News
Faces in the crowd: opera’s supernumeraries
Note: this article was originally published in 2017 on Schmopera.com, and is being reprinted here with permission by the author. When we go to the opera, what we see onstage is the result of a complicated system of task delegation; some folks do the singing, others...
Happy Birthday, Mr. Rigoletto!
Canadian baritone Louis Quilico would have been 96 today. He had the kind of career that most baritones dream of, finding an organic fit in Verdi's operas: Germont in La traviata, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Iago in Otello, Macbeth in Macbeth, and of course, the...
Collector’s item alert: our 60th anniversary issue
It's the understatement of the century to say that 2020 was...action-packed. Amid it all came an important piece of good news: Opera Canada magazine turned 60! It's an extraordinary thing for an opera-centric magazine to reach its sixth decade of publication, and...
City Opera Vancouver’s “The Human Voice” streamed in nightly webisodes
City Opera Vancouver presents its first online opera, with The Human Voice, an adaptation of the 1928 play by Cocteau and the 1958 opera by Poulenc. In this contemporary take on La voix humaine, a woman's one-sided telephone conversation with her lover changes gender...
Opera Canada wants your requests! Please!
Hi, Canadian opera lovers! Jenna here. You might know me from Opera Canada's social media channels, where I've been spending time over the last year or so as the magazine's Social Media Manager. Starting this month, you'll hear from me a lot more, as I'm taking on a...
Tapestry Opera Announces their Winter 2021 Season
Following a 2020 season of digital and live shows that reached over 5,000 pairs of eyes and offered work for Canadian artists, Tapestry Opera’s Winter 2021 lineup continues to offer innovation to Toronto's opera landscape. Founded in 1979, Tapestry is an...
Perryn Leech: Exclusive Interview with COC’s new General Director
“Collaboration” might be the most important word in Perryn Leech’s vocabulary. The new General Director of the Canadian Opera Company comes from the behind-the-scenes world of opera production, having spent his formative years learning the literal and figurative...
Opera Canada: Our team’s 2020 roundup
As 2020 draws to a close, the Opera Canada team offers their personal reflections on the most idiosyncratic year in the magazine’s 60 year history. Leah Borts-Kuperman, Editorial Assistant, Opera Canada Relative to the opera world, I’m a newbie. I saw my first La...
Opinion: How can diverse identities experience Messiah?
An old professor of mine startled me recently, asking, “What’s it like singing Messiah as a Jewish person?” I was taken aback, never having given the matter much thought. “It’s beautiful music and story-telling, like all my other repertoire,” I replied, perplexed at...
Review: Messiah/Complex joyfully proves beauty of a vast ‘Canadian’ experience
I feel I must preface this review with the confession that I have never--not ever--seen a holiday-season Messiah. I am grateful that Messiah/Complex, a filmed collaboration between the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) and Against the Grain (AtG) Theatre, seen Dec....
Lived Experience: Transgender opera singers still fear coming out and losing work
The November 2020 opening of Orchestre Classique de Montréal’s production of Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell, and Kimberly Reed’s chamber opera As One opened up another frustrating conversation about where transgender people belong in the performing arts. Navigating...
6 Canadian Messiah productions to usher in the holidays at home
As advent calendars continue the countdown to a bittersweet 2020 holiday season, opera companies keep inline with tradition--or should we say online--via streamable versions of the Handel classic. Keep reading for a complete list of Messiah shows to curl up to with a...