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Canadian Opera Resource
Canadian Opera Resource
COR
Operas
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
Blind Woman
A blind dancer and the shadow of her former sight share a final dance.
Composer: James Rolfe
Librettist: David Yee

Blind Woman
Blind Woman
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
Ice Time
The scene takes place at a national figure-skating competition. The coach is in the “kiss and cry” section reacting to her protegée’s performance.

The orchestra prelude details a sweeping skate dance routine that ends badly for the skater (she falls, tries to regain momentum, but falls again). The skater limps onto the stage (in her guard-cov...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Ice Time
Ice Time
Iron Road
Content warning: racism, colonialism, violence, death

In 1880’s China, Lai Gwan, a young impoverished woman, stands on the brink of momentous change. Her dying mother urges her to respect and honour the memory of her father, Manli, whose disappearance to the New World haunts them both.

Armed with the hope that she will find her father aliv...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Iron Road
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
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
TAP:EX Metallurgy
Punk and operatic virtuosity collide in Tapestry’s third installment of the Tapestry Explorations (TAP:EX) series. Metallurgy is a collaboration between Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk of F*cked Up, the Polaris Prize-winning punk provocateurs, and two of Canada’s most masterful and versatile opera singers, mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó and tenor ...
Composers: Ivan Barbotin, Jonah Falco, Mike Haliechuk
Librettist: David James Brock

TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
TAP:EX Metallurgy
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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 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 Laurels
Content warning: death, murder, violence

This opera explores the interior realm of a woman’s response to a crisis. The Laurels plays with audience assumptions and expectations; it is well into the piece before we realize the stranger is not the person he appears to be. While it is important that Laurel’s understanding of the Stranger is consi...
Composer: Jeffrey Ryan
Librettist: Michael Lewis MacLennan

The Laurels
The Laurels
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 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)
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
Where You Live
A businessman is waiting for a streetcar, with his back to an unhoused woman. The two silently judge each other. The man is annoyed at seeing someone who wants something for nothing, and the woman is feeling judged for a situation she has no control over. The two finally acknowledge each other, and we discover their shared experience.
Composer: Iman Habibi
Librettist: Michael Pollard

Where You Live
Where You Live
La Maupin
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 ...
Composer: Colin McMahon
Librettist: Camille Rogers

La Maupin
Dragon’s Tale
Content warning: death, suicide

Dragon’s Tale is the story of a young Chinese-Canadian woman (Xiao Lian) and her ailing father, both living in Toronto. Xiao Lian wakes up in the ancient past and witnesses the last days of one of China’s greatest poets, Qu Yuan. In doing so, she begins to understand her father and herself as she returns to a c...
Composer: Ka Nin Chan
Librettist: Mark Brownell

Dragon’s Tale
Medusa’s Children
Content warning: misgendering, mentions of sexual assault, and implied violence

Chrysaor and Pegasus, children of the gorgon Medusa, have been living with their aunts Euryale and Stheno. They receive a message from their dead mother telling the story of her assault and murder by their father Poseidon. Rejecting his mother’s family, Chrysaor g...
Composer: Colin McMahon
Librettist: Charlie Petch

Medusa’s Children
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
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
COR
Excerpts
TAP:EX Augmented Opera – Section 1: ” Product Launch”

Eurydice volunteers to test new A.I. technology that promises to capture your most vivid memories and curate your perfect virtual afterlife. Lab techs hand out eye masks to the audience.

TAP:EX Augmented Opera – Sections 2 and 3: “Descent Into Memory – Garden of the Subconscious”

Calliope and the Muses lead Eurydice C into her subconscious, to the memory of her first love.

TAP:EX Augmented Opera – Section 4: “Inner Sanctum”

In memory, Eurydice C's painter lover pushes her to allow him to paint her and make love to her, even though she is reluctant.

TAP:EX Augmented Opera – Section 5: “Fragments”

Eurydice C remembers different versions of her lover in an Arioso, Bourrée, and Passacaglia. She questions what might have been, before Calliope calls her back to the present.

TAP:EX Augmented Opera – Section 6: “Elysium”

Eurydice C is shown her Elysium with Orpheus in the garden - she is not sure she wants him there, but it fades before she can decide. The CEO brings her back to reality and closes the presentation.

