He reflects on his long career to-date: the challenges of sustaining a career in opera, and what has given him the focus, and continued drive to deliver consistently fantastic performances.

This conversation delves into Elliot's growing Identity project which explores his own identity in collaboration with creatives including Canadian director Joel Ivany, composer Dinuk Wijeratne and acclaimed poet Shauntay Grant. This project signals the evolving dialogue within the opera community, inviting listeners to contemplate the transformative power of the Performing Arts. 

All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by Opera Canada Editor-In-Chief, Elizabeth Bowman. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews.

Elizabeth Bowman:

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and this is the Opera Glasses Podcast. Today I have Canadian Grammy Award-winning baritone Elliot Madore with me. He has sung with major opera companies and orchestras throughout Europe, United States, Asia and, of course, Canada. He's a very interesting artist. He started very young and he is sustaining a wonderful career for himself. He is also the cover artist for the current winter edition of Opera Canada magazine, which is on newsstands now. Anyway, excited to have Elliot here today. Let's get to it, Elliot. Welcome to the Opera Glasses Podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

Elliot Madore:

Thank you for having me.

Elizabeth Bowman:

So where are we talking to you from?

Elliot Madore:

I am in Boston right now. From my hotel room, I'm looking out the window at Fenway Park. We're in rehearsals for Matt Aucoin's Eurydice. I'm performing the role of Orpheus and we're going to be opening in about a week's time.

Elizabeth Bowman:

How long have you been working on that role? Have you performed it before? I mean, it's obviously had its world premiere very recently.

Elliot Madore:

Yeah. So it had its world premiere in LA and they recently did it at the Met, and Matt wanted to do a chamber version of this opera, and so Boston Lyric Opera commissioned this chamber version, which is a lot more intimate, because Matt really wanted to explore a much more closely knit piece. I guess you could say. The version that he's produced is quite beautiful and we've been working on this now. We've been in rehearsals for three weeks now and I've been working on this piece for but I would say, about three months in total. It's a tricky piece, I would say rhythmically very difficult. It's been a joy to work on it and the music itself is truly very, very beautiful.

Elizabeth Bowman:

And is Matthew there? Is he?

Elliot Madore:

Yeah, he's conducting the piece. He's conducting it, so it's been really, really great to get to know him. I'd never met him before. Of course, I've been a fan of his work, but it's been a joy working with him. He's a fantastic conductor, obviously a very gifted composer as well.

Elizabeth Bowman:

When you're working with the composer directly. In this iteration, is there any flexibility with what happens musically with your role, or are you reading from the score exactly, or are you able to make suggestions based on what works for your voice?

Elliot Madore:

Matt's been great with everyone. He's extremely flexible, and if there's something that doesn't quite work, we can certainly talk to him about that. And at the same time, he has a very clear idea of what he wants and how he wants the piece to sound. And I think the joy of working with him is that he's extraordinarily articulate, and so when you ask him a question about the character or what he wants musically, he's able to articulate that in a really beautiful artistic way, and so it's almost kind of poetic, actually, and so it's been a joy to work with him on that and he's a great guy. And so if we do need something changed, yeah, he's definitely very flexible in that regard.

Elizabeth Bowman:

Yeah, you've done a fair amount of new music in your career. You have a steady diet of it. I assume that helps with all the traditional repertoire as well, like in terms of advising how you approach it. All keeps it fresh, I imagine.

Elliot Madore:

Yeah, no, I love, I love singing new music. I think there's something wonderful about not having to carry around the baggage of a piece or having to deal with preconceived expectations of a piece. I really enjoy that and, at the same time, producing something that's modern and fresh and interesting and something that's never been heard before. To explore that realm is. It's really artistically satisfying. So I very much enjoy that process. I've had the pleasure of working with, most recently, John Adams. We did Girls of the Golden West, his new opera, and we just recorded that with the LA Philharmonic, and that process in general was really really satisfying. Also to work with Peter Sellers, who directed the piece and who wrote the libretto for the piece as well. I enjoy creating something from scratch. There's something that you can't really replicate that, of course, with traditional repertoire.

