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  • About COR
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    • FAQ – For Users
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Canadian Opera Resource
Canadian Opera Resource
COR
Operas
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)
Silence
A not-so-pure Maiden is sent to marry a not-so-manly Lord, who is advised by a not-so-celibate Priest, and protected by a not-so-insensitive Thug in an England ruled by a King who won’t get out of bed. Based on the award winning play by Moira Buffini.
Composer: Leslie Uyeda

Silence
When the Sun Comes Out
The opera is a poetic love story following resistance against a fictional state that oppresses lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It centres on the rebellious Solana and her beloved Lilah, who is now a wife and mother; together, they fight for a new future, even as their secret romance is threatened by Lilah’s unpredictable h...
Composer: Leslie Uyeda
Librettist: Rachel Rose

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
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
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
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

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
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

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
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
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
Ashes
Content warning: murder

Nighttime on a dock on a lake. Tea lights have been carefully arranged on the side of the dock to illuminate a path. Adele stands at the end of a dock holding an urn that contains her husband’s ashes. She takes the lid off the urn, and begins to sprinkle ashes on the water.

Her son Theo joins her and asks what she’s...
Composer: Iman Habibi
Librettist: Charles Hayter

Ashes
Ashes
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
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
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
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
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
COR
Excerpts
Jacqueline – “Samson” – voice and cello

Comparing herself to Samson, Jackie and her husband have a tangled night of love one rainy night.

Ashes – Ashes

A nighttime confrontation between a mother and son. The son accuses her of having an affair with his uncle, and killing his father. He’s found a doctor in Chinatown who will be able to prove his father was poisoned. The mother claims she did it to end his pain.

Facing South – Scene 2: “Interior (1919)”

An ill and delirious Peary reminisces about his polar days; his wife remembers their early love.

Facing South – Scene 6: “Meteorites (1897)”

The explorers make a plan to bring the Inuit to America to make money.

I Have No Stories to Tell You – Stay Asleep

Sorrel sings to her sleeping husband Daniel, telling him about the traumatic experiences she feels she cannot share when he is awake.

Facing South – Scene 8: “Constellations”

Henson helps Minik reach the land of the dead; Peary and Josephine argue about Peary's Inuit children.

In This World, George is Heartbroken – In This World, George is Heartbroken

George and his wife Martha have three very different versions of a difficult conversation over breakfast.

One Lump or Two? – One Lump or Two?

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 are they plotting against– their partners, or each o...

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.

M’dea Undone – Act 2, Scene 8: Killing (aria)

Just before the wedding, Jason discovers Dahlia and the President murdered.

Rosa – “Every day I blistered my hands…” (duet)

Hector and Isabelle express their resentment towards each other for the sacrifices they each made.

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.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Young Love

On the wedding day of the young couple from the first scene, the now-sober old man arrives with a surprise: his wife. And they want their ring back.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – “I remember the drink we shared” (aria)

An old drunk recounts his failed marriage.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Mad with It

A young couple celebrates their recent engagement in the Sloans pub, only to be interrupted by a drunk whose 24-year marriage has just ended. The drunk leaves his wedding ring, and, sensing an opportunity, the young couple takes it.

M’dea Undone – Act 2, Scene 4: Dahlia’s Bedroom

Dahlia convinces Jason to send M'dea away.

Noor Over Afghan – Scene 6

In bed, Rafique and Noor separately wonder how to get out of their situation.

Noor Over Afghan – Scene 4: The Wedding Night

Noor tells the lie Jaan asked of her to Rafique. Rafique sends her away and tries to figure out what he should do.

Noor Over Afghan – Scene 2

The wedding ceremony. Noor hesitates, then marries Rafique.

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