COR
Operas
Elvet is struck with grief over the death of his newborn child, not yet named.
Composer: August Murphy-King
Librettist: Kanika Ambrose
Content warning: terminal illness
This is not a biographical opera, it is an exploration of an emotional journey. At age 5, Jacqueline has instant chemistry and sparks fly when she meets her cello. Their relationship grows stronger and closer, and Jacqueline matures into a charismatic and likeable teen, powerful on major stages. Soon she is a...
This is not a biographical opera, it is an exploration of an emotional journey. At age 5, Jacqueline has instant chemistry and sparks fly when she meets her cello. Their relationship grows stronger and closer, and Jacqueline matures into a charismatic and likeable teen, powerful on major stages. Soon she is a...
Composer: Luna Pearl Woolf
Librettist: Royce Vavrek
An Iranian man sits in a hotel room in Canada, writing his morning prayers.
Composer: Afarin Mansouri
Librettist: Jessica Murphy Moo
Content warning: captivity, memory loss
Laura has been forcibly confined in a basement for years until she frees herself. She approaches a stranger on the street, wondering if the stranger remembers her, and discovers that she barely remembers herself.
Laura has been forcibly confined in a basement for years until she frees herself. She approaches a stranger on the street, wondering if the stranger remembers her, and discovers that she barely remembers herself.
Composer: Ivan Barbotin
Librettist: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
A woman is being examined by various doctors. Weakly, she sings of what she used to be. One doctor smears lipstick on her. She doesn’t want to go.
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: Michael Pollard
Content warning: contains depictions of gun violence, mentions of homophobia, transphobia, self-harm, attempted suicide, memory loss, illness, death, and violence
Julie d'Aubigny (1673-1707), more often known by her stage name "Mademoiselle Maupin," was a queer and gender non-conforming opera singer. She was a mezzo-soprano, and sang some of ...
Julie d'Aubigny (1673-1707), more often known by her stage name "Mademoiselle Maupin," was a queer and gender non-conforming opera singer. She was a mezzo-soprano, and sang some of ...
Composer: Colin McMahon
Librettist: Camille Rogers
The story of two clans of little violinists, one that plays only in pizzicato and the other one only with the bow. They each claim to make the most beautiful music, so they argue and try separately to summon the Goddess of Music. She appears only when they play together, and reconciles the two clans, explaining that there is no such thing as the...
Composer: Diana Cotoman
Librettist: Diana Cotoman
Love Songs is an intimate story about love in five “thematic” movements: pure love, tender love, children’s love, mature love and love for a person who has been lost. The lyrics are sung in five languages: English, French, Serbian, Irish and Latin. There are interludes between the movements in which the phrase “I Love You” is delivered in 100 di...
Composer: Ana Sokolović
As a teenager in the 1920s, my grandmother Gladys played piano for silent films in the remote New Zealand town of Takaka. She still recalls a film which was shot nearby at Pohara beach. Although Glad has never seen the film, I found out later that it was the underwater spectacular Venus of the South Seas, starring Australian diver Annette Keller...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Juliet Palmer
Boots invites you into a boudoir full of guilty pleasures. The performer presents a cast of more than thirty pairs of boots, procured over the last decade from secondhand stores, online auctions and retail outlets. She adds to her obsessive collection weekly. When will it stop?
Lyrics are taken from Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein, with ad...
Lyrics are taken from Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein, with ad...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
COR
Excerpts
Henri wonders how, after all this time, it is possible that Lily doesn't reciprocate her feelings of love.
A lament over the disbanding of brotherhood. Freddy wonders what will become of his friendship with Jeremiah.
A box office worker longs to be on the opera stage.
An electroacoustic setting of an old Sufi song composed by Muhammad ‘Uthman (Egypt 1855-1900). The texts are considerably older; they were written by Sana’ il-Mulk (Egypt 1155-1211). The text is a poetic adoration of clouds: “O clouds adorn the crowns of the hills with garlands/And make the bending stream a bracelet for them/O sky, in you and i...
