The Canadian Opera Company designed a playful Winter Season…
All right I’ll be honest. Did every time I describe the show I was seeing tonight, did I use the phrase, “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” Yes, I did. For one, it is the one of the most iconic parts of the show so easily quotable and it is impossible to sing it without smiling. Go ahead […]
The Canadian Opera Company has set out a delicious 2019/20 season. I have been excited to see Turandot since last fall when the upcoming season was released. Knowing little about the particulars of storyline, I anticipated seeing Puccini’s work, in particular that glorious piece “Nessun Dorma” with excitement and high expectation. I knew still less […]
The Canadian Opera Company’s production of Otello is passionate, bleak, dramatic, and nearly everything one could want from an opera. Based on Shakespeare’s tempestuous tragedy, it is far from a comedic opera one might imagine with giggling maids, young lovers, and sets dripping with brocade and jewels. The set is modern and stark, a creative […]
Several cast members made their mainstage Canadian Opera Company…
Opera is sustainable when you can enjoy it without fully understanding it or taking it seriously. Few works rely on this more than Così fan tutte, which continues to entertain really-rather-refined audiences who would blanch at its antediluvian gender politics in a modern work. The official title translates as “all [women] do it”, and it’s […]
The Canadian Opera Company’s latest production of Elektra opened up recently to warm us right up, piercing through the snow. The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts was abuzz with folks of all ages. I wondered if this was a result of COC’s efforts to make opera exciting for younger audiences, or many of […]
The eclectic pairing of a visually ambitious but narratively light 20th century Russian mixed bill directed with theatrical ambition and a rich Italian bel canto full-length narrative with restrained character-focused direction makes for a beautifully balanced spring season for the Canadian Opera Company, a stretch of programming that offers something for everyone no matter why […]