Table of contents for Fall 2022 in Opera Canada

“WHAT HAPPENED IS.” THIS LINE FROM the new opera Castor and Patience is bouncing around my head as I leave Cincinnati. It rings mysterious and true like tourism copy written by a poet. History hits you in the face everywhere, sure, but there are places that hit you harder. I’m used to tripping over fragments of a 1960s future-that-almost-was in Montreal, and Cincinnati feels haunted by 19th-century success in the same way. Take the Music Hall, the Victorian Gothic home of Cincinnati Opera where the premiere did not take place (the room’s too big). This handsomely imposing building opened in 1878, a child of the industrial and agricultural expositions held in Cincinnati since the 1830s and a marker of the city’s healthy competition with Chicago and St Louis to connect western…

“Excuse me, but I’m looking for a Screaming Diva.” It’s a sunny early afternoon on the final day of June, outside a popular Upper West Side cafe and I’ve just approached the casually elegant blonde checking in with the maître d’. “Oh! I never scream,” demurs she (as I picture a theatrical eyelash flutter behind her chic sunglasses), without dismissing the “diva.” It’s Sondra Radvanovsky, one creative half of Screaming Divas, the smart, funny, utterly engaging online video series she hosts with fellow soprano Keri Alkema; and though the title betrays her tongue-in-cheek amusement at the term, a diva she undoubtedly is—at the pinnacle of the soprano heap these days, but without any ostentatious baggage in tow. Launched on YouTube in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, its trailer…

Quebec operas are not legion, which is why the creation of a new one is always eagerly awaited. Especially when librettists are writers as famous as the late Marie-Claire Blais and Hélène Dorion. Telling the life of Marguerite Yourcenar through her career and her loves highlighted the many fields of interest of the novelist who spent the last 37 years of her life on Mount Desert Island in Maine, hence the title of the opera. The life of a woman seen by two women opens the door to a lot of sensitivity and emotions, and allows us to follow her journey from the angle of love, compassion, doubt concerning creation, anguish and loneliness to the loss of loved ones. The two acts consist mainly of a series of chronological scenes:…

Sometimes you are reminded what a captivating, uplifting experience opera can be when a production achieves the highest musical and theatrical standards. The flip side is that you leave the auditorium conscious of how rarely that happens. But let’s not dwell on that second thought, and instead marvel at the success of Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s new (and first-ever) production of Handel’s Alcina, which I saw on July 27. At the helm is the Italian director Francesco Micheli, making his Glyndebourne debut. Micheli has retained all the characters and plot twists and even the dance element, which he regards as integral to the opera. The dancing, the supernatural transformations and enchantments of Handel’s fantastical creation are happily accommodated by setting the action in an Italian revue theatre. The theatre is where…

SEPTEMBER San Francisco Opera, CA USA A huge 100th season milestone is being celebrated in San Francisco and we are proud to have strong Canadian representation. Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is front and centre in the title role of John Adams’s new opera, Anthony and Cleopatra (Sept 15-Oct 5, 2022). Then another Canadian baritone, Gordon Bintner, takes on the title role in their Eugene Onegin (Sept 25-Oct 14, 2022)—his house debut. sfopera.com Opéra de Montréal, QC The world premiere of La beauté du Monde by playwright Michel Marc Bouchard (known for his success with Les Feluettes (2016)) and composer Julien Bilodeau runs Nov 19-27, 2022. Bilodeau says of the score: the music “carries the drama and translates the emotions of the characters through rich harmonic and orchestral textures magnified by its…

WHEN LEBANESE DIRECTOR PIERRE AUDI WAS named successor to Bernard Foccroulle at the helm of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2017, there was a promise of continuity of purpose between them. Both directors had been major players in the operatic vanguard since the 1980s, Audi as the founder of The Almeida Theatre in London in 1979 and then Artistic Director of the Dutch National Opera (1988 to 2018), as well as the Holland Festival (2005 to 2014), and Park Avenue Armory starting in 2018. While Foc-croulle succeeded the great innovator Gerard Mortier as Director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels between 1992-2007. Their pact was to ensure more diversity, new works, a non-European focus, women directors, scenic experimentation, and unusual venues for performing opera, in sum: a master plan…