A setting of twelve statements of the words “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord Have Mercy Upon Us”), a standard orthodox ritual practice.
Recounts the presumed origin of the HIV virus, initially as SIV non-human primates in Central Africa.
A spoken monologue about the arrival of HIV to North America and Gaetan Dugas, the presumed patient-0.
Malcolm describes his sense of suspension in time and space as we hear gunshots outside.
Elvet is struck with grief over the death of his newborn child, not yet named.
Minik remembers Greenland.
Josephine wonders what discovery is worth.
The Child is taught a lesson. She attempted to speak her truth, but was met with discipline.
A book pleads with the audience to be read. A rhythmic chorus rises. A tribute to the banned, the burned, and the hidden.
Zach longs for a lunch of junk food!
An undersea monster sings to the scientists observing her.
A figure skating coach reminisces about her own time in the competition spotlight.
A figure skater reflects on her experience in competition and decides to switch to a new career path.
Filled with regret over his life, Manli sings of an abandoned love.
Lai Gwan compares her love for Nichol with the pull of the cool mountain water.
Lai Gwan compares her love for Nichol with the pull of the cool mountain water.
Lai Gwan compares her love for Nichol with the pull of the cool mountain water.
Lai Gwan compares her love for Nichol with the pull of the cool mountain water.
Aboard a ship taking Chinese workers to British Columbia - they are hungry & thirsty. Ah Lum starts a fight with Lai Gwan, who is disguised as a young man, but they stop as the coast comes into view.
In her prime. At a post-gala cocktail party, Jackie ironically confesses she has a terrible disease: glissando-itis.
Comparing herself to Samson, Jackie and her husband have a tangled night of love one rainy night.
In her prime, Jackie admits she finds the pace of touring life dizzying. The sycophants at parties are starting to get to her.
On a phone call with her mother, Jackie is admonished. She begs her mother to visit. She’s alone with fragments of memory.
Delirious, Jackie envisions running to the ocean again through the fields, this time with her sister, Hilary. She asks that Hilary not tell Daniel about the disease.
Jackie tells us how she can blur the lines between fantasy and reality at will. She can escape the confines of her chair by dreaming of bathing in the sea. She wonders where Daniel is, and who he’s seeing.
Jacqueline, the child, tells her cello they will play great concert halls and make records.
Jacqueline remembers playing in the fields with her sister in her childhood, and the fragrance of wildflowers.
Jacqueline experiences symptoms, but her physical illness is undiagnosed, and she is instead told it is hysterical or psychosomatic.
Jacqueline enjoys telling a joke about some monks' sexual arousal.
Jacqueline remembers happy times with her cello in childhood.
Angry and frustrated at her physical inability to play, Jacqueline cancels her remaining performances.
Simone describes her postpartum depression and wonders how it is that she cannot love her own child.
"A perfect score is all that counts." Lisa fixates on the consequences of her test and predicts that Annie and Caroline will banish her from "the circle of three" because of her imperfect score. She blames Mr. Herwin.
In a dream state, M'dea recalls all she has done to survive.
Just before the wedding, Jason discovers Dahlia and the President murdered.
Duet between the woman and a violin, symbolizing her daughter.
A man tries to write a letter home, but he cannot find the right words. He burns each rejected attempt.
Jackie realizes that her sherpa has died.
Julia remembers the love she felt for her son Paul when he was a baby.
Ray, a jaded neurosurgeon, muses on the loss of his childhood wonder and innocence.
Alone in his hotel room, Ray worries that he hit someone with his car on the road. After fearing it might have been a child, he convinces himself it was only a raccoon.
As Sophie runs a bath in the distance, Ray reflects on how uncomfortable bathing makes him feel.
Ray sings of the ambivalence his parents felt towards him as a child.
Ray frantically tries to calm himself by reciting scientific jargon, while a being claiming to be his own child self tries to open the door.
