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COR
COR
  • Home
  • About COR
    • About COR
    • How To Use COR
    • FAQ – For Users
  • Operas
  • Creators
  • Submit Your Work
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Canadian Opera Resource
Canadian Opera Resource
COR
Operas
(What Rhymes With) Azimuth
A summer evening. A writer is experiencing a bit of writer’s block as she is sitting in an outdoor cafe in an historic area of town. She looks around for inspiration and happens to see a man looking at the stars with binoculars. Clouds block his view, and when he looks around he catches her glance and smiles. Is he really there? Or is he just in...
Composer: Ivan Barbotin
Librettist: Liza Balkan

(What Rhymes With) Azimuth
(What Rhymes With) Azimuth
Ashlike on the Cradle of the Wind
Content warning: AIDS, death, illness

The interior of a thumping, vibrating gay nightclub with obligatory disco ball and coloured strobe lights. A middle-aged gentleman is sitting at the bar, back to the audience, lost in his thoughts and seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. The truth is he isn't used to going to clubs, or hasn't since th...
Composer: Andrew Staniland
Librettist: Jill Battson

Ashlike on the Cradle of the Wind
TAP:EX Augmented Opera
This fifth installment of the Tapestry Explorations (TAP:EX) series offers a take on a Silicon Valley product launch, where audiences are the first to learn about Elysium, a new cloud-based technology that reimagines the afterlife as a perfect curation of our best memories. This fictional product draws attention to the modern world developing ne...
Composer: Benton Roark
Librettists: Debi Wong, Benton Roark

TAP:EX Augmented Opera
Bandits in the Valley
The Don Valley. 1880, Toronto.

Join George Taylor and the travelling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical troupe The Vagabonds in a twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the birth of his papermill. Unbeknownst to him, Jeremiah - the leader of a local small-potatoes bandit group called The Rift Rafters - just discovered a long-hidden secret abo...
Composer: Benton Roark
Librettist: Julie Tepperman

Bandits in the Valley
Bring Me the Head of Your President
Democracy lies dead in a coffin, mourned by two citizens...

"She lies silently in a coffin of ice, arms bound by a flag, eyes sewn together, mouth wired shut...”

But slowly Democracy raises her weak head and begs the two citizens to keep her alive by executing a difficult but necessary task.
Composer: August Murphy-King
Librettist: Colleen Murphy

Bring Me the Head of Your President
Chicken or Beef?
Each of two brother bulls attempts to convince the other to enter the barn. Neither wants to go, knowing their lives are at stake. The two flatter, dare, and challenge one another, until a race finally settles it: first one to the barn wins. Sort of.
Composer: Justine F. Chen
Librettist: David James Brock

Chicken or Beef?
Chicken or Beef?
Dance til the sun sets
An entire relationship in microcosm, from first meeting to last sunset together. This piece uses a couple’s dancing together as a metaphor for their time passing.
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

Dance til the sun sets
Dance til the sun sets
Dark Star Requiem
Content warning: illness, death, HIV/AIDS

Dark Star Requiem is a poetic chronicle of the 25 years (as of 2010) of HIV-AIDS, reflecting the many faces of the disease and those affected by the pandemic.
Composer: Andrew Staniland
Librettist: Jill Battson

Dark Star Requiem
Eshna
Elvet is struck with grief over the death of his newborn child, not yet named.
Composer: August Murphy-King
Librettist: Kanika Ambrose

Eshna
Eshna
Eva
A son gets caught sleeping with his father's girlfriend, Eva. A three-way fight erupts, the son professing his love for Eva and vice versa, while the father warns they’ll betray each other soon enough. They leave, and the father grieves the loss of them both.
Composer: Stephen Andrew Taylor
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Eva
Eva
Facing South
Content warning: illness, death, colonialism

Facing South is inspired by the life story of American Arctic explorer, Rear Admiral Robert Edwin Peary, and his contested discovery of the North Pole in 1909. The opera takes place in the inner landscape of Peary’s mind during the last hours of his life in February 1920, as he lies dying of pernic...
Composer: Linda Catlin Smith
Librettist: Don Hannah

Facing South
Farewell Poo
Charlie and Robert stand over a toilet examining Charlie's poo and reflecting on lost loved ones.
Composer: Rene Orth
Librettist: Daniel Solon

Farewell Poo
Farewell Poo
TAP:EX Forbidden
Content warning: sexual violence, incarceration, religious abuse, homophobia, conversion therapy

Through several vignettes, Forbidden examines the idea of rules and taboos. Do they protect people, or do they control them? Are they of any value, or do they simply exploit the powerless?

