CD Review | The Mata Hari Songbook, Patricia O’Callaghan

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Burge/Walker —The Mata Hari Songbook

Patricia O’Callaghan, soprano; John Burge, piano

Centrediscs, 2024

The Mata Hari Songbook, with music by John Burge and lyrics by Craig Walker, began life as a two-act stage show One Last Night with Mata Hari that played in Kingston, Ont., in 2017. The CD features 10 of the songs from the show, bookended by piano pieces from Burge’s Mata Hari Suite. Burge is at the piano with Toronto’s multi-genre chanteuse Patricia O’Callaghan as Mata Hari.

Mata Hari, on the evening before her execution, relates her life story. She recounts her journey from being mistress to a brutal army officer, to exotic dancer and dominatrix in Paris, to aging vamp caught up in a spy scandal that is way out of her league. Ultimately, she becomes the sacrificial victim of officialdom’s scheme to cover up failings (or worse) by French military intelligence. It’s clear her career was built on a highly sexualized Orientalism designed to titillate French palates, rather than any accurate idea of life in the Orient. In addition to the cultural appropriation, there is considerably more of a BDSM flavour than I expected! Overall, it’s a condensed but well-constructed narrative.

Musically, it’s quite rich. The style is rooted in Broadway rather than European cabaret so it’s fairly soft-edged. Brecht and Weill, one feels, might have tackled this subject with a great deal more bite. That said, the music isn’t insipid. Nods to French Impressionism, late German Romanticism, and even Atonalism keep things interesting. as do the parodic drum-and-bugle elements in the first song.

Burge is a very accomplished pianist and plays with considerable flair. He’s also a good accompanist and allows O’Callaghan plenty of space to express a range of emotions. She really is very stylish and skilled in this style of musical storytelling. The result is an interesting and enjoyable 50 minutes or so of musical theatre.

The disc is well recorded in a clear acoustic with a natural voice/piano balance. All the text is clearly audible. It’s available as a physical CD or digitally, but there’s no booklet so O’Callaghan’s excellent diction is a definite plus.