At 75,
Gail McCance can still remember the first set he helped
build.
A set designer on Broadway,
a production designer for the movies, a veteran of 90 Theatre
Under The Stars (TUTS) productions and an original founder
of the Vancouver Opera Association, the Edgemont Village resident
has a lifetime of memories behind him.
He was 12 when he assisted
his father, Jack McCance, in building a set for the 1936 production
of A Midsummer Night's Dream on the cricket pitch at Stanley
Park's Brockton Point. The production was a Silver Jubilee
celebration.
To create a forest from
a playing field, McCance and his father chopped 50- and 60-foot
cedar trees from a vacant lot in North Van and planted them
in the turf. "We made huge screens covered with chicken
wire and stuffed them with cedar bows to create the look of
formal English hedges."
Father and son trucked
the timber across the old Second Narrows crossing. To transport
them across a hitch in the road, the logs had to be lowered
over the side of the bridge and carried across aways. "Now
you'd get six months for that," recalls McCance with
a chuckle. Needless to say, their reforestation venture would
not be repeated today.
McCance has many such stories
of his years behind the scenes, from his early days at New
York's Metropolitan Opera where he toiled in his 20s, to his
years with TUTS and the Vancouver Festival and, later, with
the Vancouver Opera Association.
"I founded the VOA
for the simple reason that friends I knew were going to start
an opera. They were really nice but they had no business acumen
and they didn't sing very well," he says simply. But
his contributions to the city's performing arts community
can't be underestimated.
In '97, the trustees of
the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame recognized those accomplishments
with a star for McCance on its Granville Street Starwalk.
And on Saturday, McCance plans to be in the audience when
the Vancouver Opera celebrates its 40th anniversary with a
gala concert at the Orpheum Theatre. The program will feature
the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Vancouver Opera Chorus
and a lineup of soloists including internationally acclaimed
mezzo-soprano Judith Forst, whose first mainstage appearance
at Vancouver Opera was in '68 as the Young Shepherd in Tosca.
On the podium will be Timothy
Vernon, artistic director of Pacific Opera Victoria, who first
conducted for Vancouver Opera in '79 (La Traviata). Hosting
the evening will be well-known author, CBC Radio host Bill
Richardson.
During Saturday's anniversary
concert, which starts at 8 p.m., Forst will sing "Pensa
alla patria" from Rossini's The Italian Girls in Algiers,
the Act IV finale from Bizet's Carmen and, with the opera
chorus, "Rataplan!" from Verdi's La Forza del Destino.
Another VO alumni, Texas-based
soprano Mary Jane Johnson will return to sing the aria "Ebben?
Ne andro lontanan" from Catalani's La Wally and "Hojotoho!"
from Wagner's Die Walküre. The opera orchestra will play
the overture to Die Fledermaus and the prelude to Act III
of Lohengrin.
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