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  • Home
  • About COR
    • About COR
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    • How To Use COR
    • FAQ – For Users
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Canadian Opera Resource
Canadian Opera Resource
COR
Operas
M’dea Undone
Content warning: death, murder, suicide, xenophobia

Jason, an army captain and now war-hero, is returning home after years of war and an uncertain future. His interpreter and lover M’dea and their son Chase accompany him to a new life in the West. Jason begins a political career, working alongside the President and Dahlia, the President’s bea...
Composer: John Harris
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

M’dea Undone
Pub Operas (The Sloans Project)
Content warning: murder, death, corpse

Composer Gareth Williams and librettist David James Brock created a site-specific promenade opera inspired by Glasgow's oldest pub, Sloans. The audience moves through the 250-year-old pub and encounters a series of scenes telling stories of love, loss, revenge and forgiveness.
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: David James Brock

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project)
Pub Operas (The Sloans Project)
Playing Ball
An estranged father and daughter re-establish their relationship after he has suffered a stroke and can no longer speak. He tries to convey to her that he loves her and is sorry for the harm he caused her. She is still too hurt from their past to see what he is trying to say. Instead, she passes the time by reading a book. He finds another way o...
Composer: Norbert Palej
Librettist: Marcia Johnson

Playing Ball
Playing Ball
Rosa
Content warning: death, sex work

After the tragic death of her first child, a baby daughter, Isabelle has run away to another town in Spain to escape the grief, leaving her husband Hector with a double loss. They are a working-class couple. The scene opens with Isabelle expecting a client in a seedy bordello. Hector has found her. He entreats...
Composer: James Rolfe
Librettist: Camyar Chai

Rosa
Rosa
Hook Up
Content warning: explicit language, sexual violence, sexual content, alcohol, blackout drinking

Hook Up tells the story of three friends who have made it to university, each with their own unique desires and inner conflicts. Mindy is just excited to keep her high school friend circle together and finally get some privacy with her boyfriend. T...
Composer: Chris Thornborrow
Librettist: Julie Tepperman

Hook Up
Shanawdithit
Content warning: colonial violence, colonialsm, death, illness

1828, Notre Dame Bay, on the northeast shore of Newfoundland. William Cormack, an explorer and anthropologist, has recently created the Beothuk Institute: an organization designed to prevent the extinction of the original inhabitants of the island. After learning that a Beothuk wo...
Composer: Dean Burry
Librettist: Yvette Nolan

Shanawdithit
Shelter
Content warning: birth

A nuclear family adrift in the atomic age. Since Prometheus stole fire from the gods, we have flirted with the dangerous beauty of science. In this cartoon fable, a father protects his family at any cost.

Thomas and Claire fall madly in love at a fundraising party. Thomas has decided to “find a wife, get a life,” whi...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Julie Salverson

Shelter
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G.
Content warning: captivity, sex trafficking, sex work, sexual violence, violence, death

The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. is a fictional dramatic opera built on extensive factual research. Set in Ukraine in 1997, it is the story of Oksana, a young woman lured into the world of sex trafficking by a Russian recruiter, Konstantin, who ...
Composer: Aaron Gervais
Librettist: Colleen Murphy

The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G.
The Shadow
Barcelona, 1900. Against the backdrop of Gaudi’s surrealist Parc Guell, Raoul, a humble postman, falls for the beautiful Allegra, whose father is a wealthy aristocrat on his mail route. To impress Allegra, Raoul disguises himself as Hernando, a “wealthy suitor,” and borrows money from the local mafia to impress the girl. Raoul goes deeply into d...
Composer: Omar Daniel
Librettist: Alex Poch-Goldin

The Shadow
The Shadow
TAP:EX Metallurgy
Punk and operatic virtuosity collide in Tapestry’s third installment of the Tapestry Explorations (TAP:EX) series. Metallurgy is a collaboration between Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk of F*cked Up, the Polaris Prize-winning punk provocateurs, and two of Canada’s most masterful and versatile opera singers, mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó and tenor ...
Composers: Ivan Barbotin, Jonah Falco, Mike Haliechuk
Librettist: David James Brock

TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
Where is Ava
Chloe and Eddie are in the throes of love when they’re interrupted by Matt, Chloe’s athlete ex-husband. Matt asks where their daughter Ava is, and criticizes Chloe for abandoning Ava for some man.
Composer: Ivan Barbotin
Librettist: Katherine Koller

Where is Ava
Where is Ava
Of the Sea
Content warning: descriptions of enslavement, violence, sexual violence, death

