The Royal Conservatory announced today that it has appointed internationally celebrated Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka as Vocal Chair and Head of the Vocal Department of The Glenn Gould School (GGS), its acclaimed school of professional performance training for...
Tired out from the Holiday Season festivities? How about something frivolous, frothy and fun to get rid of those post-Christmas blues? It’s always nice to end the year—and 2018 has turned out to be quite the annus horribilis for the world—with some escapist...
Rent hikes of up to 160% by Victoria, BC's Royal & McPherson Theatre Society has already forced the Victoria Symphony to move half of its programming to the University of Victoria and could have serious budgetary repercussions for one of its other main tenants,...
Kopernikus (Rituel de la mort, 1978-79) was Claude Vivier’s only opera. Seen Dec. 4th at Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris, this production concludes Le Festival d'Automne à Paris 2018's series of five concerts dedicated to the work of the enigmatic Québecois composer....
San Francisco Opera’s It’s a Wonderful Life (seen Nov. 20th), Jake Heggie’s latest work for the operatic stage, might be called a musical—and he would not object. He declares that he has been writing them for years. Still, his prior successes with Dead Man Walking...
Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Otello (seen Nov. 28th) would seem to have all the ingredients for a compelling take on Verdi’s distillation of Shakespeare’s tragedy: top soloists Jonas Kaufmann (Otello), Anja Harteros (Desdemona) and Gerald Finley (Iago);...
It’s no mere tilting at windmills that Mozart’s Don Giovanni, rising from its own grave 231 years since its premiere in Prague in 1787, shudders with even greater resonance in today’s brave new #MeToo world, where modern day moguls fueled by their own narcissistic...
Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, presented by UofT Opera and directed by Michael Patrick Albano takes advantage of a talented ensemble while dealing with what is a rather unfocused work for the stage. As seen on Nov. 22, the opera’s themes—relevant when introduced in 1946...
Calgary Opera opened its new season in daring fashion on Nov. 17th with a bold and expensive production of Charles Gounod's five-act tour-de-force, Roméo et Juliette. Current General Director Keith Cerny impressively finessed bringing Claude Girard's famed, 1986 Opéra...
Against the Grain Theatre’s Bound v.2 (seen Nov. 19th) is opera for our times. Handel arias and ensembles have been adapted into a production that appears to border on dystopian but is, in many ways, startlingly relevant despite its source music: four “wanted persons”...
There have been many stories told in every art form of late about immigration, migration and displacement. Our country knows its fair share of émigré stories, many of which have been turned into operas and musicals. But no story has been quite so moving as the one...
As the most compact of the Ring operas —clocking in at a trifling two-and-a-half hours— Das Rheingold can let smaller companies dip a toe into Wagner’s Nibelungen universe without committing to the scale and expense of the other works in the cycle. A case in point is...