Table of contents for Fall 2023 in Opera Canada

November will mark the final issue of Opera News, a publication that began in 1936; its parent company The Met Opera Guild will wind down its operations, with The Metropolitan Opera taking over its outreach programs. Furthermore, Chautauqua Opera will eliminate full-scale opera productions starting in 2024. Then there’s Tulsa Opera’s almost full 2023/24 season cancellation. Closer to home ArtsScape Toronto has announced their devastating financial situation which will impact the offices and rehearsal spaces of many of Toronto’s smaller arts organizations and artists. This shift hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere, it has come after many years of educational arts programs being cut from schools: a lack of arts education divests a country of culture. Germany has a radically different approach: in 2022, the country boosted its culture spending…

I have known about Tidrow for a long-time; we met while singing in the choirs of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Ottawa, the same place that introduced baritone Gerald Finley and countertenor Daniel Taylor to the classical repertoire. He credits Matthew Larkin, then choir master at St. Matthew’s, as an amazing mentor to him. “He made me realize at a young age that there wasn’t anything else that I wanted to do more”. Tidrow continues, “I also showed him my very early compositions and he gave me a lot of feedback, so in a way he was also my unofficial first composition teacher”. Tidrow is prolific with nine operas already written, “not including the super short ones (under 20 minutes)”. The first of his operas he saw performed was Less…

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE IT. EVERY TIME I travel to Banff Centre, I remind myself that I cannot take anything for granted. The drive from Calgary to Banff, at first, is fairly flat and straight and then…you see them: The Canadian Rocky Mountains come into view and you’re never the same again. They take your breath away and as you get closer, you know you’re going to experience something that you’ve never experienced before. Even if you’ve been fortunate enough to be in places like Banff several times, there is always something new and revelatory about making your way through the mountains and arriving at the Centre. You prepare yourself for change and renewal. This past summer was no exception. It has not been easy at the Centre (nor anywhere else…

For the past 30 years, Wayne Vogan was the COC Orchestra’s Performance Librarian. His job description? “To make sure that the right music is in the right place at the right time,” says Vogan. It sounds simple, but in reality it’s a highly complex and very important job, one that requires deep musical knowledge, great organizational (and people) skills, and above all, meticulous attention to detail—“that borders on the obsessive,” quips Vogan. A native of Moncton, New Brunswick, Vogan graduated with a BA in Music from Mount Allison University, and a MA in Musicology from the Eastman School of Music. He got into opera while at Eastman, as a rehearsal pianist and stage manager in opera productions, which he found to be a lot of fun. After Eastman, he moved…

LC: You exemplify my quest for artists leading arts and other artists. You’re an actor, host and storyteller, having studied under Sanford Meisner. In addition to being a founding member of the Neighborhood Group Theatre in New York City and performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, you have overseen the launch of Koerner Hall and are responsible for programming Koerner Hall’s successful series of classical, jazz, world music, and pop concerts. Most importantly, though, you lead with compassion. How would you describe your leadership style? MM: Hiring good people*. Valuing diverse voices and different perspectives. Leadership by artists is vital, given the significance of the arts in community development. My artistic upbringing shapes my leadership, as I value the artist’s experience and we cultivate a welcoming atmosphere for performers. Compassionate…

Gino Quilico grew up in an itinerant household, listening to his mother Lina, an accomplished pianist and coach, and his famous dad, Louis—known as “Mr. Rigoletto” for his signature Verdi role—prepare his roles. The opera singer’s life took the family from their New York home to London and then Paris and then Rome, and back to New York, and on to Toronto, with his sister and him in tow. During his formative years, Gino saw his father perform. He was shaken when the baritone was killed in Don Carlos. “I cried when he died on stage,” he said. Gino met opera stars in his father’s orbit. He remembers the big kiss he got from Leontyne Price, but Louis was just his dad, and the celebrities “were just people to me.”…

