Table of contents for Summer 2023 in Opera Canada

LC: What’s the best thing/most challenging thing about producing theatre in Canada? DC: The remarkable, diverse, emerging talent I continue to discover is absolutely the best part. The regular travel to NYC, Edinburgh, London, Chicago, etc., to see theatre is great, too, and I continue to be inspired by the work being produced right here in Canada. The challenge is always a lack of funding and space. Canada has the skill, talent, and creativity to produce some of the best theatre in the world, but not the funding required to consistently sustain those productions. Space has become a huge challenge, both in terms of affordability and supply. It’s getting harder and harder to find appropriate space to create, to work, to rehearse and to perform. LC: In the U.S.? Could you…

IN MARCH, THE CVAI ANNOUNCED THE NOMINATION OF CANADIAN ÉTIENNE DUPUIS AND AUSTRALIAN NICOLE CAR AS CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS OF THE INTENSIVE SUMMER PROGRAM FOR OPERA SINGERS, YOUNG PIANISTS AND CONDUCTORS WHICH WILL RUN FROM JULY 9 TO AUGUST 4, 2023 AT THE UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL. The Institute was founded in February 2004 and led for the last 20 years by highly respected coach Joan Dornemann, and conductor emeritus Paul Nadler. Both will be back in Montreal this summer while the wind of change also brings a new General Director, baritone and audio producer Marc-Antoine d’Aragon, and an impressive line up of coaches and teachers, many of them invited by Car and Dupuis. Having closely followed Dupuis and Car’s flourishing careers for the last 15 years, I was surprised they could…

IDAGIO CEO Till Janczukowicz doesn’t hate tech companies. “I don’t mean it as a negative! I founded a technology company,” he says proudly. “But tech companies have to know the threats and dangers of tech.” When I ask him if he views the newly launched Apple Classical as his chief competition, he jokingly references Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings’s famous quote from 2017 that the company’s greatest competition was sleep. “And we’re winning,” Hastings later boasted. Then getting more serious, Janczukowicz says, “No. What we’re doing at IDAGIO has meaning.” Founded in 2015 by Janczukowicz and Christoph Lange, IDAGIO is a multimedia streaming service that boasts the largest streaming classical library in the world at over 250,000 entries. The Berlin-based company is run by a small team, many former or current…

I HAD THE PLEASURE OF MEETING with thispassionate, lively, enthusiastic woman who says she created this prize “for the love of the voice, for the love of opera, for the love of McGill, and particularly its music school. We have wonderfully talented singers at McGill”, she adds, “and the best opera program in Canada, but few people really make a good living from classical singing. Therefore I sponsored the Wirth Prize to help a singer start on the road to making a career from his/her talent and drive.” Ms Wirth’s relationship with the school reaches back to the early 1990s. “I became involved when Opera McGill was led by the wonderful Dixie Ross Neill, who died too soon in 2007. But fortunately she was followed by another outstanding American opera…

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MUSIC FACULTY 1978 2023 A Fond Farewell Over the course of 45 years, Albano has staged over 50 opera productions at U of T, including several Canadian premieres. In addition to his directorial savvy, he is a prolific writer, having penned the libretto to many new works. I’ll never forget the hilarious Rob Ford, the Opera, staged nearly a dozen years ago, starring none other than tenor Andrew Haji in a blond wig, as the former Toronto mayor. A hugely entertaining piece that tickled the funny bone with its rollicking theatricality and insightful social commentary. It was heartwarming to hear the tributes from Albano’s colleagues, among them Dean of Music Ellie Hisama, Director of Music Studies Sandra Horst, U of T Opera graduate and mezzo Janet Stubbs,…

In early 2023, Atom Egoyan remounted his production of Salome for the Canadian Opera Company (COC), and then immediately began filming Seven Veils, a new movie starring Amanda Seyfried as theatre director Jeanine who is remounting her former mentor’s most famous work: Salome. I spoke with Egoyan at his studio in Toronto, surrounded by a lifetime of movie ephemera and sharing handfuls of peanut-butter candy. LB: What is your ambition with Seven Veils? AE: My production of Salome was first presented in 1996, so this is the seventh presentation. And when the COC said that they were remounting it, that raised a lot of issues for me, because this isn’t 1996 anymore. At the time it was considered kind of a protofeminist approach, and I believe it is probably the…

The big moment often happens at the university level, where students embark on a four-year undergraduate degree, maybe a handful of additional years as a grad student, and they’ve got to find just the right mentor to take them on their journey. Even once a young singer takes that first leap and starts shopping—ideally by having trial lessons with a prospective teacher to see if they gel—the process is time-consuming, pricey, and potentially confusing for the voice. There’s one way to at least halve the abundance of choice, and that’s by grouping these university-level teachers into one of two ilks: those who teach full-time, and those who balance part-time teaching with their own performing calendar. Usually, the full-time teacher is someone with a singing career of their own already under…

HERE ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS Manitoba Underground Opera Gow/Remoto The Mansplaining Division May 24-26, 2023 “Alissa Watson’s spot-on stage direction allows each character to shine” —HOLLY HARRIS The Metropolitan Opera Mozart Die Zauberflöte May 19-June 10, 2023 “Musically, this Flute was top-flight” —PATRICK DILLON * designed by Canadian set designer, Michael Levine Opéra de Québec Puccini Madama Butterfly May 13-20, 2023 “The revelation of the night was definitely the inspiring and dynamic [conductor] Clelia Cafiero” —IRÉNE BRISSON Opéra National de Paris Handel Ariodante April 20-May 20, 2023 Canadian Director Robert Carsen is “a master of the surprise ending” —DENISE WENDEL-PORAY * also starring Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo in the title role Houston Grand Opera R. Strauss Salome April 28-May 12, 2023 Canadian maestro Keri-Lynn Wilson “balances crisp rhythms and power-house sonority…

WHEN WAGNER PREMIERED HIS EPIC DER Ring des Nibelungen in Bayreuth in 1876, another story about the powerful lure of gold was playing out in the Australian city of Bendigo, almost 16,000 km away in the Southern Hemisphere. Then known as Sandhurst until it reverted to the locale’s original name in 1891, it was deemed “the richest city in the world,” the result of the discovery of huge goldfields in 1851. Located about 155 km north of Melbourne, the gold rush transformed Bendigo from a sprawling, squalid mining encampment into a proper Victorian city with imposing public buildings and a rich social and economic life. Trappings of the English motherland may have set the overall tone, but the population was diverse. Germans made up one of the most important ethnic groups,…

Bryan Wagorn took advantage of the best that Canadian musical education had to offer. As a result, the world of opera is his oyster. For the past 10 years, he has served as an Assistant Conductor at The Metropolitan Opera. The demanding position entails duties similar to those of a rehearsal pianist. The title of Assistant Conductor, however, can be a little tricky to puzzle out. Clarity comes from thinking of a pianist with this job as being a support to the conductor of any given production. In other words, Wagorn is an opera conductor’s assistant. He coaches singers in their roles. He plays piano for rehearsals until the orchestra gets involved. As Assistant Conductor, moreover, Wagorn frequently goes above and beyond, for example, playing in the pit during performances…