A father will do anything to save his daughter. Of the Sea follows the story of Maduka, his daughter Binyelum, and fellow Africans thrown overboard during the Middle Passage who now populate mythical underwater kingdoms that span the ocean floor. Amidst the waves, ...
Composer: Ian Cusson
Librettist: Kanika Ambrose

Of the Sea
Little Miss All Canadian
Content warning: murder

Two women, Eunice Rose and Samantha, sit in the audience during the semifinals of a junior “Miss All-Canadian” Pageant. Eunice’s daughter is on stage doing a dance routine Eunice choreographed herself. She holds a diet coke and eats chocolate while eying her daughter and criticizing her performance. Samantha, meanwhile...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Liza Balkan

Little Miss All Canadian
Dragon’s Tale
Content warning: death, suicide

Dragon’s Tale is the story of a young Chinese-Canadian woman (Xiao Lian) and her ailing father, both living in Toronto. Xiao Lian wakes up in the ancient past and witnesses the last days of one of China’s greatest poets, Qu Yuan. In doing so, she begins to understand her father and herself as she returns to a c...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Dragon’s Tale
Jacqueline
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...
Composer: Luna Pearl Woolf
Librettist: Royce Vavrek

Jacqueline
The Waterfall (LIBLAB)
Content warning: death, infanticide, murder

A rumble of hooves. A family is fleeing, but the baby is slowing them down. The mother is forced to choose between her husband and her child. She chooses the husband and tries to get the baby to sleep before letting it go over a waterfall. At the last minute, the baby awakes, and the mother’s grief ...
Composer: Norbert Palej
Librettist: Maja Ardal

The Waterfall (LIBLAB)
The Waterfall (LIBLAB)
Naomi’s Road
Naomi’s Road, which details a young Japanese-Canadian girl’s experiences as her family is interned during World War II, is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the power of hope, cultural understanding and compassion. This compelling and emotional story is taken from one of our country’s most painful and complex social periods, a time that for ...

Like an Old Tale
A multicultural retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

"The jealous king Leontes’ wife, Hermione, is accused of committing adultery with his best friend, Polixenes, and Hermione is jailed. Soon after, Leontes and Hermione’s young son dies before she gives birth to a daughter Perdita who is smuggled out of the country after Hermione’s s...
Composer: Juliet Palmer

Like an Old Tale
Ice Time
The scene takes place at a national figure-skating competition. The coach is in the “kiss and cry” section reacting to her protegée’s performance.

The orchestra prelude details a sweeping skate dance routine that ends badly for the skater (she falls, tries to regain momentum, but falls again). The skater limps onto the stage (in her guard-cov...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Ice Time
Ice Time
Sky on Swings
We open on an Alzheimer’s hallucination. Martha, a woman in her seventies, sees a surreal and exaggerated world in which strangers torment her and weather invades her kitchen. Martha remains in the grips of her hallucination until the presence of Martha’s daughter, Winnie, rips her out of it. Suddenly, shockingly, Martha is back in the Alzheimer...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

Sky on Swings
Sophia’s Forest
Content warning: child neglect, death, migration, strong language, trauma, war

When Sophia’s mother dies, Sophia confronts half-forgotten traumas from her childhood. Sophia and her sister Emma grew up in a war torn country. The two young girls cope with and escape their grim circumstances – the adult world of war, death and displacement – thr...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

Sophia’s Forest
Love Songs
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

Love Songs
The Last Lullaby
Content warning: war, death, gun violence

A young mother with her infant daughter is threatened by an armed military officer escorting prisoners. She wants to wait for her husband, but the officer tells her he is probably already dead. The woman sings a lament to her baby, then pleads with the officer to take her baby and raise her as his own.
Composer: Jana Skarecky
Librettist: Anusree Roy

The Last Lullaby
The Last Lullaby
YES
Mark stands with his friends Maryanne and Bob, ready to play a game of baseball. They see their other friend, Kenny, and Carley, Mark's ex-girlfriend, in the distance. Kenny proposes to Carley, and runs to the group to announce triumphantly "She said yes!" Inspired by Maryanne's encouragement, Mark calls his estranged son, who lives far away wit...
Composer: Jana Skarecky
Librettist: Sheldon Rosen

YES
YES
Iron Road
Content warning: racism, colonialism, violence, death

In 1880’s China, Lai Gwan, a young impoverished woman, stands on the brink of momentous change. Her dying mother urges her to respect and honour the memory of her father, Manli, whose disappearance to the New World haunts them both.

