Table of contents for Fall 2025 in Opera Canada

At our annual general meeting over the summer, Opera Canada Publications was delighted to announce that, in 2024, we’d managed to retire almost half of our accumulated deficit. This was largely thanks to the Jackman Foundation, who offered us a matching grant to help pay off our CEBA loan from COVID times, and to our many readers and supporters, who met that challenge with extraordinary generosity. Of course, we continue to fundraise, and over the summer Opera Canada sent out another individual fundraising appeal. People have once again responded generously, and we continue to be grateful to all donors – large and small – for financial support beyond your annual subscriptions. Just as companies say, “Your ticket price covers only a portion of our costs,” Opera Canada knows that we…

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 or leadership in the realm of Canadian opera – both on stage and behind the scenes. On November 3rd, we will be gathering at Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre in Toronto to celebrate this year’s honorees, and – for the first time ever – the ceremony will be available across country with a simultaneous livestream complementing the live event. Please join us as we celebrate the 2025 Ruby Award recipients: Jane Archibald SOPRANO Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 CHANGE MAKER Larry Desrochers CEO Chantal Lambert STUDIO PROGRAM DIRECTOR Jane Archibald shares some operatic and some life experiences with Joseph So Since…

OCTOBER Staatsoper Hamburg Ambur Braid, whom Bachtrack called “born to play Salome,” returns to the role for one performance on October 5th in Hamburg opposite the Jochanaan of Kyle Ketelsen. staatsoper-hamburg.de Edmonton Opera On October 9th and 11th, Edmonton Opera presents Bravi!: Opera’s Greatest Hits in partnership with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Soloists include acclaimed soprano Miriam Khalil and rising Canadian singers Tessa Fackelmann and Zachary Rioux. edmontonopera.com Lyric Opera of Chicago Canadian superstar soprano Sondra Radvanovsky returns to Sir David McVicar’s production of Medea, October 11-26 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. lyricopera.org Opera Atelier, Toronto A perennial favourite, Opera Atelier’s beautiful production of The Magic Flute plays October 15th through 19th. Tenor Colin Ainsworth sings Tamino, and Meghan Lindsay and Douglas Williams make their role debuts as Pamina…

“IT’S GREAT TO BE HOME,” WERE Lois McDonall’s words when we met for our CBC Opera Time interview in September. It was slightly more than a year since she had been in Canada to sing the role of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. “I came back too soon then,” she said. “I wasn’t ready – I should have waited. But now I am ready.” She was speaking of her return to Toronto and her approaching appearance with the COC as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus. And it did go well. “Most stunning of the soloists was Lois McDonall,” wrote critic John Kraglund in The Globe and Mail after opening night, “whose warm, pure voice floated effortlessly and musically.” RM: I wonder how…

Opera singers are multidisciplinary performing artists whose job is to tell a story or convey an emotion through song, text and the embodiment of a character. Tom Diamond, an operatic acting coach based in Toronto, works with singers to help them build craft. When I asked what he meant by “craft,” he explained it as “what I use when inspiration fails me,” and “what I do unconsciously which must become conscious.” I first encountered Diamond when I was a member of the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio, and I remember his very direct yet encouraging and nurturing way of working. Twenty years later, I am still struck by how quickly but carefully he finds a way to get directly to the point. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Diamond had exposure to…

Larry Desrochers makes full use of the resources available in service to the community On one day, it’s the 2016 Lincoln MKC – good for the days when he and his wife commute together. On the days when he comes in alone, it’s the 2007 Ford Ranger FX4. “It’s good for hauling bush – maybe not the full tree,” Desrochers chuckles. Even if he drove a Vespa into the office, there’s not a doubt that Desrochers would make full use of the wheels and resources available to ensure that everything needed to make opera in Winnipeg gets done. He has operated this way in Manitoba’s theatre and arts circles since the mid 1980s, and now, as he concludes one of the longest general director terms in the North American opera…

