''Nigredo Hotel'' is a

chamber opera Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's ''Cardillac'' (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergoles ...

in one act composed by

Nic Gotham NIC may refer to: Banking and insurance companies * National Insurance Corporation, Uganda * NIC Bank, a commercial bank in Kenya Politics, government and economics * National Ice Center, an agency that provides worldwide navigational ice a ...

to a

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...

Ann-Marie MacDonald Ann-Marie MacDonald (born October 29, 1958) is a Canadian playwright, author, actress, and broadcast host who lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. MacDonald is the daughter of a member of Canada's military; she was born at an air force base near ...

. It premiered on 13 May 1992 at the

Tarragon Theatre The Tarragon Theatre is a theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and one of the main centers for contemporary playwriting in the country.

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

in a production by

Tapestry New Opera Works Tapestry Opera is a Canadian opera company located in Toronto, Ontario. According to its website, it is "the only Canadian company solely dedicated to the creation and performance of original Canadian opera". To date, the company has produced 18 ...

who had commissioned the opera. The production won two

Dora Award The Dora Mavor Moore Award (also known as the Dora Award) is an award presented annually by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts which honours theatre, dance and opera productions in Toronto. Named after Dora Mavor Moore, who helped estab ...

s and the work was nominated for the

Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award The Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award was a Canadian literary award given to Canadian plays produced by any professional Canadian theatre company, and having performances in the Toronto area. The prize had a monetary value of $25,000, and wa ...

.Wagner, Vit (8 June 1995)
"''Nigredo Hotel'' opens yet again; Second debut a rare victory for modern opera"
''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'', p. G.2. Retrieved 23 October 2013. Subtitled "an operatic thriller", it is set in Room 7 of a run-down hotel which takes its name from the

Jungian Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

concept of

Nigredo In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. Many alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the philosopher's stone, all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to a uniform blac ...

or "dark night of the soul". The story involves an encounter between the beautiful but crazed woman who runs the hotel and a brain surgeon forced to take refuge there after crashing his car.

Background and performance history

Jazz musician and composer Nic Gotham approached Ann-Marie MacDonald to write the libretto in 1988 after having composed the incidental music and sound effects for her play '' Goodnight Desdemona'' as well as the music for ''Boom, Baby, Boom!'', a "jazz play" by his wife Ban̦uta Rubess, in which MacDonald played the role of Austra Mednis. Gotham had originally planned to have only one character, the brain surgeon Raymond. However, MacDonald convinced him to introduce a female character, Sophie, who would represent his other self, or "anima" in Jungian psychology. Tapestry New Opera Works premiered ''Nigredo Hotel'' on 13 May 1992 at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre in a production directed by Ban̦uta Rubess. It ran there for a month before the company took it on tour to

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

and in 1993 to Scotland for the

Glasgow Mayfest Glasgow Festivals include festivals for art, film, comedy, folk music and jazz. Glasgow also hosts an annual queer arts festival in November. Unlike the Edinburgh Festival (where the main festival and fringe festivals all occur around about the s ...

. Tapestry New Opera Works subsequently revived the production in 1995 for a run at the du Maurier Theatre Centre in Toronto and again in 2005 to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary. The opera was performed by the company again in 2006 as part of the

Algoma Fall Festival The Algoma Fall Festival is an annual arts festival, usually held in October, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. The Algoma Arts Festival Association was incorporated in 1972 and the first festival was held in . The festival was established to ...

Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Sault Ste. Marie ( ) is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is at the St. Mary's River on the Canada–US border. It is the third largest city in Northern Ontario, after Sudbury and Thunder Bay. The Ojibwe, the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of ...

. On that occasion it was performed at the Wellington Square Mall in a disused discount store which became part of the set. 2006 also saw the opera's Australian premiere when it was performed in

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

by the Stopera chamber opera company in a new production directed by Caroline Stacey.

City Opera of Vancouver City Opera of Vancouver is a professional chamber opera company in Vancouver, Canada, founded in 2006. Its past productions include the Vancouver premiere of Nigredo Hotel by Ann-Marie MacDonald and Nic Gotham; commission and premiere of 'Missing ...

revived ''Nigredo Hotel'' in September 2018 in a new production directed by Alan Corbishley.Kaye, Lincoln (22 September 2018)
"Xtreme room service @ ''Nigredo Hotel''"
''

The Vancouver Observer ''The Vancouver Observer'' is an independent online newspaper. The site was founded in 2006 by journalist Linda Solomon as an online platform for Vancouver bloggers, writers, reporters, photographers and filmmakers. Novelist Ruth Ozeki was invol ...

''. Retrieved 25 September 2018.

Roles

Music

The opera's music is based on

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

harmonies and rhythms and is scored for two singers (soprano and baritone),

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

electric bass The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck The ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, and piano. The Australian critic Janet Wilson wrote that the work would be more aptly described as a "dramatic jazz piece" rather than an opera, although the score contains the traditional operatic components of

overture Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...

recitative Recitative (, also known by its Italian name "''recitativo''" ()) is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repea ...

aria In music, an aria (Italian: ; plural: ''arie'' , or ''arias'' in common usage, diminutive form arietta , plural ariette, or in English simply air) is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompanime ...

s, and

duet A duet is a musical composition for two performers in which the performers have equal importance to the piece, often a composition involving two singers or two pianists. It differs from a harmony, as the performers take turns performing a solo ...

s.Wilson, Janet (October 2006)
"Challenging work with top singers"
, ''Opera~Opera'', p. 18. Retrieved 23 October 2013.

References

{{Authority control English-language operas 1992 operas One-act operas Operas Chamber operas