A young girl, punished with repetition of religious tex...
Composer: Afarin Mansouri
Librettist: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

TAP:EX Forbidden
Get Stuffed
Get Stuffed is a comic opera about serious decisions, featuring vocalizing vegetables and a big helping of other opinionated edible characters, all competing to influence one child's daily diet. Written for 5 singing actors and 2 musicians, this opera is intended for family audiences and touring to schools with a focus on encouraging youth to ma...
Composer: Richard Payne
Librettist: Alexis Diamond

Get Stuffed
Gotcha!
It’s “gotcha day” – the term used for the first meeting between birth parents and adopted children – and Adam is about to meet his birth mother, Eileen. The reunion goes awry and they begin to wonder who has got whom.
Composer: Darren Fung
Librettist: Betty-Jane Wylie

Gotcha!
Gotcha!
Guitar
Singer-songwriter Josie works on a song in her shared Portland apartment, a girl-at-the-guitar on the cusp of leaving for New York City and a long-anticipated big break. Though her luggage is packed and she’s almost out the door, her boyfriend interjects with objections—he’ll miss her. Josie’s reassurances, dreams of him visiting her on the East...
Composer: Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Librettist: Norman Yeung

Guitar
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
Hotel Lobby
Two exes, each with their new partner, run into each other in a hotel lobby. Unresolved tension and suppressed emotions resurface in an awkward encounter no one will forget.
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: Maja Ardal

Hotel Lobby
Hotel Lobby
Ice Cream
Content warning: illness, memory loss

A mother and son have dinner. The mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and her son has increasing difficulty coping with that fact.
Composer: Benton Roark
Librettist: Liza Balkan

Ice Cream
Ice Cream
In This World, George is Heartbroken
Content warning: verbal abuse

George and Martha have three very different versions of a difficult conversation over breakfast. The first two represent what happens in George’s mind when his wife insults him over breakfast. One is violent and reactionary, with George screaming and verbally abusing Martha. The other is more considered, as Georg...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

In This World, George is Heartbroken
Insomnia Composition
At 4 a.m., a composer stands looking out the window, his tools nearby. Across town, a librettist is doing the same. Both are just slightly panicking about their latest work: an opera about a dog named Harley. This work is a meditation on the personal doubt, collegial suspicion, and sudden inspiration that can keep artists awake until the wee hours.
Composer: Iman Habibi
Librettist: Maja Ardal

Insomnia Composition
Insomnia Composition
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
Leaving
Content warning: mental illness

Simone has been battling undiagnosed postpartum depression, and is losing. She decides to leave, packing her bags, and her husband Marc begs her to explain. As their son sleeps in the next room, she leaves, and Marc doesn’t try to stop her.
Composer: Darren J
Librettist: Sharon Bajer

Leaving
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
Lost and Found
Lost and Found is a sexy tango encounter between two lost travelers who don’t share a common language, but bond over the serendipitous lexical delight of learning that the word “mango” is gloriously, sensuously, mutually intelligible. Jubilant over their shared discovery, the man asks the woman about returning to his place posthaste. The travele...
Composer: Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Librettist: Sharon Bajer

Love Redux
A modern retelling of the famous love story of Helen and Paris. In a hotel room, some time into their relationship, Helen and Paris’s ardour seems to be fluctuating.
Composer: Benjamin Pesetsky
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

Love Redux
Love Redux
Lullaby at the Shore
Content warning: xenophobia, migration

A young child wakes up alone on the beach. They call for their mother. The sound of the waves muffles the voices of people who worry about newcomers and the effect that they will have on their society. Other voices take over - other children declaring that the child belongs with them now.

