Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who has been criticized in the past for not being a friend of the arts, now has his own opera or at least one about him. However, he didn't even show up for the world premiere.
Rob Ford: The Opera hit the stage at University of Toronto's MacMillan Theatre Sunday for its first and possibly only performance.
Michael Patrick Albano, of the U of T's Faculty of Music came up with the idea and wrote the opera which is "loosely based upon the personality of Toronto's current and much discussed mayor."
He came up with the idea while sitting in a Starbucks on Bloor Street and working on a modern adaptation of five scenes from Antigone by Sophocles, a tragedy written before 442 BC. "Everybody in the whole place...was talking about Rob Ford," He told the Torontoist at the beginning of January. "And I thought, 'Maybe I'm missing the boat here.'
Ford is far from the first political figure to be used as a base for a satirical opera. Faculty of Music Dean Don McLean told Torontoist others have included Don Giovanni in the late 1700s and Nixon in China in the 1980s.
This isn't the first time Ford and opera have been mentioned in the same sentence. The mayor played an animated cannon doll in the Nutcracker in December. It was a non-speaking, non-dancing role.
While Ford was not seen in the audience, so many people wanted to see the show, they opened up the rarely used balcony.
So where was the mayor? Maybe he was preparing for his Monday morning weigh-in.
Ford weighed-in at 320 pounds, meaning he has lost 10 pounds in one week. That's a number most Biggest Loser participants would be happy to see on the scale. And his brother and councillor Doug Ford shed nine pounds.
"This is the toughest thing myself and Rob have ever done," said Doug in a CTV article. "We have both been exercising vigorously every day."
The mayor attributes his loss to a lot of running, weight lifting and "eating like a rabbit."
The brothers are taking part in a "Cut the Waist Challenge," a personal project to become healthier and raise money for charity.
Even though the opera was billed as a one-time-only performance, that may change given the interest, said Albano to the Toronto Star. Ford has been invited, but there is no word on if he will be able to take a break from working out to see a repeat performance if it happens.
(CP photo)
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