Digital Shift
The coronavirus pandemic has made digital programming a prime concern for Canadian arts companies. Forced to find ways of reaching audiences within the constraints of social distancing guidelines, they have offered fans a wide array of selections, from the National Arts Centre’s #CanadaPerforms and NACO Home Delivery series to Festival de Lanaudière’s Connected series. Canadian Opera Company held a special livestream viewing party of Rufus Wainwright’s 2018 opera Hadrian, while indie company Against the Grain Theatre has hosted panels, interviews, and virtual opera pubs on its YouTube channel.
It remains to be seen the full extent to which the 20/21 opera season will be influenced by 2020’s forced move to digital, but there is no doubt the internet will play a role in cultivating a sense of community, however intangible, while simultaneously educating and entertaining. Here, a broad range of figures from both the Canadian and international classical world give their thoughts and opinions on the hows, whys, and wherefores of the intersection between opera, education, money, marketing, community, and technology.
Artists respond
“In all of the change and the loss, I could see this spiralling depression coming like a tsunami.” Inspired by videos posted from Italy, Toronto-based soprano Teiya Kasahara (they/them) began their own series of balcony performances. The world “was so hard-hit at the time and people were dying, but neighbours were getting together to find joy again, to lift their spirits through music. There’s such a beautiful history and culture there with opera, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I’m a singer, maybe I can do something?’ Then I saw [Canadian mezzo-soprano and CBC host] Julie Nesrallah perform “O sole mio” from her balcony and thought, ‘Okay I can do this.’”
Kasahara was in the midst of a directing internship with Nightwood Theatre when the lockdown in Canada began in March. “There was this desire to triage and ask what else we can do,” they say of the experience, “that kind of, show-must-goon mentality, but also responding to what was coming.” They began their vocal series with “Ave Maria” and subsequent choices were based on two simple factors: things they knew, and things they knew others would recognize: “[Carmen’s] “Habanera”, “Nessun dorma”, things completely out of my , but were fine for this.” Kasahara worked with pianist Andrea Grant, who lives in the same apartment building, coordinating as best they could between balconies; there were no set performance times in order to discourage social gatherings. “It became more of a surprise, like a pop-up.” The performances were part of a series, #19forCOVID19. “I needed to give myself a goal or a structure in order to understand: What am I doing? Why am I a musician? I create in community and collaboration, and to share in that moment, with people I’d never normally meet or talk