Inspired by ...
Composer: Afarin Mansouri
Librettist: Marcia Johnson

Lullaby at the Shore
Lullaby at the Shore
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
Merk’s Dream
Content warning: death, ableism

Old Merk feels his age. He will die soon. He tries to prepare Pauline, his mentally disabled adult daughter, for the inevitable. What, if anything, will she remember of him? Of the house they share? Of their life together? Will she remember her father’s love? Will she remember the embrace of home? Will she unde...
Composer: Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Librettist: Nick Carpenter

Merk’s Dream
Morning Prayers
An Iranian man sits in a hotel room in Canada, writing his morning prayers.
Composer: Afarin Mansouri
Librettist: Jessica Murphy Moo

Morning Prayers
Morning Prayers
Mother Everest
Content warning: death

Just below the summit of Mount Everest on the south summit ridge, Jackie and her partner Pasang are celebrating that she is the first woman to reach the summit without oxygen. Then something changes. Could it be Mother Everest punishing the climbers?
Composer: Abigail Richardson
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

Mother Everest
Mother Everest
Mousetrap
In a video game, two mice are navigating through a house when suddenly they encounter a giant squirrel.
Composer: Rene Orth
Librettist: Lila Palmer

Mousetrap
Mousetrap
My Eyes are Bright and Sparkly
“Hate your stupid earrings, hate your ugly shoes.” Stephanie is getting ready to go out on a date, but she begins to unravel when she checks herself in the mirror. The voices she hears in her head are variations of her own critical voice. She sees herself the way she imagines her date will see her. Nothing is right – everything is wrong. It is a...
Composer: Rene Orth
Librettist: Colleen Murphy

My Eyes are Bright and Sparkly
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

My Mother’s Ring
My Mother’s Ring
Naila and Lolo
Partition in 1947 drives Naila’s family to the new country of Pakistan while her best friend Lolo must remain in India. In a child’s-eye view of this world event, the significant concerns for these two nine-year-olds are custody of a tin box with important valuables (“marbles and flowers and keys and rings”), and the care and feeding of a pet ra...
Composer: Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Librettist: Anusree Roy

Naila and Lolo
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

Nigredo Hotel
Noor Over Afghan
Noor Over Afghan is set in Afghanistan, and tells the story of two young Afghani sisters, Noor and Jaan. But Jaan is dying, and begs Noor to take her place in the marriage and have her child. By the time the groom finds out, Jaan will have died. They swap places, Noor disguised by the veil.
Composer: Christiaan Venter
Librettist: Anusree Roy

Noor Over Afghan
Noor Over Afghan
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.
One Night, One Bell
In a country torn by war, a woman works as a bell-ringer. There used to be many more in the tower, but one by one the bells were taken: metal for the war-machine. A man climbs the tower after hearing her play the one remaining bell. What seems at first a meeting of two lovers turns dark as the man tries to claim the bell. They need the metal for...
Composer: Stephen Andrew Taylor
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

One Night, One Bell
One Night, One Bell
Opposites Attract
Across eight brief vignettes, couples experience small moments of frustration, miscommunication, and attraction.
Composer: Iman Habibi
Librettist: Phoebe Tsang

Opposites Attract
Opposites Attract
Oubliette
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.
Composer: Ivan Barbotin
Librettist: Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

Oubliette
Oubliette
Perfect Night
A Woman and Man in bed.  Naked.  Or nearly.  The Man reads to the Woman.  Poetry by Irving Layton.  They have the house to themselves.  They are reconnecting, finally, after their youngest kid has headed off to college.  It’s a perfect night.  Until the mosquito shows up.
Composer: Jana Skarecky
Librettist: Nick Carpenter

Perfect Night
Perfect Night
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
Pursuit
Content warning: stalking

A young barista seems to know a surprising amount about one of the customers at her cafe.
Composer: Iman Habibi
Librettist: Jessica Murphy Moo

Pursuit
Pursuit
Rip
The piece opens in the middle of a reverse custody battle, with each party demanding the other take their son, Simon.  Carla believes her son will grow up dysfunctional without a father, and Peter claims he’ll do nothing but cry for her.  Interspersed with their fighting is the occasional instruction to Simon, indicating he’s in the room, a witn...
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Rip
Rip
Rocking Horse Winner
Content warning: illness, death

Rocking Horse Winner primarily explores the relationship between Paul, a young adult, and his emotionally distant mother, Ava.