Armed with the hope that she will find her father aliv...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Iron Road
COR
Excerpts
Shelter – Scene 4: Hope Grows Up, “This is Our House” (aria)
Hope grows up quickly, climbing out of her crib as a woman of twenty-one. She sings to herself, wanting to leave the house.
Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Charm
A father befriends the man who murdered his daughter but eluded the police, plotting revenge in the process.
Rosa – “Every day I blistered my hands…” (duet)
Hector and Isabelle express their resentment towards each other for the sacrifices they each made.
Shanawdithit – Scene 7
Her health fading, Shanawdithit wonders if she’ll be welcomed into the spirit world after so much time with the colonists. Cormack tells her he must leave, and Shanawdithit gives him a sketch of his house to carry with him. He leaves the room to pack. Shanawdithit hears the spirits of her people calling her name. It is time. One spirit in partic...
Shelter – Scene 5: The Pilot (duet)
The pilot watches Hope from afar. They meet and become lovers.
Shelter – Scene 4: Hope Grows Up, “Waiting” (duet)
Thomas has brought Lise to become Hope's tutor, but Hope has grown up and wants to leave the house. Lise warns her not to give her love away to just anyone.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 1
A young Chinese/Canadian woman (Xiao Lian) faces a difficult choice: Honour her family’s traditional past or embrace a more modern future. Her father dwells on the memory of his deceased wife and honours her by performing the Qingming funeral tradition. Meanwhile, Xiao Lian’s two friends want her to get out and be more social. Her father objects...
Shelter – Scene 6: Trinity (aria)
Hope introduces the pilot to her family. He leaves, and Hope argues with her parents about going with him.
The Shadow – Scene 1
Raoul the mailman is in love with Allegra. He arrives at her house and they flirt, but are interrupted by Allegra's father. Raoul vows that he will win over Allegra by disgusing himself as a wealthy merchant named Hernando.
The Shadow – Scene 2
Disguised as Hernando, Raoul asks out Allegra.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 9
The combined spirits of Qu Yuan and Father return and ask the audience to release them from their servitude. That freedom granted, they ascend into the heavens triumphantly.
Where is Ava – Where is Ava
Chloe and Eddie are in the throes of love when they’re interrupted by Matt, Chloe’s athlete ex-husband. Matt asks where their daughter Ava is, and criticizes Chloe for abandoning Ava for a man.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 2, Scene 5
Father Alexander and Oksana realize they share an attraction for each other, but Oksana is determined to go home and tell her parents what has happened. Konstantin phones the refuge to get Oksana back.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 8
Xiao Lian performs the Qingming ceremony to honour the spirit of her departed father and mother. Love and fellowship combine in the running of a dragon boat race. Xiao Lian joins her friends and crosses into her future.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 7
All hope is lost as the villagers return and collect Qu Yuan’s possessions. They take the scrolls containing his famous poetry to the Daoist temple, where they will be preserved forever. Xiao Lian returns to the present at the bedside of her dying father. With his encouragement and love, she finally recognizes the value of honouring the past.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 3
Xiao Lian vows to look to the past and summons the great spirit of Qu Yuan. His spirit rises and assumes the form of Xiao Lian’s father.
Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 2
Xiao Lian’s father bitterly reveals that he will die soon. Xiao Lian’s mother appears in spirit form and asks her to forgive her father. She speaks of their happiness together as a family in earlier times. As a child, Xiao Lian had a close connection with the Dragon Boat Festival, known as Duanwu and its hero, the ancient poet Qu Yuan. Her Fathe...
Little Miss All Canadian – Little Miss All Canadian
Two mothers in the audience for a beauty pageant: while Eunice's daughter performs, Samantha reads an article about a murdered 11-year-old girl.
Hook Up – Section 1, Scene 1: “Opening Montage Overture”
Cindy, Mindy, and Tyler revel in the newfound freedom of university life. Cindy delights in being single, Mindy says goodbye to her parents, and is excited for more privacy and time with Tyler... who is looking forward to playing more Fortnite.
Hook Up – Section 5, Scene 1: “Mindy’s Spiral”
Mindy tries to understand if she was raped at the party. She can't make herself contact anyone, but seeks information online; Cindy slips a morning after pill under the door.
Ice Time – “Axel, halfloop, salchow, toe”
A figure skater and coach review a disappointing routine together.
Ice Time – “We all fail…” (aria)
A figure skater reflects on her experience in competition and decides to switch to a new career path.
Ice Time – Ice Time
