Reviews
Canadian Opera Company
Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White “Celebrate her Legacy!: Foregrounding Black Canadian History”
Canadian Opera Company | Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White| Opera Canada Review
Manitoba Underground Opera
Rocking Horse Winner “Watson and her entire cast are to be commended for bringing their sensitive artistry in bringing this harrowing opera to life”
Manitoba Underground Opera Rocking Horse Winner Review
San Francisco Opera
Innocence “De Sévigné compensated with fine acting, while discharging the vocal line with precision and tonal beauty.”
San Francisco Opera: Innocence
Glyndebourne
Carmen “Paulus’ Carmen is at once a powerful psychological drama and a testament to women’s universal struggle for freedom.”
Glyndebourne: Carmen “Paulus’ Carmen is at once a powerful psychological drama and a testament to women’s universal struggle for freedom.”
Royal Opera House
Andrea Chénier “This is opera at its finest””
Royal Opera House: Andrea Chénier
Edmonton Opera
Das Rheingold “It was compellingly forceful and intimidatingly compelling, and by the time he was cursing the gods who robbed him of his glorious future with the ring, this Alberich was perversely in charge, both operatically and narratively. Mazerolle sang his hope and fury splendidly.””
Edmonton —The phrase “Wagner chamber opera” sounds like an oxymoron, but that’s what Edmonton Opera offered its audience to end the company’s diverse 60th-anniversary season. Wagner’s first instalment of his Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold, is the shortest of the cycle’s...
Canadian Children’s Opera Company
The Hobbit “As long as imagination and creativity are alive, The Hobbit will continue to entertain and inspire the child in all of us for generations to come.”
From May 31st to June 2nd, The Canadian Children’s Opera Company (CCOC) presented four performances of Dean Burry’s The Hobbit at Harbourfront Centre Theatre in Toronto. Twenty years ago, the former Artistic Director of the CCOC, Ann Cooper-Gay, commissioned this...
Opéra de Québec
Die Fledermaus “The result was colorful, entertaining, and full of Quebecois allusions.”
Cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus was finally performed four times at the Opéra de Québec from May 11 to 18 in an entirely Quebec production, sung and spoken in French in a version inspired by Paul Ferrier's (1904). As the second...
Canadian Opera Company
Medea “an opera that seizes you by the scruff and makes you want to come back for more”
Greek myths might bring to mind settings of vast chalky columns bathed in Mediterranean light, but not so in this production of Luigi Cherubini’s adaptation of the tragic tale of Medea. After an exuberant, stormy overture, the curtain rises on King Creonte’s palace,...
The Little Opera Company
The Walk from the Garden Jonathan Dove “Taking the road less travelled with this gripping, metaphorical tale for modern times”
The Little Opera Company (LOC) took a bold leap of faith as it closed its 2023/24 season with the Canadian premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Walk from the Garden, a darkly ominous, allegorical church opera inspired by the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from...
Vancouver Opera
Carmen “Box office-breaking opening… the highest-grossing and largest scale production in the company’s 64-year history”
Carmen, the opera that Stephen Sondheim once called a non-stop hit parade, boasts a double cast of Carmen and Don José. Sarah Mesko starred opening night beside Alok Kumar as Don José while Ginger Costa-Jackson—stepping in for Carolyn Sproule who had to cancel at the...
Canadian Opera Company
Don Pasquale Endless high spirits
If you find yourself in search of a good few hours of worry-free merriment, the return of Don Pasquale to the Canadian Opera Company (COC) after a thirty-year absence will be all the balm you need. Donizetti’s charming, satisfying comedy lands with us in a production...