Blind Woman – The Blind Woman

A blind dancer and the shadow of her former sight share a final dance.

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 5: “Undersea” (aria)

Minik remembers Greenland.

Facing South – Scene 10: “Sea Anemone” (aria)

Josephine wonders what discovery is worth.

Ice Time – “Once upon a time…” (aria)

A figure skating coach reminisces about her own time in the competition spotlight.

Ice Time – Ice Time

After a disappointing performance a coach chastises the skater, then dreams of her glory days; the skater decides this has been her last performance.

Iron Road – Manli’s Aria

Filled with regret over his life, Manli sings of an abandoned love.

Iron Road – Act 2, Prologue: The Dream

Lai Gwan dreams of the conflicting desires of her mother, father, Nichol and herself.

Iron Road – Act 2, Scene 5: Remember the Dead

Manli and Lai Gwan decided to make a life together in Canada. As they collect and bury the bones of Chinese workers they remember all the dead, including Ama and Nichol.

Jacqueline – “Telephone” – voice and cello

On a phone call with her mother, Jackie is admonished. She begs her mother to visit. She’s alone with fragments of memory.

Jacqueline – “Run” – voice and cello

Delirious, Jackie envisions running to the ocean again through the fields, this time with her sister, Hilary. She asks that Hilary not tell Daniel about the disease.

Jacqueline – “Bathing in the Sea in October” – voice and cello

Jackie tells us how she can blur the lines between fantasy and reality at will. She can escape the confines of her chair by dreaming of bathing in the sea. She wonders where Daniel is, and who he’s seeing.

Jacqueline – “You and Me” – voice and cello

Jacqueline, the child, tells her cello they will play great concert halls and make records.

Jacqueline – “Intense Perfumes” – voice and cello

Jacqueline remembers playing in the fields with her sister in her childhood, and the fragrance of wildflowers.

Jacqueline – “Mon Ami” – voice and cello

Jacqueline remembers happy times with her cello in childhood.

M’dea Undone – Act 1, Scene 3

M'dea and Jason commit to loving each other and helping each other recover from the war and memories that haunt them.

M’dea Undone – Act 1, Scene 7: Revealed (aria)

In a dream state, M'dea recalls all she has done to survive.

M’dea Undone – Act 2, Scene 5

M'dea tries once more to get Jason to stay with her, but he believes he will never forget his war crimes if she is in his life. M'dea eventually agrees to go back to her country.

TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – second movement

A couple is trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter. They grieve, and fight with one another.

TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – third movement

The couple continues to mourn.

TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy A – final movement

Duet between the woman and a violin, symbolizing her daughter.

TAP:EX Metallurgy – Metallurgy B

In a series of micro-vignettes, we witness a love affair from meeting to first date, falling in love to falling out of love, and into old age.

My Mother’s Ring – “You are my beautiful boy”

Julia remembers the love she felt for her son Paul when he was a baby.

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

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

Nigredo Hotel – “When I was small” (aria)

Ray sings of the ambivalence his parents felt towards him as a child.

Nigredo Hotel – “Wisdom Aria” Option 1

Sophie, the manifestation of Ray's soul sings an extended aria explaining how she has been locked away from Ray since he was a child.

Nigredo Hotel – “Wisdom Aria” Option 2

Sophie, the manifestation of Ray's soul sings an extended aria explaining how she has been locked away from Ray since he was a child.

Nigredo Hotel – “You are dark but lovely”

Ray and Sophie sing an intimate duet as they reconnect and reconcile.

Oubliette – Oubliette

Having escaped forced confinment in a basement, a girl approaches a stranger. She asks if the stranger knows her, as she tries to remember her past.

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

An old drunk recounts his failed marriage.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Chopin’s Ghost (aria)

A bar manager recounts the night she heard Frederick Chopin play piano, and the effect it had on her relationship with the bar’s resident piano player.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Country Song

Two men break into their old haunt, bringing their recently deceased friend along for the ride. They pour three pints and pull up a country song on the jukebox. In turn, they reflect on what they’d tell him if he were still alive.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – Charm

A father befriends the man who murdered his daughter but eluded the police, plotting revenge in the process.