After a disappointing performance a coach chastises the skater, then dreams of her glory days; the skater decides this has been her last performance.
Iron Road – Act 1, Prologue: The Old World
Before dying, Ama tells Lai Gwan of her father, gives her a wedding dress, and urges her to go to North America to find her father - but always remember Chinese traditions.
Iron Road – Act 1, Scene 3: The Mountain
The Chinese workers are led in and a disguised Lai Gwan challenges Manli the Bookman’s authority. He seeks revenge by assigning Lai Gwan to the most dangerous work in the camp: planting dynamite on the mountain face while suspended in a basket.
Iron Road – Act 1, Scene 4: The Stream
While she is bathing in a stream, Nichol disovers Lai Gwan is a woman - she asks for his help to find her father and to keep her secret. Manli interrupts them before Nichol decides what to do.
Iron Road – Act 1, Scene 5: The Camp
The Chinese workers decide to strike, led by Lai Gwan, after another death with no proper funeral. The strike is put down and Nichol stops Lai Gwan from being hung by Manli. She discovers Manli is her father.
Iron Road – Act 2, Prologue: The Dream
Lai Gwan dreams of the conflicting desires of her mother, father, Nichol and herself.
Iron Road – Act 2, Scene 1: The Fight
As Manli and Lai Gwan argue about their situation, Lai Gwan tells of Ama's death, which crushes Manli. He decides to set the next explosive charge himself. Nichol and Lai Gwan recognise their love and follow Manli into the tunnel.
Iron Road – Act 2, Scene 2: The Cave
In the explosion rubble, Lai Gwan and Nichol declare their love depsite Ama's warnings. Nichol dies as the workers rescue Lai Gwan and Manli, who declares his renewed love for his daughter.
Iron Road – Act 2, Scene 4: The Last Spike
Whites celebrate the finishing of the railway and officially dismiss the Chinese, who blame Manli for abandoning them.
Iron Road – Act 2, Scene 5: Remember the Dead
Manli and Lai Gwan decided to make a life together in Canada. As they collect and bury the bones of Chinese workers they remember all the dead, including Ama and Nichol.
Jacqueline – “Telephone” – voice and cello
On a phone call with her mother, Jackie is admonished. She begs her mother to visit. She’s alone with fragments of memory.
Playing Ball – Playing Ball
Tabitha helps her father Ken, who has had a stroke. She combs his hair and helps him with his therapy ball, retrieving it each time he drops it.
M’dea Undone – Act 1, Scene 10 (duet)
Dahlia's father encourages her to seduce Jason, and promises her she can have anything she wants.
M’dea Undone – Act 1, Scene 8 – A Dinner Party
The President invites Jason to be his running mate, and begins to remake him. This process sidelines M'dea and Chase. Dahlia and Jason are attracted to one other.
M’dea Undone – Act 1, Scene 10: Dahlia’s Bedroom (duet)
Dahlia's father encourages her to seduce Jason, and promises her she can have anything she wants.
M’dea Undone – Act 2, Scene 3: Fountain
M'dea has a breakdown and brings Chase to the fountain at Jason and Dahlia's, where she sees the ghost of her mother. She is discovered by Jason and Dahlia, and a fight ensues.
TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – second movement
A couple is trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter. They grieve, and fight with one another.
TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – third movement
The couple continues to mourn.
TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – final movement
Duet between the woman and a violin, symbolizing her daughter.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Prologue
Sofiya and Yuri take their infant daughter Oksana to have her horoscope read by Asa, who predicts that "freedom invades her future."
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 1, Scene 1
Though others are at first suspicious, Russian Konstantin convinces Ukranian teenagers Nataliya and Oksana to come work for him at a hotel in Romania for the summer.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 1, Scene 3
Sofiya goes to Asa to have her cards read for news of Oksana. The police will not treat Oksana's disappearance as crime, as she went with the men willingly. The cards say Oksana has been robbed of her soul.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 1, Scene 5
Pavlo checks in with Sofyia and Yuri for news; Sofiya and Yuri argue & blame each other for letting Oksana go.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 2, Scene 2
Asa and Sofiya are checking the cards. Pavlo arrives with the news that a priest called from Italy to say that Oksana is alive, but there is no sign of Natalyia.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 3, Scene 1
Pavlo reads Oksana's letter to her parents telling them she'll be home on November 8, her birthday. They are thrilled, and get carried away planning a party for her.
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. – Act 3, Scene 5
Sofiya and Yuri consult Asa when Oksana has not arrived as her lettered promised. They are interrupted by Pavlo with news that the priest from Italy is on the phone, and wants to talk to Oksana's parents.
COR

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