Paul is driven to bridge the relationship with his mother, but Ava s...
Composer: Gareth Williams
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Rocking Horse Winner
Sanctuary Song
An opera for all ages. Sydney, an Asian elephant poached at a young age from the jungles of Indonesia, recalls her remarkable life in captivity, far from home, as her keeper of 22 years leads her on a journey towards sanctuary in the hills of Tennessee. A dynamic weaving of opera and dance unearths friendships lost and found and restores a stole...
Composer: Abigail Richardson
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

Sanctuary Song
Sanctuary Song
See Saw
Content warning: suicidal thoughts

A comedy. Trish laments her breakup with Ralph. She is desolate and considers suicide. Gina scolds Trish for over-dramatization and urges her to move on in her life. She succeeds in getting Trish to agree to go out for a drink at a bar nearby. They are intercepted by Ralph (on his bicycle) carrying a box of ...
Composer: Andrew Staniland
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

See Saw
See Saw
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
She is Me
Content warning: fire, death

Janna and her grandpa are in Toronto’s distillery district. Before she has to leave, Janna asks him to tell the story of how he and Grandma met. Both were fighting a fire, and met as part of the bucket brigade. Janna proudly reminds him he saved everyone that night, but this isn’t true. Grandpa confesses that a wo...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Katherine Koller

She is Me
She Sees Her Lover
Agnieska and Sumana share a night together after meeting in a bar. The night, however intimate, has vastly different meanings to each woman. While Sumana is brimming with the excitement of a first chance at love, Agnieska is haunted by memories of her romantic past.

The next morning, Agnieska wakes early and admires her new lover Sumana as sh...
Composer: Craig Galbraith
Librettist: Leanna Brodie

She Sees Her Lover
She Sees Her Lover
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
Sleep, Sleep
A woman and her grown son are leaving their home. It’s time for bed, but the boy insists they play his favourite game one last time. Begrudgingly, the mother agrees. They make up ways of killing an unnamed woman.

When the game is over, the boy asks what would happen if they killed the woman “for real,” if it would make his father love them ag...
Composer: John Harris
Librettist: Marjorie Chan

Sleep, Sleep
Sleep, Sleep
Snow Globe
A sister and brother go through the belongings of their recently departed mother and find an old snow globe from their youth. They both really want to keep it. A bitter fight ensues and the sister inadvertently blurts out a very painful secret.
Composer: Ian Cusson
Librettist: Colleen Murphy

Snow Globe
Still the Night
Content warning: antisemitism, genocide, Holocaust, infanticide, murder, Nazis, sexual violence, sex work, violence, war

Still the Night tells the fictional story of two Jewish Polish cousins, both named Bryna, who have escaped fr...
Composer: John Alcorn
Librettist: Theresa Tova

Still the Night
Tea at Three
Late at night, Allie receives a visitation from her deceased best friend, Karen.
Composer: Katya Pine
Librettist: Sheldon Rosen

Tea at Three
Tea at Three
The Cellar Door
Content warning: child sexual abuse, incest, death, murder

Judith and Daniel, long estranged siblings, are brought together by the passing of their father. Time has passed, but it seems like Judith hasn't changed at all. Daniel kills his sister when she wants to resume their childhood sexual relationship.
Composer: Melissa Hui
Librettist: Jovanni Sy

The Cellar Door
The Cellar Door
The Colony
While out on a hunt for a new mate, The Queen of the Amazon Ants and one of her subjects find themselves under attack.

The Queen wears low cut, tight-fitting army fatigues that accentuate her shapely thorax and abdomen, and a pair of black calf-high combat boots. The Queen also has two large antennae growing out of her head because she is an ...
Composer: Kevin Morse
Librettist: Lisa Codrington

The Colony
The Colony
The Golden Boy
The scene is divided into two sections: a tense argument between mother and child, and a tender aria for the mother as she finally reveals a painful truth to her son about the prolonged absence of his father.
Composer: Darren J
Librettist: Anusree Roy

The Golden Boy
The Golden Boy
The Last Life
A farmer lovingly takes care of his brown cow, not knowing he and the cow have met before in past lives, once in the 18th century and again in the 20th.
Composer: Katya Pine
Librettist: Sharon Bajer

The Last Life
The Perfect Match
Two sock puppets long for something more than their dreary lives. They bump into each other on the street, and it doesn’t take long for them to recognize they’re each other’s perfect match!
Composer: Anthony Young
Librettist: Krista Dalby

The Perfect Match
The Perfect Screw
Nominated for a 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Musical/Opera, this 40-minute tragi-comedy about creative integrity, autonomy, and the right fit is an allegorical tale that dismantles the ironies of capitalism; a parody of cross-border relations; a romance.

