Au Café Trudeau

OVERVIEW

Title: Au Café Trudeau
Composer: Kevin Morse
Librettist: Leanna Brodie
Commissioned By:

Tapestry Opera's Composer-Librettist Laboratory

Language: French, English
Producer:

Tapestry Opera

Run Time:

Roles:

Role	Voice Type	Range ?	Character Description
Harcourt Farnsworth	middle	C3-F#4	A Toronto anglophone francophile. His English accent is pronounced and unlovely, but not a cartoon.
Ruisselle Moulu	middle-high	A3-G5	A young bilingual francophone Québécoise nationalist

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Orchestration: Piano

SYNOPSIS

A francophile from Toronto walks into a café in downtown Montréal. His coffee order and small talk with the barista turns into a political rift that eventually leaves him lost in translation.

MUSIC DESCRIPTION

A seemingly light-hearted piano accompaniment in 3/4 sets the mood. Kevin Morse's score cleverly gives ample space for comedic timing to deliver a quintessentially awkward Montréal moment.

SCORES FOR PURCHASE

Libretto:

Au Café Trudeau – Libretto

Purchase This Score

Arias & Excerpts:

Au Café Trudeau - Au Cafe Trudeau

A francophile from Toronto walks into a café in downtown Montréal. His coffee order and small talk with the barista turns into a political rift that eventually leaves him lost in translation.

Character	Voice Type	Range ?
Harcourt Farnsworth	middle	C3-F#4
Ruisselle Moulu	middle-high	A3-G5

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PREMIERE PRODUCTION INFORMATION

Premiere Production:

Tapestry Briefs 2006, September 22-23, 2006 at Tapestry/Nightwood New Work Studio, Toronto, ON

Producers:

Tapestry Opera

Cast:

Role	Name
Harcourt Farnsworth	Alexander Dobson
Ruisselle Moulu	Jessie Lloyd

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Premiere Production Team:

Role	Name
Directors	Liza Balkan
Music Director	Christopher Foley
Music Director	Jennifer Tung
Conductor	Alexander Cann
Stage Manager	Kate Porter
Lighting and Sound	Joel Weiss

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CREATION

QUOTATIONS FROM CREATIVE TEAM

With this brief LIBLAB piece, I wanted to show off the multilingual prowess and comic chops of our LIBLAB singers Alex Dobson and Jessie Lloyd… and the theatrical and comic ability of my composer, Kevin Morse. As a longtime lover of Montréal Francophone culture, I also wanted to sound off about that quintessential and humiliating Montréal experience, “the switch”… when you start off speaking in your halting French to a Francophone, and they reply to you in English! The title is a reference to Canada's former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s father) and his influential yet unrealized dream of functional bilingualism from sea to sea. If you’ve ever been to Montréal or to any bilingual city I hope you howl with recognition. If not, feel free to write to me and I will explain it to you!

-Leanna Brodie

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