Why do some opera companies stay relevant while others die slowly and noisily like mammoths in a tar pit? Consider Toronto’s Tapestry founded in 1979 by Wayne Strongman as Tapestry Singers. The company was renamed Tapestry Music Theatre in 1985 and Tapestry New Opera Works in 1999, which tells you that it wasn’t created to be Canada’s neonatal intensive care unit for new opera—but that is what it grew into. This turn was influenced by resident directors Claire Hopkinson in the Nineties and Tom Diamond in the Aughts. Its most famous initiative, the Composer-Librettist Laboratory or Liblab, was launched in 1995: it’s like speed dating to make opera babies. Some of each year’s most precocious crops have excerpts performed at the annual Briefs production. A list of their dozens of…

‘The writing is on the wall.’ Kimberly Barber’s lucid words echo in my mind. For years, there have been rumblings of the need for renewal and reinvention in the world of classical music. After all, opera and art song are seated on historical monuments which were once self-sustaining. Now, the viability of these art forms is constantly threatened both in their economic sustainability and in their relevance to a changing world. Music faculties and conservatories across the country are forced to compete for an ever-shrinking pool of students to fill their classrooms. Similarly, symphonies and opera companies struggle to fill their seats. So where do we go from here? As Associate Dean, Professor in Voice and Administrative Coordinator in Opera at Wilfrid Laurier University, Barber has carefully considered the way…

HIGHLIGHTS Festival d’Aix-en-Provence Mozart Così fan tutte July 6-21, 2023 “Russell Braun is a consummate actor and an artist who continues to astound with his range of roles, from Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin to extremely taxing roles by contemporary composers like Peter Eötvös and Kaija Saariaho.” —DENISE WENDEL-PORAY Boston Early Music Festival Caccini Alcina June 10 - 25, 2023 “[Alcina] could well have been written for Mireille Lebel” —PATRICK DILLON Highlands Opera Studio | Haliburton, ON Regeneration August 17 - 19, 2023 “It was a stunning example of what collaboration between artists of different ethnicities, ages, and styles can produce while also telling a timeless tale.” —DAWN MARTENS OrpheusPDX | Portland, OR Mozart Il re pastore August 3 - 6, 2023 “Canadian soprano Katherine Whyte created a stellar Aminta,…

… Could you briefly sketch your journey from opera and music to Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets? I studied voice at the University of Toronto then performed small gigs and recitals, chorus work and did some touring with Opera Atelier. I needed to earn more money, so I started working at the lowest entry job available at the bank. They valued my communication skills which was a surprise, since every singer I knew employed those same skills; I took them for granted, but started to realize how valuable they were in other contexts. I struggled with stage fright and eventually retired from music to focus on building a career in banking. I did an MBA to fill in my technical knowledge gaps and my banking career really took off.…

SL: Born in Lebanon, where you spent the first 14 years of your life before moving to Canada with your family. You graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor in Biomedical Engineering in the Spring of 1997, a few months later, you won First Prize at the Metropolitan Opera National Council Competition. Two career paths were opened to you: you chose music. IB: It was not a tough decision. I just wanted to do music! The only thing I’d say could have been at the back of my mind was the stability. There is no job security for singers… My intuition has always been a beautiful guide for me throughout my life and I remember clearly the question that came up: do you want to be in your…

Our 2022 Top40 ranking sees total revenues rising to $66.6 million, up from the pandemic low of $55.4 million in 2021 but still far short of the pre-pandemic $85 million racked up in 2019. The most recent increase, of course, reflects a quickening of performance activity as companies returned to the stage. But these latest numbers covering the broad industry also reflect the stark reality that opera as a dollars-and-cents business in Canada would be dead in the ground were it not for public funding and the generosity of opera loving-individuals and related charitable institutions. Of the total revenues recorded by the Top40 in 2022, only $12 million was earned; the rest came from public funding and donations. In percentage terms, the Top40 companies earned about 18% of their keep,…

PRICE EXPERIENCED HIS FIRST OPERA at the age of six when an aunt took him to a classic production of Aïda at the Paris Opera. With a large smile, he recalls his childhood memory: “It was wonderful! During the triumphal march, the elephant did something on the stage which was cleaned by one of the dancers with a shovel and a bucket. The whole audience loved it and stood to applaud him and I thought: opera is fun, it’s fabulous!” It is with the same sense of wonder that Price continues to enjoy the lyrical stage. His contributions to the company’s success, including leading the annual endowment campaign since 2010, has earned him the recent National Opera Directors Recognition Award. He will be recognized alongside the five American recipients of…