Sophie, the manifestation of Ray's soul sings an extended aria explaining how she has been locked away from Ray since he was a child.
Sophie, the manifestation of Ray's soul sings an extended aria explaining how she has been locked away from Ray since he was a child.
In a letter, Jaan asks if Noor still loves her.
A woman makes an appeal that the metal of her bell shouldn't be used for a war machine.
Jackie demands Alex say something, but Alex doesn't. Erica paces.
Having escaped forced confinment in a basement, a girl approaches a stranger. She asks if the stranger knows her, as she tries to remember her past.
An old drunk recounts his failed marriage.
A bar manager recounts the night she heard Frederick Chopin play piano, and the effect it had on her relationship with the bar’s resident piano player.
A man recounts his prior murders.
A woman cryptically remembers her past as she is briefly examined by three different people.
A waltz is cut short. Ava discloses how far she’s fallen, and how difficult she finds caring for her son.
Ava bemoans Paul's lack of understanding, and her need for luxury.
James and Sydney start their journey. Sydney remembers being young and playing in the forest with her friend Penny. One day, they are both captured, and the family herd is shot.
Sydney on her first day at the zoo. Frightened and alone, she thinks of her homeland.
Sydney and James arrive in Tennessee, remembering their 22 years together. They say goodbye.
Shanawdithit, dying, speaks to her ancestors. She is ready to leave this world.
Cormack presents his findings about Shanawdithit to the members of the Beothuk institute.
Shanawdithit reprimands Cormack for his saviour complex.
Excited by the possibility of a night with a new lover, Sumana anxiously expresses her anticipation.
Agnieska questions why all of her previous relationships have failed.
Waking early, Agnieska admires her new lover Sumana as she is sleeping.
Hope grows up quickly, climbing out of her crib as a woman of twenty-one. She sings to herself, wanting to leave the house.
Hope introduces the pilot to her family. He leaves, and Hope argues with her parents about going with him.
A deconstruction of moments in The Sound of Music.
A celebration of iconic Hitchcock film moments, sampling from The Man Who Knew Too Much, Psycho, and The Birds.
Using quintessential recordings of Maria Callas arias, an aspiring soprano engages with the full and intense presence of her idol. What begins as suffocation and frustration ends as confidence as the soprano gains a deeper understanding of her idol: she’s human. They both are.
A celebration of iconic Hitchcock film moments, sampling from The Birds.
A short scene, sampling the wedding scene where Elaine screams for Ben.
Daniel sings of his fear at the prospect of going down into the cellar of his childhood home, after his father has died.
Judith sings angrily at her brother when he expresses his desire to leave their childhood home after their father has died.
The Queen of the Amazon Ants laments the fallen state of her realm to her lone remaining subject. She decides she must find a mate.
A young woman, Laurel, runs through a dark forest, filled with anxiety and haunted by disturbing memories.
Laurel stabs the Stranger, killing him. As his body slides to the ground to rest at her feet, she begins to feel a new sense of freedom, not realising that it is at the cost of her conscience and her humanity. The aria should be performed with an improvisational blues quality over the regular pulse of the accompaniment, to convey both this sense...
Robertson demonstrates the new “automatic spiral ratchet spring-loaded screw driver,” affectionately called the “Yankee.” The demonstration is cut short when the driver slips off the single slot screw, injuring Robertson’s hand.
Robertson in his shop, Amalia (present day) in her bathroom with her antique vanity, Phillips in his workshop, also injured by a screw driver slip.
Phillips sings the praises of his new screwdriver.
Amalia dreams of what can be accomplished with hardware.
In the afterlife, Henry Ford invites Robertson to present his screwdriver.
Amalia critiques the two screwdrivers and chooses the Robertson.
Wandering in a big box store, Amalia dreams of what can be accomplished with hardware.
Amalia critiques the two screwdrivers and chooses the Robertson.
Robertson, still sad, hopes his screwdriver will still be of use to others.
English 
French