Etiquette – Film Release

March 26, 2024 7pmET/8pmAT

BUY TICKETS HERE!

Please join us for the first ever viewing of this film and the following live chat, and/or watch later in the week! Etiquette will be available to ticketholders until April 3. 

It’s New Year’s Eve, 1927.

Journalist and poet Dorothy Parker pours herself a generous drink in her Art Deco styled apartment. She’s up against a brutal deadline: write a review of socialite Emily Post’s 684-page tome on Etiquette by morning. The audience is swept up by Dorothy’s Roaring Twenties energy, as she disregards Etiquette in favour of a night of partying.

A few weeks later.

Emily sits down to tea in the elegant home of trailblazing politician Nancy Astor. Mrs. Astor challenges Emily to defend her idealistic views on the human condition. Despite the tension between them, the two women realize they share a history of disappointments and betrayals.

Flashback to Dorothy’s apartment.

The harsh light of day shines on a disheveled Dorothy and her typewriter. She attacks her review with a fresh burst of scathing wit and exuberant music.

Film credits:

Essential Opera – Producers
Tom Belding – Director
Tom Belding & Claire Fraser, cinematography 
Emlyn Murray – Art director

Maureen Batt, soprano  – Dorothy Parker
Erin Bardua, soprano – Emily Post
Lucy Hayes Davis, mezzo-soprano – Nancy Astor

Brad Reid – Clarinet
Tara Scott – Piano
Tara Scott – Conductor
Jodie Alcorn-Miller – Assistant conductor

Jeremy VanSlyke  – Recording producer
Ben B. Creelman  – Recording engineer
Ben B. Creelman, Haruka Nagata  –  Editing and mixing
Nathan Cann  – Mastering

Tom Belding –  Editing & VFX
Claire Fraser –  Key Grip / DIT

Emlyn Murray – Costumes
Becca Guilderson – Hair
Emily Jewer – Make-up
Julia Jordan – 1st assistant director
Emily Jewer – 2nd assistant director
Emily Jewer – Graphic design
Annika Williams – Covid safety 
Julia Jordan & Annika Williams – Production assistant 

Filmed at Local Council House, Halifax, NS

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Etiquette – EP

AVAILABLE NOW

Etiquette

Listen by clicking the link below:

LISTEN HERE

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MEDIA RELEASE

September 25, 2023

Essential Opera and Leaf Music Present

Etiquette

(Halifax/Kjipuktuk, NS) Composer Monica Pearce’s one-act opera Etiquette is being released by Leaf Music and Essential Opera. The twenty-one minute work features three influential 1920s women: author, critic and satirist Dorothy Parker (known for her wit and wisecracks), author and socialite Emily Post, and American-born British politician Nancy Astor. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and At Home (the book by Emily Post) was published in 1922, noting the importance of etiquette in all aspects of life: “Consideration for the rights and feelings of others is not merely a rule for behavior in public but the very foundation upon which social life is built.” When reviewing the work, however, Parker observed that, “Those who have mastered etiquette seem to arrive at exquisite dullness.”

Commissioned by Essential Opera, this world-premiere recording was made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts Nova Scotia. The album was recorded at St. Andrew’s United Church in Halifax. A stylish short film is also being released in the coming months.

Monica Pearce composed the music, and the librettist is John Terauds. The recording features sopranos Maureen Batt and Erin Bardua, mezzo-soprano Lucy Hayes Davis, pianist Tara Scott, and clarinetist Brad Reid.

Essential Opera’s recent projects include recordings and short opera films by Canadian women composers. Founded in 2010 in Toronto by Erin Bardua and Maureen Batt and now based in Atlantic Canada, the company has commissioned many new works, receiving support from SOCAN, Ontario Arts Council, Arts Nova Scotia, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Their first commercial release was an EP of Anna Pidgorna’s “Mirror, Mirror” (March 2021). Upcoming projects include a full-length opera by Fiona Ryan. Essential Opera presents works from the tried and tested to the brand new. Their mission is to give audiences opportunities to experience opera at its most essential, with a dynamic and evolving definition of what is essential.

Monica Pearce is a Canadian composer specializing in opera, chamber music and everything toy-piano-related. After completing her Bachelor of Music at Mount Allison University with a focus on piano and composition, Monica has a Master of Music in Composition from the University of Toronto and co-founded emerging composer collective, the Toy Piano Composers, with Chris Thornborrow. Her compositions have been performed and commissioned by many leading ensembles. She won the Harry Freedman Award for her harpsichord work toile de jouy and was nominated for Classical Composer of the Year by the 2022 East Coast Music Awards for Maureen Batt’s recording of Aunt Helen. In 2022 she released her debut album Textile Fantasies, a multi-work piece including eight works inspired by textiles and patterns. Called “vivid,” “pleasantly intricate,” “imaginative and meaningful,” by reviewers, this recording features performances by keyboardists Cheryl Duvall, Wesley Chen, Barbara Pritchard, and Joseph Ferretti, tabla player Shawn Mativetsky, and renowned ensembles TorQ Percussion and SHHH!! Ensemble. Monica is active as a librettist and worked with composer Cecilia Livingston on the Dora-nominated opera on the life of Anne Frank entitled Singing Only Softly.

Leaf Music is an independent recording label based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, making and distributing high-quality classical music recordings by artists and composers from across Canada. Our growing catalogue of solo, orchestral, and chamber music is distributed by Naxos of America to the world’s most important music retailers, download providers, and streaming services. We are also a provider of professional audio and video production, post-production services and integrated music marketing and distribution in Canada.