Mike Fan 范祖铭 (HBMus '19) is a Chinese-Canadian, queer, non-binary freelance opera singer based in Toronto. They recently developed a project with Pacific Opera Victoria, creating and performing an opera video called Tā (他/她), which combines Chinese opera costume and makeup (by Starlight Chinese Opera) with European opera arias and art songs inspired by the East.
What drew you to studying music and performing opera?
I came in a very roundabout way to opera - first, I began as a young pianist at age six. Through my training as a musician, I discovered opera at age 13 in a music history class and was hooked! The piece we heard as Dido’s Lament, so tragic and in English - so I understood every word and it spoke to me as a sensitive and melancholy young person. Shortly after, I saw my first opera on PBS - Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and I identified immediately with the shy bookworm Tatyana. It all comes full circle this August when I perform the role in drag with my company Opéra Queens.
However, not feeling quite at home as a pianist, I embarked on the next logical thing and pursued medicine, first through a pre-med degree at University of Guelph and then a rather disastrous medical school interview at McMaster University. Clearly that was even further from my destined path and at age 21 I had my first voice lesson with a local teacher out of desperation to find something that brought me joy again. I clearly had a natural classical voice with a two-octave range, which is not typical, and just two years later I found myself accepted and embarking on my HBMus voice performance degree at Laurier’s Faculty of Music! The rest, as the say, is history…but I’m the one surprised most of all that my operatic career began quickly, unexpectedly and inexplicably especially given that I was so shy and awkward as a kid!
Can you tell us about Tā (他/她) and what it was like to create and perform in your own opera?
Tā (他/她) is an opera film that I developed as a young artist in Pacific Opera Victoria’s 2021-22 Civic Engagement Quartet. This was a unique opportunity, especially in the classical music industry where each of our personal and artistic voices as marginalized individuals was championed and encouraged. Through five pieces written by, or inspired by, those of Asian descent filmed at Array Music and outdoors from Toronto’s Harbourfront to Chinatown, I explore my complex journey navigating being a second-generation immigrant, queer, non-binary person while straddling interdisciplinary art forms such as opera and drag. It’s exciting to be revisiting this film this May during 2022 AAPI Heritage Month as I prepare to fly out to BC to make my in-person début performing with Pacific Opera Victoria - one of the highlights being a concert in Victoria’s Chinatown celebrating their new branch of the Chinese-Canadian Museum!
It was an incredibly challenging but rewarding first time for me writing, filming and directing a film incorporating drag, classical performance and film footage, especially as much of it was filmed outdoors in the bitter cold of December & January! The storyboard itself and production documents really took the most work - countless hours and about six months of work that mostly remains unseen, but fortunately it all made the work of my editor much easier in the end! It was rewarding and a relief to see the film come together - since it was all recorded out of order, I had a vision that I wasn’t sure would gel together until I saw the first draft. My ever-patient boyfriend was even beginning to question why he needed to film me “walking by that garbage can three more times!”
As for the music itself, fortunately I relied on music from the public domain and living composer Chan Ka Nin and that wasn’t composed myself - my friend and colleague Rebecca did compose her own music for her video! However, I have commissioned new operas by my colleagues Morgan-Paige Melbourne and Dr. J. Marchand Knight that have also been immensely rewarding to create together especially as queer and BIPOC creators and musicians - though I leave the composing to them!
What's one thing you wish people knew about opera or musical performance in general?
People are often amazed and surprised when they come to see a fully staged opera that we perform without microphones for 3-5 hours at a time usually in foreign languages over dozens of instrumentalists with the same demands as stage or film actors - whether kissing decapitated heads, being stabbed, or hanging upside-down. It’s beyond heavy metal!!! Also, it’s not as expensive as you may think and there are surtitle translations in most theatres these days which is more accessible than many suppose.
On the more complex side, people are also not as knowledgeable about the challenges we face as opera singers in a centuries-old, Eurocentric and heteronormative industry. For queer people of colour such as myself, there is incredible racism we face, whether our linguistic skills and credentials being more readily questioned, nepotism, and being racially typecast in shows such as Madama Butterfly and Porgy and Bess. Artists, orchestras and crews are not paid nearly as much as they should be and the countless degrees and money we spend unpaid or even paying for performance experience are no guarantee of success in an industry where talent, fortune and knowledge are still not enough to guarantee regular employment. At the same time, especially given social justice movements being accelerated in the pandemic, it’s our time as marginalized arts workers to rise up and create the change that has so long eluded us in classical music - and fortunately big companies and organizations are finally beginning to listen, but we must make sure we continue to do the work to make our voices heard and needs addressed.
Just for fun- what is your favourite memory from your time at Laurier?
I was actually a founding member of a new theatre troupe called Student Budget Productions which last I heard is still operating at Laurier! In my first year at Laurier, friends of mine created the group and I was one of the initial small group of actors that performed in our first show, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (I was the cross-gartered Malvolio). Fast forward a few years and we were selling out A Midsummer Night’s Dream and School for Scandal. Eventually, toward the end of my degree at Laurier, I ended up stepping in as President. We undertook every aspect - from ticket sales to media and publicity, set and costume design, casting and production scheduling.
In addition to my experiences with Opera Laurier, which involved significant production work behind the scenes as well as performing, I didn’t realize how much this would train me for my career now! In addition to my freelance work as an opera singer and actor, I am also Founder, Artistic & Executive Director of Opéra Queens, performing opera in full colour - majority BIPOC/IBPOC and in drag, gender-bent, and queerified. Fortunately we’ve received close to $200,000 in grants in our first two years of operation, so I’ve been able to hire assistants and other staff seasonally, but ultimately that same self-initiative, work ethic and all-around encyclopedia of skills I honed at Laurier with Student Budget Productions as well as Opera Laurier, Improvisation Concerts Ensemble, Languages & Literatures Department and many other groups form the basis of my unique and wide-ranging work today!