Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2023 från Opera Canada

… What is the best leadership role you’ve held? What did it teach you? I coached youth soccer many years ago. We had autonomy to manage, guide and train A LOT of young people. It taught me an important leadership lesson early: there can be negative consequences to decisions we make, even when said decisions are the right ones. At the end of that summer, I wrote what I still think was a courageous, if naive, letter to the director offering management ideas from safety to parental involvement boundaries—they asked for feedback and I gave it. And perhaps to no one’s surprise, I applied again for the following year and didn’t get the job. That lesson hasn’t stopped me from making courageous decisions as a leader, but I do so…

Known to Dreamers MEASHA BRUEGGERGOSMAN-LEE, ELLIOT MADORE, JONELLE SILLS; STEVEN PHILCOX CENTREDISCS — CMCCD 32523 RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 2024 Canadian Art Song Project features the contributions of Black Canadian composers and poets FEBRUARY 2024 IS SET TO BE AN exciting month for music and history education in Canada. Known to Dreamers: Black Voices in Canadian Art Song (Centrediscs), initiated and recorded by the Canadian Art Song Project (CASP), features the contributions of Black Canadian composers and poets writing for a medium often taken for granted amidst the larger spectacle of grand opera. The project offers a rich array of sounds, performances, reflections, and direct experiences, elements which CASP Co-Artistic Director and Managing Director Lawrence Wiliford says highlight art song’s power for “storytelling and connection.” Included on the album is the…

BROUGHT UP IN AN OPERA-LOVING household, Dawson has been a Canadian Opera Company subscriber since 1997. He comes from an investment banking background, but has since retired from that enterprise. What makes him tick most is creativity and innovation; that is just the thing that has driven his support for Tapestry Opera as Chair for the last seven years. Tapestry has produced an amazing variety of new operas which serve to expand the scope of the genre. Dawson is particularly proud of Tapestry’s Composer-librettist Laboratory (LIBLAB) which results in new creations; LIBLAB is also the model for the English National Opera Studio’s All-in Opera, as well as Pacific Opera Victoria’s Composer-Librettist Workshop. Since its inception in 1979 Tapestry has produced 18 full-length world premieres and 160 world premieres of opera…

DECEMBER Royal Opera House, London, UK In her second year as an artist in ROH’s Jette Parker Program, Canadian soprano Sarah Dufresne will sing the Dew Fairy in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel in a beautiful festive production by British director Antony McDonald, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth Dec 16, 2023 - Jan 7, 2024. roh.org.uk Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam Canadian mezzo-soprano Martina Myskohlid (a member of the Dutch National Opera Studio) will take on the role of Flora in DNO’s La traviata production Jan 27- Feb 18, 2024. She also sings Second Lady in Simon McBurney’s Die Zäuberflöte with Dutch-Canadian tenor Lucas van Lierop (Monastatos) over the holiday season. Dec 1-28, 2023. operaballet.nl Netflix Bradley Cooper-directed Maestro also starring Cooper as Leonard Bernstein will be available on Netflix on Dec 20,…

» TWO TENDENCIES ARE CLEAR: THE EXTENT TO which festivals now, perhaps more so than opera houses, are committed to opera as a forum for positive cultural, political, and interdisciplinary exchange and secondly, how Canadian singers are taking part in this in a major way. Indeed, almost every festival I visited this summer features one or more Canadian singers, not to mention Canadian stage designer Michael Levine, who was named “Set Designer of the Year” by Opernwelt magazine for his Madame Butterfly at the 2023 Bregenz Festival. Festival at Aix-en-Provence - July 4 - July 27, 2023 Now celebrating its 75th year, the Aix festival has maintained a commitment to unfussy (no black tie, no long dress) and highest-quality programming. In addition, this year, a youth rate was introduced for…

Jorell Williams never intended to be a singer. “It was an accident,” he tells me from his condo in downtown Toronto. “I was a pianist. I had been playing piano since I was four.” Jorell had college auditions planned as a piano major. When he arrived for his audition at SUNY Purchase, they informed him that the program for which he was applying had lost state funding and was no longer in existence.“‘But you could audition for voice’,” they informed him. “THE WHOLE APPEAL OF OPERA IS TO SEE HOW PEOPLE TRANSFORM INTO SUPERHUMAN BEINGS.” Scrounging together Mozart’s art song “Abendemp-findung” in three days, Jorell auditioned as a voice major and was accepted. “And the rest is history!” he says mockingly of himself. What Jorell didn’t realize at the time…

The word “amaaaazing” was drawn out and spoken softly, not at all like an exclamation one might normally expect from a teenager. Their sense of wonder was palpable. It gave me goosebumps, not only because the experience had such a powerful impact, but because that evening, many other youths, brand new to opera and attending as part of our 60th season youth-for-free initiative, shared similar sentiments with me. The day prior, I had travelled with EO’s Music Director and conductor Simon Rivard to a local high school to work with a group of grade 11 and 12 band students. We were accompanied by head coach and repetiteur Frances Armstrong and 2 singers participating in EO’s emerging artist residency program: mezzo soprano Adanya Dunn and baritone Bruno Roy. At the school…

HIGHLIGHTS Opera Canada The 2023 Rubies Nov 6, 2023 A night to remember Manitoba Opera Kusturok/Weisensel/Steele Li Keur: Riel’s Heart of the North Nov 18 – 24, 2023 “… many compelling moments ringing with truth in this show.” —HOLLY HARRIS Opéra de Québec Donizetti Lucie de Lammermoor Oct 21 – 28, 2023 “Let us highlight the solid performance of the chorus…and the excellence of the Orchestre symphonique de Québec.” —IRÈNE BRISSON Southern Ontario Lyric Opera Puccini Madama Butterfly Sept 27 – Oct 15, 2023 “With productions like this, Madama Butterfly will continue to remain a fan favourite.” —DAWN MARTENS San Francisco Opera Bates / Campbell The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs Sept 22 – Oct 7, 2023 “Olivia Smith was outstanding.” —JOHN BENDER Park Avenue Armory Schubert Doppelganger Sept 22 –…

WHILE OPERA COMPANIES reduce both the number of productions and performances per season, here instead are leaders with a vision of collaboration, teaching tools with which to earn a living in the face of these realities…at music school! So-called bohemian values of high-minded, artistic wealth resigned to material poverty are replaced compassionately with marketable skills and higher standards of living. This pilot project develops agile artists able to transition to any number of roles, within or without the performing arts. What began in 2020-21 as an entrepreneurship course at Opera McGill taught by Krehm (General Director at Opera 5 and real estate executive), in which students learned the financial, legal, administrative and artistic realities of forming a company, has evolved into an internship program providing tangible links between educational institutions…

Infinity Voyage EMERSON QUARTET, BARBARA HANNIGAN, BERTRAND CHAMAYOU ALPHA CLASSICS ALPHA1000 RELEASED SEPTEMBER 8, 2023 After 47 years of award-winning music-making, the Emerson String Quartet disbanded in October 2023; Infinite Voyage was their final release. THE ORIGINS GO BACK SOME EIGHT YEARS to when Eugene Drucker heard Hannigan in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin and opened up a conversation about working together. The result was a concert in Berlin featuring the Schoenberg Second String Quartet; a work which is central to the new CD. That was followed up by concerts in New York, Vienna and Switzerland and the beginning of a relationship that culminates and is documented in Infinite Voyage. Although the Emerson Quartet has recorded over fifty CDs with Deutsche Grammophon this one, like most of Hannigan’s recordings, is…