This piece by Lydia Perović was originally published in the Final Word section of our summer 2021 issue. To check out the full issue, or to see our subscription options for exclusive content, click here. I had a lot of time this year to think about what factors...
In Opera Canada's new Q&A series, we've asked arts writers across the country to weigh in on how the Canadian opera industry is handling the prolonged pandemic environment. First up...Lydia Perović. What are your feelings on the types of programming being offered,...
We’ve all seen the pictures: Salzburg Festival defied the odds and put on two staged operatic productions this summer. The festival had a COVID-testing clinic in situ, tight protocols for testing, masking, foot traffic, as well as who could work closely with whom....
*tap tap* Is this thing on? Hello everyone. My name is Lydia Perović and I’m here to admit publicly that after years—nay, decades—of musical snobbery, I am coming out as a fan of Puccini’s La Bohème. SUPPORT GROUP FOR THE LOVERS OF SENTIMENTAL MUSIC: Hi, Lydia! This...
Arrigo Boito, the redoubtable 19th-century Italian poet and Verdi’s best known librettist, skillfully distilled and adapted Shakespeare’s Othello for the operatic stage but also, unfortunately for us today, flattened it into a morality play. Gone is Shakespeare’s Act...
The final Mozart-Da Ponte collaboration, 1790’s Cosí fan tutte, o sia La Scuola degli Amanti (Women Are Like That, or A School for Lovers) is hard to stage effectively. Atom Egoyan’s 2014 production, revived on Feb. 6th at the Canadian Opera Company, doesn’t quite get...
The availability of live-streamed and on-demand opera has exploded in the last five years. Major companies like Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), Opéra national de Paris, Grand Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona) and Vienna State Opera have cinema distribution deals...
There are operas whose musical and dramatic brilliance does not show signs of ever running out, hundreds of years into their production history. Then there are operas which make you wonder if the art form is deader than a museum piece.
Canadian Opera Company’s nine-year-old production of Stravinsky’s shorts, The Nightingale and Other Short Fables directed by Robert Lepage has aged well—as family entertainment. It sells well, it brings children and rookies to the opera house, and this time around it...