Mar 14, 2024
Perspectives from Michael Cavanagh
(Originally printed in 50th Anniversary Concert program, February 2023)
For five decades Manitoba Opera has touched the lives of thousands through music and song, creating memories that last a lifetime.
Throughout our 50th anniversary season, we will be sharing just some of these wonderful stories and personal recollections.
This instalment features Michael Cavanagh, a Winnipeg product whose journey has led him to The Land of Forests where he is the Artistic Director of the 250-year-old Royal Swedish Opera.
Michael Cavanagh, a born-and-bred Winnipegger who is currently artistic director of the Royal Swedish Opera, started his opera career in Manitoba Opera’s 1974 production of Tosca, singing in the children’s chorus. “The first opera I ever saw, I was in,” he says with a laugh.
“I remember being amazed by the sheer athletic power of the singers, of the leads. It wasn’t just that the music was pretty. There was just so much power and force. I remember it as this physical, primal experience.”
That kind of feeling stays with you, Michael suggests, and for him it grew into a lifelong connection to opera, which has taken take him all over the world as a teacher, director, and artistic director.
Michael’s stint in the children’s chorus came to an end when his voice broke. “Then I was in a few operas as a super, carrying a spear in a production of Nabucco or whatever, and then I was singing in the main chorus. And my singing was OK,” he says modestly. “I would have roles in school tours like Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance, where we would do something like two shows a day for a few weeks.”
Michael is quick to point out how important the chorus was to his journey. “Singing with the chorus and later working with them were such a huge part of my development, and I am still lucky to count many of them as friends,” he explains.
But don’t think it was all glamour! “I had so many jobs, paid and unpaid, with Manitoba Opera,” Michael recalls. “They used to raffle off a Jaguar every year, and so I worked the Jaguar lottery. I would drive this Jaguar from mall to mall and stand behind a desk and sell tickets.”
He then started working backstage, building props, working sets, and even serving briefly as production manager. “I had realized that singing was not for me, but I still had that attachment to the opera world,” he explains. “I felt like I was in the wrong end of the right business.”
Michael eventually broke into directing, gaining on-the-job experience at Manitoba Opera as he worked as an assistant to then artistic director Irving Guttman.
“Irving heard possibilities in singers,” Michael relates. “I was fascinated by how excited these international singers were to come and do these roles in Winnipeg. I learned later, when I paid more attention, that Irving would talk to these big singers and suggest new roles they hadn’t done before.
“It was like trying something out on the road before you take it to Broadway. And they would come to Winnipeg, and they would realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the most supportive, comfortable, positive, generous environment. Why wouldn’t I come back?’”
With all the roles he undertook at Manitoba Opera, Michael gained musical knowledge, practical experience, and professional connections, as well as “a real confidence, the sense that I could do this.”
But when asked what stands out about his Winnipeg experiences and his work at Manitoba Opera, he has a simple answer: “The values,” he says.
“I don’t want to overstate this, but I really think it’s true. There was this kind of basic decency. Fundamentally, what backs up the work is kindness and humanity. Sure, we’re all under pressure. There are time and money pressures, and everybody gets wound up and everything is a big drama, but at the end of every hour, day, week, month that you’re working in these intense environments, you have to keep things in perspective.
“And I go back to my core values, which were instilled with my parents, my siblings, my communities in Winnipeg, that sense of shared values. That’s what I bring from my upbringing in that amazing city called Winnipeg.”
He also brings, of course, his love of opera. As Michael says: “I’m a multi-genre-ist. (That’s not a word but I’m going to use It anyway.) I really like silly Rossini comedies, but I also have a soft spot for Puccini.”
“I’ve always had a special affection for Rake’s Progress, one of the few times where a toweringly brilliant score meets an incredibly complex and rich and clever libretto.” Michael also has a personal connection to the Stravinsky opera: He met his wife, Jackalyn Short, on a production where she was playing Anne Trulove, which he took as a sign.
In 2023, Michael will help the Royal Swedish Opera mark its 250th year. And while it might seem that in Europe, home to some of the oldest, most established companies in the world, the future of opera is secure, Michael suggests that even these operas are under pressure and asking existential questions.
That’s why it’s important to celebrate milestones. Having an opera company “is important for any community of size and ambition, and I think Winnipeg is certainly the kind of city that has a multinational, multi-dimensional, and diverse population that deserves different ways of telling their stories, of singing their stories.
“A city like Winnipeg deserves to have its own ways of storytelling that a community can get to know, so they trust their theatre company, their ballet, their art galleries, their opera,’” Michael suggests. “Larry Desrochers and his team have built this incredible community of trust. People going to Manitoba Opera know they are in good hands. They’re going to get excellent stories sung beautifully by great guest artists and the wonderful MO Chorus, supported by that fantastic orchestra.
“And they deserve it. It’s a way of singing our own stories back to us.”
Banner photo: Falstaff, Manitoba Opera, 2016. Photo: R. Tinker