Fifty years of life, work, or marriage are events worth celebrating. Such celebrations rarely come without the acknowledgement of both periods of growth and success and also challenges along the way. And so it has been for Calgary Opera. Contrary to the tradition of humble beginnings, professional opera in Calgary came into being abruptly, initiated by typical western entrepreneurial bravado, and with more than a tinge of inter-city rivalry. Prior to the founding of the Calgary Opera Association in 1972, opera in Calgary had generally been a hit-and-miss affair, consisting mostly of touring productions by the Canadian Opera Company, leavened with occasional local amateur ventures. But virtually overnight, Calgary, at the time a brash, Johnny-come-lately prairie city, fixed on the Calgary Stampede and petrodollars, became the home of a professional…

Jules Massenet: Intégrale des mélodies pour voix et piano ATMA CLASSIQUE *MARIE-NICOLE LEMIEUX APPEARS COURTESY OF ERATO/WARNER CLASSICS RELEASED NOVEMBER 4, 2022 333 songs, including 13 unpublished songs and 31 songs never before recorded THE PANDEMIC HAS WREAKED havoc across large swaths of the classical world, but for one immense Canadian recording project, it has been a blessing. Releasing November 4 via ATMA Classique, Jules Massenet: Complete Melodies for voice and piano is the largest lyric cycle ever undertaken in Canada. The project, which consists of over 300 songs spread over 13 CDs, was recorded in 2020 while much of the world was in lockdown. “Without COVID, this project would not have been able to happen the way it did,” says Artistic Director and baritone Marc Boucher, who also performs.…

BEING A FREELANCE ARTIST IS CHALLENGING IN THE BEST OF TIMES—JUST ASK ANY OPERA SINGER. YOU NEED TALENT, SOLID PREPARATION, TRAINING, DRIVE, COMMUNICATIVE POWER, NOT TO MENTION A BIT OF LUCK ON YOUR SIDE, AS IT’S A VERY COMPETITIVE BUSINESS. WITH CLASSICAL MUSIC MAKING UP A MINUSCULE ONE PERCENT OF THE ENTERTAINMENT DOLLAR, THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE ARTISTS THAN THERE ARE GIGS. AND WHEN YOU ADD ON THE CURRENT COVID-19 PANDEMIC, THE MERE SURVIVAL OF MANY CAREERS COMES INTO QUESTION. Yet amidst the global health calamity, one finds cases of resilience and determination. Canadian tenor David Pomeroy is a fine example. A native of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Pomeroy is now in the third decade of a solid career. Just before the pandemic hit, he was slated to sing lead roles,…

John Adams gained his controversial repute with operas that enacted nearly contemporary events—with Nixon in China (1987) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1991). In Doctor Atomic (2005), he staged actions culminating in the Trinity moment of atomic detonation on July 16, 1945, and still potent to modern memory. In Girls of the Golden West (2017), Adams turned to narrative history based upon texts drawn from a range of authentic documents of the Gold Rush era. The wordy libretto allowed him a few moments of lyric expansion and expressivity, but the weight of words lay heavy on ears accustomed to flowing operatic lines—be they in aria form or in the extended, nearly melodic lines of arioso brought to perfection by Monteverdi, Gluck, and Wagner As Adams considered a new commission to launch…

ALL OF US HAVE SEEN THE ACRONYM BMO—signifying the presence of the Bank of Montreal, on programs and websites of opera companies across Canada. In a recent conversation with Nada Ristich, Head of Canadian Community Giving for BMO and a glamorous and vital presence on the opera scene, I learned that the bank’s commitment to culture reaches back to 1835. It was in 1994 that Nada emerged at BMO, personifying a new era of innovation and collaboration between the bank and the arts. She takes an intense and highly informed interest in the works to which she has given BMO’s support. She expects organizations that seek her support to do so on the strength of their artistic mission. “No political issues, no advocacy,” she says, reinforcing the essential aims of…