Puccini is the star of Madama Butterfly so it’s appropriate that, at nearly every turn in their current production of the ultra-famous opera, the Canadian Opera Company does right by the music. Backed by the always excellent COC orchestra and chorus, the principal players in the production deliver beautiful performances with nuanced, steady vocals. Skilled […]
Toronto kicked off its 2024/2025 season with a stellar month of opera performance this October. Beginning with Verdi’s lush and complex Nabucco and topped with a bold new production of Charles Gounod’s Faust, the Canadian Opera Company is currently having their best rep season in years. Led by a sublime Mary Elizabeth Williams who […]
Medea (Canadian Opera Company) Set to a broody and demanding score by Luigi Cherubini with Carlo Zangarini’s Italian libretto translation, the COC’s ambitious new co-pro mines Euripides’ iconic tragedy for every ounce of its delicious melodrama and winningly rejects pressure to impose important modern meaning upon the disturbing tale. A twist ending that sees the […]
Don Giovanni (Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre) The COC’s new production of Don Giovanni replaces a much more casual, modern version that I loved but few others seemed to. In its place is a more conventional take with period costumes and the hulking cube set from Fidelio repurposed with doors in place […]
Beethoven only wrote one opera, refusing to return to the medium after the self-described torturous process of getting Fidelio to the stage. Upon finally seeing the much-anticipated production at the Canadian Opera Company (their first since 2009), it’s not difficult to see the fault lines where creative conflict surely stepped in. The opera’s premise […]
The libretto (Hedwig Lachmann) to Richard Strauss’ Salome is loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name. The iconic artists added their own exceptional flair to a barebones bible story where we don’t even have a name for the girl known only as the daughter of King Herod and Herodias. Early historians would […]
The Canadian Opera Company’s fall season presents a well-balanced duo of contrasting classics to signal that, even without the world renowned artistic director we recently lost to Paris, the COC is back on its feet. First up, The Flying Dutchman is a quick hit of Wagnerian sorrow coming in at only 2 hours and […]
After two years of cancellations, a series of tentative theatre-ish offerings, and more than a few false starts, Toronto’s theatre companies are coming back. The journey towards a normal theatrical experience has taken place a little bit then seemingly all at once as my once-bare calendar suddenly doesn’t have a night off for weeks. Of […]