Smalltown Canada setting Donizetti’s rustic melodramma giocoso (comic opera) The Elixir of Love returned to the Canadian Opera Company on October 11 for the first time since 1999, in a new-to-Toronto production by American director James Robinson. The action has been...
Richard Strauss’s Arabella (1933) had its triumphant Canadian premiere last night, opening the Canadian Opera Company’s 17/18 season. It is one of those operas that comes saddled with a ‘reputation,' often viewed as less than top drawer Strauss; hindered by creaky...
Cincinnati Opera’s U.S. premiere production of Another Brick in the Wall has begun presales of single tickets. These tickets are only available through October 31, and are limited to three dates in the five performance run. The opera opens July 20th at Springer...
Opera Canada's 18th annual awards gala The Rubies is quickly approaching. On October 30, three honourees will be recognised for their contributions to Canadian opera, and among the recipients is accomplished director and librettist Michael Patrick Albano. As Associate...
Keith Warner's frenetic, conceptually driven production of Richard Strauss's Elektra (1909) reinforced a musically brilliant performance of this brutal, uncompromising opera centered on a mythic daughter's longing for revenge of the murder of her father, Agamemnon, by...
The world premiere of Missing, a new opera based on the tragedy of over 1,200 missing and murdered First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and girls in Canada, is fast approaching. The opera, produced by City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria will open November...
For the past 12 years, the annual ‘Meet the Young Artists’ recital that kicks off the Canadian Opera Company’s Free Concert Series has signalled the start of the opera season in Toronto. On September 26, the latest crop of uber-talented Canadian opera singers and...
Did you ever wonder what happens when three tenors share the concert stage? Operettts—the three ‘t’s standing for each tenor—offered a gleefully amusing answer in the form of a rivalry between three divos all on one stage, performing operetta’s greatest hits. This...
Lyric soprano Layla Claire, who hails from Penticton, B.C., was a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist program and made her debut on that storied stage as Tebaldo in Don Carlos in 2010. Since then, her career has advanced quickly,with...
On September 16, artistic director and conductor Sabatino Vacca launched Southern Ontario Lyric Opera’s (SOLO) 2017-2018 season with Puccini’s La Bohème. The popular crowd-pleaser is so well known that it can be a mundane experience—however, this is not the case with...
A new opera is taking audiences back in time at Todmorden Mills. Each weekend in September, Tapestry Opera’s production of Bandits in the Valley is performed in the historic buildings and forests of the Mills. It’s about an hour long with no intermission, and the fast...
A new take on an old story Handel’s take on the Greek myth of Acis and Galatea received a refreshingly twenty-first century approach by re:Naissance Opera and Sound the Alarm: Music/Theatre at the Annex Theatre in downtown Vancouver on September 16. Collaborating...