Elizabeth Bowman:

You're coming from Edmonton, where you were singing the title role in Don Giovanni, speaking of traditional repertoire. So it's like quite a juxtaposition from the Mozart Don Giovanni to this Matthew Aucoin. And how was Edmonton? Was it freezing?

Elliot Madore:

Edmonton. You know what? The weather wasn't bad. I was kind of disappointed. Actually. When I was performing in Zurich, I had a friend of mine who actually, strangely enough, lives in Edmonton and he was singing with me there and he told me that it was minus 50 or something, which is pretty crazy. So that was my expectation. I thought I was going to go there and it would be minus 50, but it was pretty mild actually. You know, I love working, Joel and I, Joel Ivany. We have a wonderful relationship. He's a good friend of mine, so whenever I have the opportunity to work with him I definitely try it and make that happen.

Elliot Madore:

And this Giovanni came up and it was in English and Joel had a new concept about the piece. You really wanted to lean into the comedic side of it, and so it was, I would say, a lot less dangerous, I would say maybe, and just really leaning into, you know, the Bufo aspects of that piece. And the audience loved it. We really enjoyed it. We had a lot of fun and of course it was a little bit tricky for my brain to switch from Mozart to Matt Aucoin relatively quickly. So that was tough, but that was a challenge, but I enjoyed it.

Elizabeth Bowman:

So you recently did Don Giovanni with Joel, with the Banff and the National Arts Center collaboration as well, and that was obviously in Italian.

Elliot Madore:

Yes.

Elizabeth Bowman:

So was there a similar element to how you guys did it or other than the English translation? What were the differences? I'm just curious.

Elliot Madore:

Well, the main differences in the Edmonton production. The rest of the thieves were replaced by spoken dialogue in English.

Elizabeth Bowman:

Interesting yeah.

Elliot Madore:

And Joel really wanted to lean into the local aspect of the piece, meaning there was a lot of Edmonton slash Alberta references which the audience loved. For example, I referred to myself as the great one. Of course, the Wayne Gretzky reference, which is appropriate, for anybody who is a hockey fan wouldn't have that one, and so he really wanted to lean into that aspect. And, of course, when we did it in Ottawa and when the young artists did it in Banff, it was all Italian, Italian recitative. I think that lent to a more traditional rendering of the piece, even though there was a little bit more of a modernized take on it in terms of a set, I think all of us. The portrayals of the characters were a little bit more traditional, I would say.

Elizabeth Bowman:

Joel is doing really great things for opera right now. His attention to his audience, who is coming, who could possibly come to the opera, is visible in the projects that he is executing. So I'm grateful to him from the industry standpoint for all the work that he's been doing. I mean, the audience enjoyment of Don Giovanni in that way is just a wonderful thing.

Elliot Madore:

Yeah, absolutely, I think, joel, one of his greatest strengths, beyond being a great director and a great storyteller, I think one of the things that he's able to do is to really, I think, as you alluded to, to really understand his audience and to know how to bring them to the theater, how to attract these people to the theater. You know he certainly did that with ATG and he's doing that with Edmonton Opera. When we were there, it was pretty much sold out for both performances, which was amazing because the theater in Edmonton is quite large, so to have that be completely packed was really, really special, and Joel certainly knows how to do that.

Elizabeth Bowman:

That's good news, because that's not necessarily the overarching narrative for our business right now, so that's really wonderful. I want to talk to you on a Joel Ivany related note about identity, because I mentioned it in my editor's letter as a project that I admired and I understand that it's potentially being expanded upon artistically and I just wanted to touch on that in our conversation today. So can you tell me a bit about how that project came to life and where it's going now?

Elliot Madore:

I guess I could start with just a little bit of background on myself that made help to bring a little bit of context to the piece. So I'm biracial, my father is black, my mother is white. I've never met my father, and so I had always, from a young age, struggled with my identity, with knowing how to identify and where to identify, and so it was a little bit of a void that I had to.