Due to the all-powerful Ford selecting the American Phillips screw for...
Composer: Abigail Richardson
Librettist: Alexis Diamond

The Perfect Screw
The Perfect Screw
The Rape of Artemisia
Content warning: sexual violence

Based on the testimony of the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi on her rapist and instructor Agostino Tassi, we are given a snapshot of violation, confusion, and the oppression of women.
Composer: Ivan Barbotin
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

The Rape of Artemisia
The Rape of Artemisia
The Theory of Everything
A man at a restaurant thinks he recognizes a woman seated alone at the next table. Could she be a famous author he just read? As the pieces of this miscalculation come together for the woman, we find that she is surprised to be noticed, and taken aback that she’s assumed to be a string theory expert. The scene flips an expected script of expecta...
Composer: Elisabeth Mehl Greene
Librettist: Sheldon Rosen

The Theory of Everything
The Translator
Content warning: death, incarceration, interrogation, suicide, torture

A translator at a secret prison for suspected terrorists witnesses extreme torture and death of detainees. She leaks the information to news broadcasters, but the government covers it up as a hoax. Her supervisor begs her to say nothing more about the things she has seen -...
Composer: David Ogborn
Librettist: Leanna Brodie

The Translator
The Translator
The Two Graces
The night before her birthday, an aging Queen Elizabeth I catches an intruder in her boudoir. It turns out to be none other than her arch-nemesis Grace O’Malley, Irish pirate and chieftain, come to reclaim her seized ship and her trampled rights. A comedic opera about power and politics, destiny and desire, and how hard it is to be a woman at th...
Composer: Sean Ferguson
Librettist: Alexis Diamond

The Two Graces
The Two Graces
The Virgin Charlie
Charlie is performing in a show, and while backstage receives an unexpected visit from the Virgin Mary. Mary has news for Charlie: he is pregnant with the son of God. The little messiah has come to fulfill a prophecy - will armageddon strike the earth, or will forgiveness once again save it all?
Composer: William Rowson
Librettist: Taylor Graham

The Virgin Charlie
The Waterfall
Content warning: sexual harassment, violence, fire

A northern land, the end of winter. A cold, dusky pre-dawn on the edge of a mountain; across the valley roars a mighty waterfall. In this valley there are two farms, one poor - owned by Runa, a single woman - and one rich, owned by Olaf, who wishes Runa for his bride.

Olaf proposes to Runa...
Composer: Norbert Palej
Librettist: Maja Ardal

The Waterfall
The Waterfall
Two Sisters
Content warning: death, murder, drowning

Two sisters are outside by the river talking. One sister describes the boy she hopes to be with, and the other sister admits that she is pregnant with his baby. Jealousy is a deadly emotion.
Composer: Benton Roark
Librettist: Lila Palmer

Two Sisters
Two Sisters
The Handless Maiden: Scene 8 (Wash the Loss)
Based on "The Handless Maiden," a mythic story found in cultures around the world, and a continuation of the events in Me and You (Madonna of the Wilderness).

After seven years of wandering, the girl (now known as Madonna) has regained her hands through loving self-sacrifice. She’s returned to the cabin of her childhood, where her journey beg...
Composer: Benton Roark
Librettist: Katherine Koller

The Handless Maiden: Scene 8 (Wash the Loss)
The Handless Maiden: Scene 8 (Wash the Loss)
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

What is She?
What is She?
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
R.U.R. A Torrent of Light
The fictional tech company R.U.R., founded by couple Helena and Dom, dominates the A.I. software market and powers the now-ubiquitous androids that serve their human owners.

As Dom becomes more focused on growing R.U.R’s profits, Helena’s creative research leads to an unexpected technological breakthrough that pits the couples’ visions square...
Composer: Nicole Lizée
Librettist: Nicolas Billon

R.U.R. A Torrent of Light
Gould’s Wall
A young, extraordinarily talented musician is striving for perfection in her art. Her path to greatness? A magnificent wall.

Bursting with the compulsion to reach the top, she invokes Canadian icon, classical pianist Glenn Gould to guide her towards dizzying heights – but the path isn’t easy. Each brick represents her art, her rigour, and her...
Composer: Brian Current
Librettist: Liza Balkan

Gould’s Wall
One Lump or Two?
Content warning: mention of murder, violence, poison

Four Victorian women sit down for a most unusual tea time. The women have two things in common: their dislike of the other women and of their husbands. Each woman refuses to drink tea for one reason or another while brainstorming ideas such as poison, prison, bee-stings or drowning. But who...
Composer: Glenn James
Librettist: Sandy Pool