Pub Operas (The Sloans Project) – “I have killed seventeen” (aria)

A man recounts his prior murders.

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

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

Sanctuary Song – Scene 2: Capture

James and Sydney start their journey. Sydney remembers being young and playing in the forest with her friend Penny. One day, they are both captured, and the family herd is shot.

Sanctuary Song – Scene 3: Fire

Sydney is injured in a fire and sold to the zoo.

Sanctuary Song – Scene 4: Alone (aria)

Sydney on her first day at the zoo. Frightened and alone, she thinks of her homeland.

Sanctuary Song – Scene 5: First Meeting

Sydney and James meet for the first time. Though both are nervous, they connect with each other.

Sanctuary Song – Scene 6: Arrival

Sydney and James arrive in Tennessee, remembering their 22 years together. They say goodbye.

Shanawdithit – Scene 2

Cormack’s study in St. John’s, now Shanawdithit’s room. “Nancy April” reveals she can speak English quite well, and tells Cormack her real name: Shanawdithit. Cormack asks her where the rest of her people are, where her home is. Shanawdithit says simply: they are no more. Shanawdithit reflects on the loss of her people and the taking of her a...

Shanawdithit – Scene 4

The taking of Demasduit weighs heavy on Shanawdithit’s heart. Cormack, unsure of what to do, tries to comfort her, saying Demasduit was treated well. Shawnadithit asks if white people actually care about her people, her story, because Cormack’s words are betrayed by the actions of his fellows, and indeed, his own. Cormack insists he will ensu...

Shanawdithit – Scene 5: Salmon, Seal, Caribou

Shanawdithit describes the last days of her family as they were pushed from their land and then hunted. She asks Cormack not to speak of their death, but of their life. Cormack is ecstatic and gets lost in the memories Shanawdithit paints. She breaks his reverie with the cold fact that the life she speaks of will never happen again. She colla...

Shanawdithit – Scene 7

Her health fading, Shanawdithit wonders if she’ll be welcomed into the spirit world after so much time with the colonists. Cormack tells her he must leave, and Shanawdithit gives him a sketch of his house to carry with him. He leaves the room to pack. Shanawdithit hears the spirits of her people calling her name. It is time. One spirit in par...

She Sees Her Lover – “So many ways” (aria)

Agnieska questions why all of her previous relationships have failed.

She Sees Her Lover – Scene 1 (duet)

Agnieska and Sumana share an intimate night together after meeting in a bar. Memories of past lovers almost make Agnieska give up on this new love, but Sumana convinces her to hold on to hope.

Tea at Three – Tea at Three

Late at night, Allie receives a visitation from her deceased best friend, Karen.

The Cellar Door – “Down there I won’t go” (aria)

Daniel sings of his fear at the prospect of going down into the cellar of his childhood home, after his father has died.

The Cellar Door – “That’s all you have to say?” (aria)

Judith sings angrily at her brother when he expresses his desire to leave their childhood home after their father has died.

The Cellar Door – The Cellar Door

Back in his childhood home after the death of this father, Daniel kills his sister when she wants to resume their childhood sexual relationship.

The Golden Boy – The Golden Boy

After a painful argument, a mother tells her son the truth of his father's absence and tries to comfort him.

The Last Life – The Last Life

Former lovers are reincarnated and reunited, but this time around one is a farmer and one is his cow.

The Laurels – “Lost” (aria)

A young woman, Laurel, runs through a dark forest, filled with anxiety and haunted by disturbing memories.

The Laurels – “And so I killed a man…” (aria)

Laurel stabs the Stranger, killing him. As his body slides to the ground to rest at her feet, she begins to feel a new sense of freedom, not realising that it is at the cost of her conscience and her humanity. The aria should be performed with an improvisational blues quality over the regular pulse of the accompaniment, to convey both this se...

The Laurels – The Laurels

In a wooded park at night, it seems like Laurel is running for her life- but it turns out she is running from the memory of the murder she committed that night.

The Translator – “America died in that cell” (aria)

Traumatized by her experiences, Alessandra reflects on her work as a translator in an American military prison.

The Translator – The Translator

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.

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

A Gardener, lost in the wilderness, ends up at Madonna's cabin. She recognizes him as the man in her dreams and vows to heal him of his grief.

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.

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