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 ...

Content warning: cannibalism, gun violence, starvation

Based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, Dog Days tells a post-apocalyptic tale of a typical American family. The country has fallen into chaos as an undefined war rages on U.S. soil. Roads are closed except for military use. There is no work. Progressively, the schools close. Food runs ou...

JFK explores the final twelve hours of the 35th president’s life and time spent in Fort Worth, Texas. But far from being a musical biography, JFK is a portrait of a precipice. The fleeting moments of hope before a cosmic page turned, optimism faltered, and America was forced into a new and uncertain era. The opera is a portrayal of the man as we...

Pirate Song tells the true story of two 18th-century female pirates, Mary Read of England and Ann Bonny of Ireland. To go to sea, they disguised themselves as men, and mixed business with pleasure by becoming lovers in 1720 while aboard a pirate ship captained by Calico Jack Rackham. When attacked by the British crown later that year in Jamaica,...

Content warning: blood, gun violence, murder

Pedro Carmona, a young surgeon and son of a prominent Portuguese general, has escaped military service in Angola in 1968 by fleeing to Toronto with his upper-class wife Constanza. In order to survive, he has taken two jobs while he retrains to qualify as a doctor. The opera begins as Constanza—sick...

Act One, Scene One
Autumn, 1915


In the park of a small town in the Crowsnest Pass, family and friends celebrate the wedding of Filumena Costanzo to Charlie Lassandro. As festivities proceed, Filumena seems withdrawn, stunned by her new husband’s brusqueness. Charlie has given her a new “Canadian” name, Florence, which she clearly rejects. ...

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.

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 ...

Content warning: gun violence, death, mass shooting

In the Blue Room of the Quebec National Assembly, Denis Lortie kills and wounds people with a submachine gun as a protest against Quebec sovereignty.

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...