Ruby Awards
The Opera Canada Ruby Awards, named in honour of Opera Canada’s founding editor Ruby Mercer, were first awarded in 2000. The Rubies were created to recognize and honour outstanding achievement and leadership in the realm of Canadian opera – both on stage and behind the scenes.
While they have been given in various categories over the years – in 2000, three were awarded: a Creative Artist Award, and Opera Builder Award, and an Opera Educator Award – these categories have become more permeable to allow the recognition of people who work in any area of the art form. Typically, the Rubies are awarded in honour of lifetime achievement in the art form, and they represent the highest honour in Canadian opera.
In 2022, a different category of Ruby Awards was introduced.The Rubies’ Nada Ristich Change Maker Award celebrates innovative leadership and social impact in opera. The award recognizes an individual (or group of artists) who has made an outstanding cultural contribution to the community through their artistic practice, or to initiatives that create significant creative and social change in the field of opera in Canada. Because the Change Maker Ruby can recognize a single initiative, it is not a lifetime achievement recognition.
Click the buttons below to review Rubies materials for specific years or read on for a list of all recipients.
Rubies – Past Recipients
After each recipient’s name, click the icons to learn more about them. Click 
to see the Opera Canada article written for their Rubies ceremony (or another Opera Canada feature about them for years where specific Rubies features weren’t written), 
for the recipient’s website,
to see their Wikipedia entry or 
to see their entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia.
2000: John Cook, Maureen Forrester , Stuart Hamilton
2001: Irving Guttman, Father Owen Lee, Jon Vickers
2002: Nicholas Goldschmidt, Mary Morrison, Pierrette Alarie & Leopold Simoneau
2003: Richard Bradshaw, Bill Neill & Dixie Ross Neill, Teresa Stratas
2004: Mario Bernardi, Judith Forst, Joseph Rouleau
2005: Cornelius Opthof, Joey & Toby Tanenbaum, Timothy Vernon
2006: Ben Heppner, CBC (Classical Music Division), Lotfi Mansouri
2007: Robert Lepage, Richard Margison, Marshall Pynkoski & Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg
2008: no awards
2009: Robert Carsen & Michael Levine, Tracy Dahl, Ermanno Mauro
2010: Dawn Martens, Roger D. Moore, Stephen Ralls & Bruce Ubukata, Edith Wiens
2011: Russell Braun, Jacqueline Desmarais, Nancy Hermiston
2012: Gerald Finley, Michael McMahon, Janet Stubbs
2013: Selena James, Dáirine Ní Mheadhra & John Hess, Barbara Willis Sweete
2014: Rev. Edward J.R. Jackman & Hon. Henry N.R. (Hal) Jackman, Rosemarie Landry, Adrianne Pieczonka
2015: Carrol Anne Curry, W.R. (Bob) McPhee, Wendy Nielsen
2016: Atom Egoyan, Grégoire Legendre, Sondra Radvanovsky
2017: Yves Abel, Michael Patrick Albano, Karina Gauvin
2018: Wayne Gooding, Dominique Labelle, Alexander Neef
2019: Emma Albani, Benjamin Butterfield, John Estacio, Liz Upchurch
2020: Barbara Hannigan, Edward Johnson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Michael Schade
2021: Paul Frey, Sonja Frisell, Allan Monk, Erin Wall
2022: John Fanning, Rebecca Hass (Nada Ristich Change Maker), Bramwell Tovey
2023: Isabel Bayrakdarian, Gino Quilico, Jaime Martino & Michael Hidetoshi Mori (Nada Ristich Change Maker), Wayne Vogan
2024: Michel Beaulac, Michael Cavanagh, Sandra Horst, artists of Li Keur (Nada Ristich Change Maker), Brett Polegato
2025: Jane Archibald, Larry Desrochers, Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (Nada Ristich Change Maker), Chantal Lambert