Ariadne Lih listens to Teiya Kasahara talk about the changes needed to accept artists as full human beings (For more about The Queen In Me, see Jane Forner’s article in Opera Canada’s winter 2024 issue.) These descriptors are all laid out in the first paragraph of Kasahara’s bio. There, like everywhere, Kasahara shares who they are as an artist with generosity and creativity and without apology. This was immediately clear when I met them in 2022, during their keynote address for Queer History Month at McGill. That was my introduction to the story behind The Queen In Me. Kasahara, an incredibly gifted coloratura soprano, found themselves exhausted by the grind of Queen of the Night performances and weighed down by operatic misogyny and gender norms. They were moved to create…

AUDIO Ho: Chinatown CITY OPERA VANCOUVER LEAF MUSIC, LM281 “CHINATOWN, THE OPERA, is a story of found family. It is about intimacy and trust between two men in a world that views them as alien and expendable labour,” writes librettist Madeleine Thien of her collaboration with composer Alice Ping Yee Ho and Hoisan translator and writer Paul Yee. The work premiered at City Opera Vancouver in 2022, and this recording was released in 2023. The first act is kaleidoscopic in nature, chronicling the growing relationship between Xon Pon and Saihin between 1896 and 1948. Both Chinese workers in Canada, Saihin is saving to pay the Head Tax that would allow his wife and daughter to join him. The act ends with Saihan ill and dying, and Xon Pon travels under…

INTERVIEWING THE “Sandberg of the Symphony” Aubrey Bergauer was inspiring and vindicating. Many of the issues raised in this column feature in her excellent book, Run It Like a Business, stuffed with strategies for retention, growth, customer experience, verticalization and diversification of revenues for the arts sector. Canadian opera companies are in dire straits. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Request their tax returns from the CRA and see for yourself, or just turn to page 28 of this issue for the data. I’ll wait… Diagnosing problems is one thing, but fixing them is far more difficult. And here’s the optimistic piece – Aubrey’s book has data-driven strategies with KPIs to prove they work. Her tenure as chief executive of the California Symphony was marked by a doubling of audience size and…

In 2020, Opera Canada’s former editor, Wayne Gooding, began tracking the finances of the largest opera companies in the country and reporting them in an annual feature, typically in the fall. This list includes both our largest institutions and some of our smallest, volunteer-led organizations. In the 2024 data, company revenues range from over $33.2 million to just under $10,000. This does not speak to the goals or ambitions of these differently sized companies. Opera Canada believes that every company on this list has the goal of producing the best art it can with the available resources, but the data does point out some differences between our largest and smallest companies, particularly in their revenue diversification and in their ability to sustain an operating deficit in any given year. So…

Chantal Lambert shares what made Opéra de Montréal’s Atelier lyrique special during her time there Her Ruby Award is a well-deserved recognition of the remarkable work she accomplished from 1990 to 2023 at the Atelier. During this period, Chantal was also invited to join the board of directors of the Conseil Québécois de la musique (CQM) as the first representative of the lyrical arts. She became president of the CQM from 2008 to 2011 and was inducted into the Canadian Opera Hall of Fame in 2016. With a deep commitment to promoting young artists, she sat on the board of the Association for Opera in Canada from 2019 to 2023 and is currently director of the Réunion des opéras du Québec. She is also president of Le Volier, an organization whose…

THIS SUMMER, I ATTENDED THREE OF EUROPE’S most storied festivals – Aix-en-Provence, Bayreuth and Salzburg. Across vastly different stages and styles, a shared theme emerged: opera confronting a fractured world not through nostalgia but through reinvention, reckoning and fleeting moments of grace. Aix-en-Provence – Mourning and Resolve Festival d’Aix-en-Provence opened under the shadow of the sudden death of its director Pierre Audi in May. The season he had meticulously planned, however, carried forward his spirit of bold programming and interdisciplinary collaboration. On July 4th at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, theatre director Robert Icke made his operatic debut with Don Giovanni conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Visually rich but conceptually muddled, the production collapsed Don Giovanni and the Commendatore into one fractured figure, a man at war with himself. The…

UP NEXT I will be singing the role of Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten. How are you getting ready for it? I’m incorporating the music and story into my life through various media. Since the opera is based on a book, I will read it and listen to the audiobook. I will also save three to five reputable recordings – this allows me to hear the orchestra and explore different interpretations of the style. When it comes to my score (digital and/or electronic), I always divide it into sections – highlighting my part and key musical markings. As I highlight, I also scan the music and place a star next to areas that may need more attention due to perceived difficulty. I find learning…