Doctor – COR

COR

Operas

Content warning: violence, death, murder

Based on a 1960s film by the same name, this story follows two doctors, James and Sam, when an argument turns deadly.

Composer: Chris Thornborrow

Librettist: Morris Panych

My Mother’s Ring

Content warning: murder, violence, mental illness

The story begins with a distressed Paul being interviewed about his missing parents. It switches to two weeks earlier with Harold and Julia in the airport after sending him off. Julia worries that something is wrong with their son. Harold is sure that he'll be back to his old self after the tr...

Composer: Stephen Andrew Taylor

Librettist: Marcia Johnson

Nigredo Hotel

A ‘Hitchcock-style thriller’ for baritone and soprano, Nigredo Hotel is “the story of a neurosurgeon, a man of science, who has lost his soul. One night he thinks he has hit a child on the road and hides out in a decrepit, Hitchcockian motel run by a monstrous concierge called Sophie. The terrifying crone — his anima — locks him into his room an...

Composer: Nic Gotham

Librettist: Ann-Marie MacDonald

Restoration

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

What is She?

Content warning: misgendering, intersex discrimination

A meditation on the discrimination intersex athletes face from their peers. A woman wins a gold medal, but her struggles to get there mean nothing to the organization and the other athletes. She’s disqualified and shamed.

Composer: John Harris

Librettist: Anna Chatterton

10 Days in a Madhouse

Content warning: ableism, institutionalization, medical abuse, mental illness, sanism, sexual violence

10 Days in a Madhouse is a psychological opera that plays with notions of madness, inspired by the life of Nellie Bly, a trailblazing reporter who in 1887 faked madness in order to be admitted to Blackwell’s Asylum for the Insane and report ...

Composer: Rene Orth

Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

COR

Excerpts

Man With the X-Ray Eyes – Man with the X-Ray Eyes

James, an eye doctor wanting to keep his new x-ray vision, argues with his colleague Sam and accidentally kills him, as his assistant Diane watches.

Nigredo Hotel – “Until I was a child…” (aria)

Ray, a jaded neurosurgeon, muses on the loss of his childhood wonder and innocence.

Nigredo Hotel – “If it was a man” (aria)

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.

Nigredo Hotel – “The square root…” (aria)

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.

Restoration – Restoration

A woman cryptically remembers her past as she is briefly examined by three different people.

What is She? – What is She?

An intersex woman wins a gold medal, but her struggles to get there mean nothing to the organization and the other athletes. She’s disqualified and shamed.

My Mother’s Ring – My Mother’s Ring

Paul is being interviewed about his missing parents. Is Paul a suspect? Is the interrogator a police officer or a psychiatrist? Who were the people who were in his parents' house when Paul returned from his trip? All is not as it seems.