Bullish in the pit: the COC Orchestra has learnt a lot about playing Wagner over the past three years, and it's ready for the biggest show in opera.

AS THE CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PREPARES TO STAGE its first Ring cycle, the word on the street is that the COC Orchestra is happy. This is astonishing news: as everyone knows, Canadian orchestral musicians are typically bored, overworked and underpaid. When they're not fretting about imminent orchestral bankruptcy, they're voting to go on strike. But the mood in COC Orchestra is optimistic and upbeat. "Everyone is getting prepared, emotionally, mentally and physically," says Ian Cowie, a trombonist and the orchestra's Personnel Manager. "It's absolutely amazing to play this music, with this orchestra."

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This attitude is surprising, given the task that lies before them. The Ring cycle is about 16 hours of music, spread over four evenings, and the COC will be playing three cycles--about 42 hours of Wagner. The parts on the players' music-stands are hundreds of pages long, and much of the music is fiendishly difficult.

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The orchestra's preparation for the COC's Ring has been, in some ways, even more daunting than the performances themselves. When the curtain rises on opening night with maestro Richard Bradshaw on the podium, the orchestra will have played 33 rehearsals between July 26 and September 10. Adding to the challenge of learning this music is the fact that the musicians must learn to play it in a hall they're not used to: the Ring is the COC's first production in its shiny new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. "It takes a certain skill to learn how to pace yourself," says Cowie. "And there are little growing pains at the Four Seasons, like locating the washrooms and finding the light switch. But we're having an easier time than ever hearing what's happening on stage. And the better we can hear, the better we can play."

As well, the COC Orchestra must adjust to its own expanded size. In the Hummingbird Centre, where the company mounted three of the Ring operas in as many years, the orchestra pit could only accommodate about 80 musicians. But the new house was designed with a full-scale Wagner orchestra in mind, and the company has assembled an orchestra of over 100 for the Ring. The strings consist of 16 first violins, 14 seconds, 13 violas, 10 cellos and eight double basses. In the woodwinds, the flutes, oboes and clarinets are in groups of four, with three bassoons; also included in this section are parts for piccolo, English horn and bass clarinet. In the brass section, there are four trumpets, four trombones, a tuba and nine French horns. A timpanist, three percussionists and six harpists complete the orchestra. There are also some off-stage anvil-players and a couple of exotic instruments, pretty much unique to the Ring: steer horns and the so-called Wagner tubas.

The COC's steer horns were made in Toronto by one of the orchestra's musicians. Bass trombonist Herbert Poole builds and repairs instruments as a professional sideline--his home is full of them--and he's only too happy to show off his creations. "It only plays one note," he says, almost apologetically, holding one of the brass instruments he's hammered out in his workshop. Indeed, with no moving parts, it's an unremarkable-looking thing: a small, curved horn, just over a foot long, gradually flaring to a wide bell. But when he pops a trombone mouthpiece into it and puts it to his lips, a clear, horn-like note emerges.

"At the Met," he continues, "they use trombones for the steer-horn parts. But Richard Brads haw said he wanted something 'otherworldly'--something that would come out of the orchestral texture and sound distinctive. These three little ones are for Gotterdammerung, and this big one is for Die Walkure." He holds up a larger steer horn--a strange, Frankensteinian beast that's obviously been assembled from parts of other brass instruments. "This bit," he says, pointing to one section of tubing, "is from the rotary valve on a Chinese euphonium."

The Wagner tuba is a more refined and complex instrument. A cross between a regular tuba and a French horn, Wagner first thought about such an instrument in 1853 to portray Valhalla in sombre, remote and mystical tones. According to hornist Joan Watson, the COC recently acquired a set of them from Germany--particularly good ones, thanks to some help from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "I talked to someone I know in the Berlin Philharmonic, and he called the Alexander company." (Gebruder Alexander, based in Mainz, is Germany's leading manufacturer of brass instruments.) "They jump up and down for the Berlin Phil! He asked them to build six, and send them to Berlin. The Berlin players tried them out, picked out the four best and sent them to us. We saved $8,000, because we didn't have to go through an American agent."

As the COC's principal horn, Watson won't be playing the Wagner tuba--the lower horns double on this instrument--but she'll certainly be the centre of attention when she performs the famous horn call that summons the dragon in Act II of Siegfried. For this, she's undertaken special coaching. "I've played the excerpt many times in auditions, but it never crossed my mind that I'd ever play it in the Ring," she says. "I took the part to a singing coach, and she took me through an incredible process of analyzing the character of Siegfried. She said, 'Now relate all of Siegfried's experiences to your own life.' So once I conquered my own dragons, the horn call became part of my journey. That made it very personal."

As well, Watson is getting into shape by putting in time on her treadmill at home--and she's confident that she'll be well prepared for the performances. "If you're playing a brass instrument properly, and if you pace yourself, you can play for a long time without getting tired. Wagner is good to us--we play for a while, and then he gives us a few bars rest. Not one person in the horn section has complained about endurance. It's not something I want to be worried about when I'm playing the Ring, I just want to be enjoying it."

While the brass players may get much of the glory in a Ring performance, the string players play most of the notes. For Marie Berard, Concertmaster of the COC Orchestra, playing a Wagner opera is not unlike playing a violin concerto. "It's soloistic and unbelievably difficult--you need technical prowess. But the positive side is that it's very rewarding. Act III of Gotterdammerung has a level of difficulty that makes it impossible to be absolutely flawless in execution. And it's not just the violins, the lower strings also have a lot more to do."

For string players, the difficulty of the operas, their length and the need to produce a sound that's big enough to compete with all those wind instruments mean that the Ring isn't just taxing, it can be dangerous. "Every time we've done a Ring opera, we've had string players drop out," Berard says. "And some people have opted to do two or three of four operas. People are afraid of injuring themselves, and we're all hurting a little bit. If you're a relaxed player, you'll fare best. But some players have previous injuries, or weaknesses in other areas. You have to be wary, it makes you watch how you play!" Faced with the prospect of damage to muscles and tendons, many COC string players have signed up for preventative massage therapy to keep them flexible between performances. "You do what you can to make sure you stay loose," Berard adds. "Other than that, we have to cut down on other things. The Ring kind of takes over your life. You can't teach for six hours in the day, and then go and play Siegfried. It's so exhausting, but also so emotionally involving. You get into a Wagnerian headspace. It would be impossible to play this music with a laissez-faire attitude."

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Yet even the fear of career-threatening injuries doesn't seem to have dampened the orchestra's bullish spirits. "We've managed to retain a good atmosphere," Berard adds, "and so much of that has to do with Richard Bradshaw. He can be demanding, and he gets upset sometimes, but we feel he's our biggest fan. He's always relaxed in rehearsals. There's a balance of good humor and getting down to business."

In Cowie's view, the result of all this hard work is that the orchestra has never sounded better. "The precision and the stylistic interpretation are worlds apart from when we first played Die Walkure. 1 don't want to boast, but I feel we're more in tune, more rhythmic and more musical than any recording I've ever heard." Watson agrees: "We've been listening to a lot of DVDs and CDs. I think the COC orchestra sounds better than the Met, better than Vienna. It really is world class."

With an international audience beating a path to Toronto--including a convention of music critics from across North America--the COC Orchestra will be subjected to comparison with the ensembles Watson names, among others. How it stacks up remains to be seen in the September performances, but when it's all over, the company's orchestral musicians will certainly have earned a day's rest--which is about all many will get before rehearsals begin for the COC's next production, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.