About the Works

Le Quattro (27 minutes)

Choreography: Wen Wei Wang

Music: Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (selections) – published by Mute Song Ltd. and presented under license. Performed by Victoria Symphony.

Lighting Design: Dorrie Deutschendorf

Costumes: Linda Chow

Performers: Full Company

Set to Max Richter’s reimagining of Antonio Vivaldi’s iconic masterpiece The Four Seasons, each movement is a musical homage to the season it reflects. From the renewal and awakening of spring to the inevitable return of a frostbitten winter.

“Behold, my friends, the spring has come. The earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun; and we shall soon see the results of their love!“ — Sitting Bull

- Pause -

Ma mère l’Oye suite (Mother Goose Suite) (17 minutes)

Music: Maurice Ravel. Performed by Victoria Symphony

– Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty

– Little Tom Thumb

– Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas

– Dialogues of Beauty and the Beast

– The Fairy Garden

Maurice Ravel originally composed Ma mère l’Oye – five children’s pieces in 1910 as a work for four hands for Mimi and Jean Godebski, the young children of close friends. The score was subsequently adapted as a solo piano work, as a five movement orchestral suite (as performed today), and also further enhanced with two new movements and four interludes to create a ballet. The musical stories are inspired by historic French fairy tales by Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont.

- Intermission -

Le loup de Lafontaine (25 minutes)

Choreography: Wen Wei Wang

Music: Le loup de Lafontaine, composed by Ian Cusson. Performed by Victoria Symphony.

Lighting Design: Dorrie Deutschendorf

Costumes: Linda Chow

Performers: Full Company

Le loup de Lafontaine — Note by Ian Cusson

Commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

This work is inspired by Le loup de Lafontaine by Thomas Marchildon, published by Société historique de NouvelOntario. The title and general story parameters are used by permission of the publisher.

Le loup de Lafontaine is part-legend and part-history, a story that takes place in the small French-speaking Ontario community of Lafontaine in 1902. The story, first recorded by the parish priest in the 1950s, is a cautionary tale where a diverse but divided community is ravaged by a lone wolf. The story is still told today through the yearly Festival du Loup, a celebration of unity and culture in the small Franco-Ontarian community.

Lafontaine lies on the banks of Georgian Bay and has long been a meeting place of diverse peoples. In the time of the story, various settler and Indigenous communities lived in close proximity, one to the other, rarely intermixing. Each had a deep mistrust of the other.

It is only with the arrival of the wolf — an outsider — that the community comes to terms with their divided nature. They unite, despite their differences, with the common goal of ridding the land of the intruder.

But this story — the terrifying wolf and the frightened community — has always given me pause. The wolf, it turns out, isn’t quite the monster the people make it out to be. It is gentle with children, it keeps to itself, and except for killing sheep for food, it does no harm.

The wolf in the story morphs into a symbol in the community. It is the testing place of the community’s fears and rivalries and hatred. It is the feared and hated outsider whose expulsion from the community will be the means to the restoration of the divided peoples.

The wolf becomes the ultimate scapegoat: it is hunted and killed, its body is strung up in the town square, and the community comes together, celebrating a Mass in honour of its death. The community is rid of this intruder and is united — but at a cost.