Opera Canada

There are clusters of Canadian musician-expats in just about all of Germany’s major cities today. The young Torontoborn mezzo-soprano Marta Herman moved away right after university and immediately forged a stable career in the German fest system. She

Listening to Jeremy Dutcher’s Polaris Prize-winning album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, what’s most striking is how symbolic the first song is of his overall approach to the music. “Mehcinut” begins much like any number of art songs do, with piano and

Meeting soprano Tracy Cantin, one is struck by her personal warmth and ready smile, her peals of melodious laughter never far away. When we chatted in May, she had every reason to be happy. It was just days after her triumph in Anna Bolena at Canadia

Canadian director Robert Carsen is acclaimed for his international productions as well as stagings on home turf. His 1997 Metropolitan Opera production of Eugene Onegin opened the 18/19 Canadian Opera Company season. This autumn he turned his attenti

When I met Canadian baritone Russell Braun in Salzburg for an early morning coffee in August, he said that one of the biggest challenges of rehearsing the star role in Hans Werner Henze’s The Bassarids at this year’s Festival was surviving the heat.

For anyone making their first pilgrimage to the Bayreuth Festival—the annual north Bavarian homage to the mature operas of Richard Wagner—be prepared to be overwhelmed. Never mind the multiple, long afternoons and evenings at the Festspielhaus, parsi

We have full-sized, ‘year-round’ opera companies in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal, and Québec—yet the seasons are short. Canadian Opera Company in Toronto is by far the country’s most industrious house, producing

For 85 years, the Banff Centre has established itself as a mountaintop beacon, attracting top artistic talent and pedagogues and then beaming their accomplishments in music, theatre, literature, film, visual art and other forms of expression across t

Persistent gender parity gaps, young artist training options and career planning challenges were the three main themes covered at the Opera’s Changing Worlds summit, which took place the weekend of September 21-23, 2018 at McGill University in Montré

The opening of a brand-new new opera house anywhere in the world is bound to bring equal measures of trepidation and anticipation. Will the acoustics meet with the approval of critics and the public alike? And will the whole experience—the sightlines

Edmonton Opera opened its 55 season on Oct. 20 with a solid production of V erdi’s La traviata. The set, an all-purpose, large living space featuring a curved staircase and floor-to-ceiling lattice windows, was built at EO’s north-end opera centre, t