French-Canadian baritone Hugo Laporte is in Montreal, preparing to reprise the role of Conte d’Almaviva in Opéra de Montréal‘s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, opening Sept 23. We caught up with him to reflect on early career beginnings, favourite composers, how he defines success and all things opera life. To Laporte, success is about “cultivating inner peace… and even better, sharing happiness with others!”
For opera fans who are also movie buffs, a highly anticipated event of the 2023 TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) is Seven Veils, a new film written and directed by Canadian opera director and filmmaker Atom Egoyan. It is based on his 27-year-old production...
Manitoba Underground Opera took audiences from heaven to hell this summer, with Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, its second production of its Odyssey 2023 festival. This year’s line-up wraps up with Verdi’s The Corsair being staged on deck of the historic Nonsuch ship...
Canadian soprano Jacqueline Woodley is in rehearsals in Vancouver preparing to sing one of Handel’s most ambitious cantatas, Apollo e Dafne with Early Music Vancouver. We sat down with Woodley to chat all things opera – from early career inspirations to what it means to be brave in music, and how she defines success.
Canadian-Armenian bass-baritone Vartan Gabrielian is in San Jose, CA rehearsing for Opera San Jose‘s production of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet and making his role and house debut as Friar Laurent. This week, he takes us to San Jose, CA and shares his favourite spots with us – from sunny coffeeshops to iconic flea markets, and everything in between.
When La Traviata was first performed in Venice in 1853 it was a major disappointment. This was the age of Wagner and Verdi and big operatic drama. Verdi had disregarded the moral and artistic convention of his time, as well as the expectations of his audience; instead...
Operagoers may have been tempted to think that an opera from the likes of a teenage Mozart would be a lightweight thing, but in the hands of director Dan Rigazzi, Il Re Pastore (“The Royal Shepherd”) offered a fresh look at what it means to rule and who should do it....
This summer, in its 17th season, Halifax Summer Opera Festival brought enthusiastic young singers to town again to produce two double-cast fully staged operas: Serse (1738) by G.F. Handel and La Jolie Parfumeuse (1873) by Jacques Offenbach, the latter apparently a...
On August 17 and 19, at the Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavilion in Haliburton, Ontario, patrons of Highlands Opera Studio witnessed a remarkable artistic creation. Regeneration, a multi-textured work designed and directed by Valerie Kuinka, was inspired by the...
Wayne Gooding provides an overview of the existing gender inequalities on the podium, and shines a spotlight on Tapestry Opera’s Women in Musical Leadership program – a three-year conducting program designed to nurture the next generation of women and non-binary conductors. This text was originally published in the Spring 2023 print version of Opera Canada magazine.
Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Bowman sits down with Timothy Myers, Artistic Advisor at Austin Opera, to talk innovation in opera: how to craft a sustainable future for the arts, the big questions we should be asking, and placing power in the hands of the artists. This text was originally published in the Spring 2023 print version of Opera Canada magazine.
Lucia Cesaroni sits down with Deborah Lau-Yu, founder and principal at PALETTERA Inc., an award-winning design studio that specializes in storytelling and branding. They reflect on the arts, design and entrepreneurship — how we can best bridge these worlds, make room for more diverse voices, and do better.