Sommaire pour Fall 2024 de Opera Canada

Few young artists talk about luck. It‘s hard to fault them, though. Why give people reasons to wonder “Does this person deserve to be here?” But ask anyone with a long and varied career, and they’ll eventually bring up luck. It’s a kind of honesty that is encouraged by success and the benefit of hindsight. Baritone Brett Polegato is candid about the lucky breaks that helped launch his career – now in its third decade and showing no sign slowing down – and the ethics and artistry that allowed him to make the most of his opportunities. I thought that being a finalist at the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 1995 would have been important, but it turns out that the crucial moment happened years earlier and led…

“I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR CHERYL” says Elaine Dobbin in reference to Cheryl Hickman, General and Artistic Director of St. John’s based Opera on the Avalon. “Who would have thought that we could have an opera company in Newfoundland, particularly one that encompasses the entire province – including Labrador – in its current video project. And people are so supportive of the company, across all of Newfoundland. Cheryl’s drive and creativity are mind-boggling to me.” Dobbin’s philanthropy initially focused on various Newfoundland health charities. However, after learning from a friend with an autistic child that there were inadequate services for this population, she redirected most of her efforts towards autism. Benefiting from her volunteer leadership, the Autism Society for Newfoundland & Labrador (ASNL) was able to open the Elaine Dobbin…

Wayne died too soon after a career devoted to journalism, particularly about his great love of opera. Wayne leaves his partner of 40 years, Peter Lam, who looked after him so devotedly in the past year as Wayne was in and out of hospital, fighting the bladder cancer that eventually took his life. Wayne was born in England and did his first degree at the University of East Anglia. Coming to Canada in 1970, he completed an MA in philosophy and journalism at the University of Western Ontario. Entering the journalistic world, he did short stints at The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star before settling into a lengthy stay at the Financial Post newspaper. He became the first person to write about opera in a newly launched arts section.…

If gross revenues were a reflective measure of the health of Canada’s opera business, we might be optimistic from Opera Canada’s fifth annual ranking of our top 40 performing companies that the sector has weathered the COVID disruptions reasonably well. This year’s results show the companies racked up an aggregate $81.6 million in revenues, up from the $72.3 million recorded last year, and within striking distance of the $84.5 million recorded when we launched the project five years ago. The five-year comparison is pertinent. In the inaugural feature in 2020, the data coincidentally etched a picture of the last full performing season before COVID disruptions. This latest instalment records the first full season after theatres reopened. As ever, though, the devil is in the details. Mine this year’s data in…

On March 13, 2024, Michael David Cavanagh left this world, at the much too young age of 62, from leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare complication of bladder cancer. To his family and many friends, it was the grievous loss of a beloved son, brother, husband, father, uncle and grandfather as well as a dear friend. The opera world lost a brilliant stage director and an exceptional creative spirit. A native of Winnipeg, Cavanagh grew up in a music-loving family and got his first taste as a performer in the children’s chorus in Carmen and Tosca. He went on to study singing at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, in classes during the day, and spending many evenings at the Hamburgische Staatsoper, taking it all in. Intrigued by the different…

OCTOBER Royal Opera House, London, UK Canadian mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta opens in an already sold-out run of two one-act operas by Leonard Bernstein, Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place, playing October 10-24, 2024. rbo.org.uk Deutsche Oper Berlin, DE Deutsche Oper Berlin’s production of Fidelio, running October 20-30, 2024, stars Canadian soprano Jane Archibald as Leonore. deutscheoperberlin.de Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY Grounded, a new opera, runs September 23 to October 19, 2024 at the Met, starring Canadian mezzo Emily D’Angelo and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Canadians not in New York can catch the opera in its cinema broadcast on October 19th. metopera.org Vancouver Opera, BC Vancouver Opera opens their 65th anniversary season with Die Fledermaus, which runs October 26 to November 3, 2024. The amazing mostly Canadian cast includes Lara…

Regular patrons at the Opéra de Montréal are likely to have met the company’s long-serving artistic director. Over the last 35 years, out of all the performances, Michel Beaulac reckons having been absent from the theater for barely a dozen. He always sits in the hall and feels the audience because, as he says “It’s all about communication!” “At the opera, we need to talk to the audience. Opera speaks to the public, and it should not be a cryptic message. So, I am sitting in the theater and as soon as people start shifting in their seats, leaning on their elbows, coughing, I feel the public’s fatigue. Then I say to myself ‘Something is wrong!’” Invited to join the communications team of the company in 1989, Beaulac subsequently assumed…

LISETTE OROPESA HAS BEEN AT THE BANFF Centre for barely a day when I meet her and her husband in their hotel lobby. “Hi! Sorry we’re late!” she says, half-walking, half-jogging towards me. Not even 36 hours earlier, the superstar soprano had been performing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall. In another 36 hours, she will have departed for a concert tour with the same group in Japan. She can be forgiven five minutes. With only two days working with the participants in the Banff Centre’s Chamber Music and Opera: Interplay program, Lisette’s time is limited. She has spent her first day doing wall-to-wall lessons in the morning and a three-hour masterclass in the afternoon. We had planned for a brief sitdown…