Tom Diamond Opens Luminato with 'Dark Star Requiem'

The story of AIDS spans more than 25 years and reaches from Africa to North America and around the globe. So how do you tell it, in an opera no less?

Tom Diamond, director of Dark Star Requiem – an ‘operatic oratorio’ that receives its world premiere at Luminato tonight – says in one sense, you can’t. “In a way it would be like telling the story of the Holocaust,” he says. “Where do you begin to tell that story?”

Instead, Dark Star Requiem, which is jointly produced by Luminato and Tapestry new opera works, uses an evocative hybrid form to get its message across. With a libretto by Jill Battson and a musical score by Andrew Staniland, Requiem sets poetry to the music of four soloists, two percussionists, and two of Canada’s premiere ensembles, the Elmer Iseler Singers and the Gryphon Trio. Together with an array of visual media, these elements portray 14 episodes, or “collected historical moments” as Diamond puts it, from the entire HIV epidemic.

“For me it really moves between the world of science and humanity,” he says. “Because of all these scientific implications, scientific discoveries, the notion of finding a cure or a maintenance for people who have the disease, and the implications for humanity. We’re lucky in North America to have access to medication and they’re not so lucky in Africa, and in many ways it kind of devastated the continent, and continues to. I think it’s the largest ongoing medical emergency of our generation.”

Like all Tapestry works, this piece strives to enlighten the audience as well as to entertain. “When you hear it’s the stories of HIV and AIDS, you think you’re going to witness an exclusive, tragic evening, which is not the case at all,” says Diamond, explaining that the piece includes comical, moving, and ironic moments, as well as a degree of finger-pointing at the Catholic church for its counterproductive role in the crisis.

Diamond’s directing career dates back to the ’80s, but he says, “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite like this before. I’m not sure anyone has ever done anything quite like this, in terms of an operatic oratorio.” With his extensive background in opera and musical theatre, he would know. Though his home base is with Tapestry (where he serves as the resident director and dramaturge), Diamond is also well-versed in classic operas. He freelances with a variety of companies (in fact, he’s flying to Italy on Tuesday to direct Handel’s Julius Caesar for a month) and is one of the more publicly recognizable opera directors working today, thanks to the twelve hours he spent on television judging Bravo! Canada’s Bathroom Divas, a Gemini Award-winning reality/documentary series tracking opera-star wannabes.

He still gets stopped at opera events, on airplanes, and even sitting in his gym’s steam room (true story) by people who remember him from the show. “My 15 minutes of popular culture fame came with me doing something I do naturally, and they just put a camera in the room to basically witness a skill that I’ve been honing for 20 years,” he says with obvious amusement.

As our conversation winds down I ask about the role Judaism plays in his career, and Diamond returns to the idea of humanity in his work: “The whole idea of menschkeit in the Jewish faith and what that means is really important to me,” he says. “My Judaism permeates everything I do, every perception of everything I do, and affects all my work, all the time. I’m grateful for my parents raising me so well because I really have a strong sense of humanity, which I think is really what the Jewish faith at its very best is all about.”

With its compassionate and hopeful take on the AIDS epidemic, it seems like his work with Dark Star Requiem would qualify. Diamond hopes its premiere at Luminato will lead to a longer run for the oratorio. “We think the project has legs,” he says. “We think the project is an important piece of work and we hope the world agrees with us.”

Dark Star Requiem runs June 11-12 at Koerner Hall in the Royal Conservatory of Music. For more information, visit www.luminato.com or www.tapestrynewopera.com.