Soprano Melody Courage sings a choral cry for peace in Britten's War Requiem
Vancouver Bach Family of Choirs presents the emotional composition with words by English soldier and war poet Wilfred Owen
Melody Courage.
Vancouver Bach Family of Choirs presents Britten’s War Requiem at the Orpheum on April 5 at 7:30 pm
BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S WAR REQUIEM is, in the composer’s own words, “an act of reparation” for all the violence and destruction committed in times of war.
A lifelong pacifist, Britten was recognized as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, exempting him from military service. The English musician was reaching the height of his career in 1961 when he was commissioned to write the War Requiem to honour the reconsecration of England’s Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed by an air raid in 1940. The resulting composition weaves the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead with nine poems by English soldier Wilfred Owen that were written during his time in the trenches and hospital throughout the First World War. Deeply emotional, with an underlying tone of caution, the piece remains just as relevant more than six decades after its release.
The Vancouver Bach Choir and Vancouver Bach Children’s Chorus will perform Britten’s masterpiece at the Orpheum on April 5, alongside the West Coast Symphony Orchestra. Métis soprano Melody Courage, one of the soloists for the War Requiem, recalls that the last time she saw it live was at a 2014 Vancouver Symphony Orchestra production led by late conductor Bramwell Tovey.
“I remember being extremely moved by that performance,” Courage says in a phone call with Stir. “So when I had another listen to the recording, I was literally bawling. There’s parts of it that are just so moving, and also parts that are just so exhilarating. And also there are a lot of high notes, which I love singing up there. So I’m like, ‘Yes, I get to sing high—woohoo!’”
Courage, who is of Dene, Cree, and Chipewyan descent, moved to Victoria from Vancouver about a year and a half ago. She began her music studies at UBC and then transferred to the Vancouver Academy of Music’s S.K. Lee College to pursue opera. The artist has since gone on to perform in a wide variety of roles, including Steve Jobs’s ex-partner Chrisann Brennan in The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs with Calgary Opera and one of the Three Ladies in Vancouver Opera’s production of The Magic Flute. She also starred in the Cree opera Pimooteewin and Sàmi companion piece Gállábártnit as part of the double bill Two Odysseys, presented in Toronto by Soundstreams Canada and Signal Theatre.
A standout role for Courage was the Native Girl in the world premiere of librettist Marie Clements and composer Brian Current’s nationally acclaimed opera Missing, which tells the story of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women. The original coproduction was by City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria; Courage later performed in the U.S. premiere of the work with Anchorage Opera in Alaska.
Missing is sung in both English and Gitxsan, which was a new experience for the soprano.
“It’s a softer language,” she shares. “They have all these beautiful, whispery sort of words. We got to work with a Gitxsan speaker named Vince Gogag, so he came into a lot of our initial rehearsals to make sure we were saying [words] right. And he was so gracious, because even in speaking English and singing English, you have to do things differently in order for [vocals] to project; you may have to open your mouth more and things like that.”
As for Courage’s upcoming War Requiem performance, she’ll be singing parts of the grief-heavy Mass, which is in Latin. She remarks that when Britten premiered the work in 1962 at Coventry Cathedral, it conveyed “a warning to those in the future about what war actually is and what it does” that still rings true.
“I think it applies to us because it’s an anti-war piece,” Courage says. “And with everything that’s going on right now—with Russia and Ukraine, with Israel and the Gaza Strip—it’s a denunciation of war.”
Courage will be performing the War Requiem alongside two other soloists: baritone Tyler Duncan, who she first met when they were both students at UBC, and tenor Asitha Tennekoon (“I just adore him, and I love his voice; it’s one of the most pure, beautiful-sounding tenor voices,” she says). The baritone and tenor will be singing Owen’s poetry, which acknowledges the individuals who are caught in the conflict of war.
Now that she’s firmly established in the world of choral music, Courage says she’s looking forward to maintaining her work pace over the coming years. At the top of her mind is simply seeing where life takes her—starting with the career-defining War Requiem. Though it is rooted in sombre subject matter, the piece is brimming with sonic beauty.
“Actually, I told my husband this,” Courage reveals: “I said if something happens and, say, I die the day after, or never get another gig again, I will feel fulfilled after singing this, because it’s that exhilarating.” 
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