COR
Operas
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...
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
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.
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 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
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 -...
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
Content warning: mental illness, alcohol use, incarceration due to mental illness
Is it the clothes that make a man, or is it something other than?
Based on the satirical Nikolai Gogol story of the same name, The Overcoat centres on Akakiy Akakiyevich, a diligent man no one likes, who works the numbers best he can. But he can barely pay th...
Is it the clothes that make a man, or is it something other than?
Based on the satirical Nikolai Gogol story of the same name, The Overcoat centres on Akakiy Akakiyevich, a diligent man no one likes, who works the numbers best he can. But he can barely pay th...
Composer: James Rolfe
Librettist: Morris Panych
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...
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
COR
Excerpts
The Child is led back to the book cage, and performers take their places.
Lucifer jangles an entrancing key in front of the Child and a young boy. This key promises to open the gates of heaven, but the boy has his own doubts about that. Nevertheless, he zips up his vest...
The Child questions Lucifer’s role as tempter, while he tempts with growing intensity. He chastises the Child for bowing to authority. She erupts in anger, pushing the books aside and leaving the cage.
A distraught woman is trying to report her sexual assault to a policeman. She admits she’s had some alcohol. Instead of pursuing justice, the policeman arrests her for illegal possession of alcohol. The Child witnesses all of it.
Lucifer rebuilds the cage, then tries to convince the audience to join him in self-exile.
The Child is allowed out of her cage, with a warning she can have anyting she wants except for one thing. She asks what it might be, and in a Kafka-esque reply they say, “you know.”
The President threatens M'dea with prison or the loss of her son if she doesn't do as he wants. He warns her not to cause trouble for Jason.
As Lucifer tries again to get the Child to go with him, the Child finds out who Lucifer is in one of the books of the cell.
After days of near catatonia in his cold apartment, the landlady asks Petrovich to repair Akakiy’s old coat, to no avail. Even his coworkers arrive to check in, but by then, Akakiy is unreachable. Akakiy is committed to a mental hospital. Once he arrives, the other residents encourage him to look at things a little differently. It turns out h...
The Child is bored. She reads several books in an effort to learn all the things she shouldn’t do, say, feel, or see. Lucifer simply asks her why, attempting to get her attention on him instead of books. She finds a name, Iblis, and taunts him.
Traumatized by her experiences, Alessandra reflects on her work as a translator in an American military prison.
Colonel Crane, Alessandra's supervisor, tersely tells her to lose what her perceives as her naive sense of morality: "We are just here to win."
2003: After leaking torture photos to the internet, American army translator Alessandra Jenson refuses to be hushed up, and live streams her suicide in protest.
Lucifer taunts the Child in a cell. She doesn't understand what she's done wrong.
Irish pirate Chieftain Grace O'Malley sneaks into the bedroom of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and convinces the Queen to give her back her ship and free her lover. In return Grace will attend the Queen's birthday celebration and cause a sensation - which delights Liz.
An interrogator turns his lurid eyes on an imprisoned female activist. Purposefully misunderstanding her movements as seduction, he convinces himself of something horrid.
English 
French