Ryerson Alumni - Summer 2019 - 37

PROFILES

Two to tango

Connecting with audiences takes centre stage
for the powerhouse duo behind Opera Atelier
BY DEBORAH SMYTH

Opera Atelier founding
co-artistic directors
Jeannette Lajeunesse
Zingg and Marshall Pynkoski
prepare for their
exciting new season.

getting a phone call in the Louvre
announcing your appointment to the
Order of Canada is remarkable enough. It's
even more remarkable for someone who
doesn't own a cell phone. Yet this is precisely
what happened to Opera Atelier founding
co-artistic directors Marshall Pynkoski and
Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg in December.
"When we go on tour, our office gives us a
phone in case of emergency, and suddenly
this phone was ringing," says Pynkoski,
who has no TV or computer at home. "We're
not Luddites, we don't think these things
are awful," says Pynkoski. "We just felt it
was too much of a distraction to be able to
think creatively."
A nd creative they have been. Since
founding their groundbreaking company
in 1985, the same year they were married,
Pynkoski and Zingg have built Opera Atelier
into Canada's premier opera/ballet company. It brings productions from the 17th
and 18th centuries to life, in collaboration
with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.
With Pynkoski stage directing and Zingg
choreographing, they have toured some of the
world's greatest venues, including La Scala,
the Salzburg Festival, the Rossini Festival
and the Royal Opera House at Versailles.
The Order of Canada recognizes Pynkoski
and Zingg's contributions to opera and ballet in Canada, their mentorship of young
artists at The School of Atelier Ballet for
33 years, and their commitment to live
performance. They've also received Dora
Mavor Moore Awards, the Ordre des Arts
et des lettres from France, and Alumni
Achievement Awards.
"To connect with one another and to connect with what's on stage and with people
around you in a communal experience is
tremendously important and very rare nowadays," says Zingg.

Pynoski agrees: "We want people to come
to our productions and become broadened,
become more complete human beings as we
expand their imaginations."
Pynkoski and Zingg are collaborators in
work and in life, finishing each other's sentences like a verbal pas de deux. This is appropriate considering the two first met as students
in Ryerson's theatre performance program,
and started dating while studying in Toronto
with Russian ballet teacher Flora Lojekova.
"We had really great ballet teachers at
Ryerson, such as John Marshall," says Zingg.
"We were very fortunate, our Ryerson teachers knew what ballet was in terms of its roots,
in terms of an art form."
This grounding in ballet's history would
serve them well as they travelled to Paris
together to study further, financing their studies by performing two shows a night, seven
days a week, at the Moulin Rouge.
Back in Toronto, they started performing at
the Royal Ontario Museum, first alone, then
with singers from the opera school. They
began their collaboration with Tafelmusik
and David Mirvish, who helped launch the
company by adding them to his subscription
series at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
"He had been attending our shows, and
said, 'What you need is a real theatre.' Within
a few seasons we had grown so much, we
moved to the Elgin Theatre," says Pynkoski.
Opera Atelier's upcoming season promises to be their most ambitious yet, featuring internationally acclaimed bass-baritone
Douglas Williams as Don Giovanni next fall
and an all-star Canadian cast in Handel's
The Resurrection in April 2020.
The secret of their success?
"I always say to people, if you start something, start small, grow slowly and never give
up," says Zingg. "And that's exactly what
we've done."
Summer 2019 / Ryerson University Magazine

Ryerson Alumni - Summer 2019

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