SOLO: The Modern Opera The World Needs

By Cindy Ci Posted on June 1, 2022
SOLO's Watershed Festival Program. In the top left, it is an image of Kristen Hoff performing under stage lights. Beside that on the right, it is a logo that says Solo: A Musique 3 Femmes Production, followed by show times, dates, and location. In the middle of the page, it is the show's program. At the bottom, it is the credits for the show.
SOLO’s Watershed Festival Program – Designed by Kristen Lebeouf

There is a conventional expectation of what a Western opera performer and performance should look like. With expensive sets and costumes and elaborate orchestrations, it is an artform who’s high-brow reputation is the only part I’m familiar with. But Musique 3 Femmes’ presentation of SOLO at this year’s Watershed Festival, the “tour-de-force double bill for solo voice” actively subverted the Eurocentric tradition inherent to opera allowing the songs and stories to speak for themselves.

Mezzo-Soprano Kristen Hoff tackles both new works featured in SOLO–Judith Weir’s King Harold’s Saga and Love Songs by Ana Sokolović. With three acts in ten minutes, King Harald’s Saga follows the 1066 Norwegian invasion of England led by King Harald “Hardradi”, which ends in defeat at the Battle of Stamford Bridge nine days before the successful Norman invasion at the Battle of Hastings. Hoff distinctly portrays all eight roles – from the titular King Harold, Saint Olaf, his two wives, and the Norwegian Army, by dramatically alteringing her physical embodiment and utilizing different vocal techniques. In doing so, she challenges the elegance that is expected of women opera performers by honouring the jarring characterizations this opera demands.

This can also be said with her rendition Love Songs, a five-movement opera that explores the multi-faceted concept of love by using various poems from different countries. We get to witness Hoff experience excitement, naivety, desire and loss in no less than a hundred languages. Hearing “I love you” in a hundred different ways really highlights the nuances and similarities of such feelings, and the poetry of the words move Hoff in a rhythmic, yet unrestricted, manner. Her performance really brings out the beauty and musicality of non-European languages, which are not often treated this delicately.  

With King Harald’s Saga and Love Storys, I saw Hoff become the vessel to explore the potential opera has to offer, and what Hoff has to offer to opera. M3F’s SOLO is a perfect example of the Watershed Festival’s desire to “Reimagine Music Theatre”.

Solo was performed as part of the 2022 Watershed Festival on May 26th. Click here for more information on the Watershed Festival, and here to find out more about Musique 3 Femme.