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)
Pomegranate
On a fateful school trip to the ruins of Pompeii, the fantasies of smitten teenagers Suzie and Cass are ignited. They are transported from 1977 to 79 AD, where they discover romantic freedom in the looming shadow of Mount Vesuvius – but not for long. The timeline shifts to 1981 and the Fly by Night, a Toronto lesbian bar, in the aftermath of the...
Composer: Kye Marshall
Librettist: Amanda Hale

Pomegranate
La pagaille des violons
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

La pagaille des violons
Before the Last Meter
A 12 minute long opera, it is set during the 1996 Olympics and Paralympics held in Atlanta.  A Paralympic athlete with a disability, and a person of color made homeless by the construction of Olympic sites, meet by chance in Piedmont Park in front of a strange statue.  “Before the Last Meter” explores and humanizes the themes of ambition, home, ...
Composer: Saman Shahi
Librettist: Isabella Dawis

Before the Last Meter
Sooner Than Later
Content warning: gun violence, strong language, terminal illness, attempted assisted suicide

A father and son argue in a dark alley.  The father, sick with a tumour "the size of a fig" in his brain, begs his son to end his life.  When the gun they're using fails and the son panics, the father offers comfort and encouragement in the form of a ...
Composer: Cecilia Livingston
Librettist: David Yee

Sooner Than Later
Sooner Than Later
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
The Defining Moment
Content warning: infidelity

An ambitious politician gleefully shares with his mistress the news that his party may soon be back in power.  The mistress shares her own news: she is pregnant.
Composer: Jana Skarecky
Librettist: Norman Yeung

The Defining Moment
The Defining Moment
Molly’s Veil
Content warning: illness, death

Charlotte works to prepare a Thanksgiving meal while her sister Margaret, who is ill, rests. When Margaret drops some china, the sisters are forced to confront the fact that Margaret's illness is likely terminal, and they will soon be separated. They sing a heartfelt duet, vowing to say hello to a new closeness...
Composer: Jana Skarecky
Librettist: Sharon Bajer

Molly’s Veil
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
Svadba
Svadba explores a "wedding theme, especially the night before the ceremony, when we are privy to private and ancient rituals between the bride and her girlfriends. The text is taken from original Serbian poetry but given a new context for our contemporary culture... A wedding is an important turning point in every woman’s life, usually steeped i...
Composer: Ana Sokolović
Librettist: Ana Sokolović

Svadba
The Midnight Court
"Bentley’s libretto is based on Frank O’Connor’s translation of the celebrated 1780 Gaelic poem by Brian Merriman (1749-1805), a work surprisingly contemporary in its frank discussion of women’s sexual needs and how men fail to meet them.  In Bentley’s adaptation Merriman himself becomes the opera’s central figure who falls asleep on a midsummer...
Composer: Ana Sokolović
Librettist: Paul Bentley

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
dawn always begins in the bones
A collection of dramatic musical settings of poetry by twelve different Canadian writers. The poems range from serious to humorous, and touch on subjects including the beauty of nature, to ecology and urban animals, to language and poetry itself.
Composer: Ana Sokolović

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

10 Days in a Madhouse
I Have No Stories to Tell You
Content warning: PTSD, violence, war

I Have No Stories to Tell You mines the aftereffects of war through the story of a soldier’s return home from an extended assignment on the battlefield. Written as a companion piece to Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, the opera explores war as a catalyst for changed identity through th...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

I Have No Stories to Tell You
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
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 i...
Composer: Lembit Beecher
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch

Sky on Swings
Flotsam & Jetsam
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...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Juliet Palmer

Flotsam & Jetsam
Flotsam & Jetsam
SLIP
Slip is a site-specific performance for a swimming pool or bath house fusing sound, movement and light. Each production of Slip is unique, but builds on previous performances. Cultures with distinct architectures and social rituals of bathing are juxtaposed to increase awareness of our own histories. As humans we are bound together...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

SLIP
Stitch
From the abuse of the sweatshop to the fantasy of costume and the empowerment of sewing-it-yourself, the sewing machine has been a force for liberation and exploitation since its invention in the 19th century. Hemmed in by the language of sewing and the inexorable rhythm of the machine, three women fight to find space for imagination ...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Stitch
Stitch
Voice-Box
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Voice-Box
Voice-Box
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
Boots
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...
Composer: Juliet Palmer

Boots
The Man Who Married Himself

Unwilling to marry a woman, a man fashions a lover from his own left side. He’s enraptured by her perfect beauty – a mirror of his own – until he discovers that this new woman longs for freedom and wildly desires another.

Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

The Man Who Married Himself
The Man Who Married Himself
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