“My voice teacher was verbally abusing me,” explains Emily Bilton, drag artist and opera alum. "I ended up failing my third-year recital by 2 percent. I had to get a 65 and I got a 63. And the only explanation they could give me was that my tone wasn’t what they...
Against the Grain's (AtG) Figaro’s Wedding takes the Mozart opera off the stage and to an events hall at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, going all in on the wedding of the century! Like a dork’s day at a Renaissance fair, the roll-out for this production and the subsequent...
Tapestry Opera’s experimental opera series, TAP:EX is back. Conceived as an annual opportunity for operatic experimentation, this year’s installment, Augmented Opera, showcases Tapestry’s love of Black Mirror. Hosted by Alphabet Inc.'s Sidewalk Labs and with some...
The music came to a sudden stop and the curtain fell onto the stage with mechanical precision. As the choir hummed, a heart-rate monitor blared out a sinister flat-line and for a moment I thought I’d died. Sadly though I was still very much alive. When the lights...
At long last, the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio Competition has drawn to a close, and with it Canada's top young opera singer has been found: Midori Marsh, the super soprano from Cleveland, Ohio took home both the First Prize ($5000) and the Audience Choice...
Against the Grain Theatre’s La bohème feels like a cult movie that everyone’s heard of but no one has actually really seen. Like Game of Thrones or Hamilton, a shared cultural osmosis sparks déjà vu as Rodolfo mourns Mimì’s lifeless form, or as Schaunard boasts of...
Tucked away in the halls of the University of Toronto, past a dizzying variety of architectural pinpoints that make up its network of colleges, lies UofT Music School’s Early Music program. Charged with exposing students to pre-classical repertoire, the program is the...
“Given in bits.” Such were the words acclaimed composer Giacomo Puccini used to describe productions of Il trittico, his anthology opera. “Brutally torn to pieces,” was his less diplomatic approximation. Indeed, Il trittico, one of Puccini’s final compositions, has...