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  • Home
  • About COR
    • About COR
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    • How To Use COR
    • FAQ – For Users
  • Operas
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Canadian Opera Resource
Canadian Opera Resource
COR
Operas
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
Airline Icarus

A worker ruminates on the terrifying power of flight as he loads bags.   Three passengers board and discover they’re sitting beside each other.  During the pre-departure safety demonstration, a flight attendant longs for an escape from her mundane life and job.  The three passengers think of their own isolation and lo...

Composer: Brian Current
Librettist: Anton Piatigorsky

Airline Icarus
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
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
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
You and Meme
An awkward first date seems destined for failure, until the two bond over a mutual love of memes. The result? A hot, steamy connection over goats.
Composer: Dean Burry
Librettist: Nicolas Billon

You and Meme
You and Meme
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
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
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

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
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
Unfamiliar
Content warning: black-out drinking

A night out celebrating midterms takes a turn when Jamie doesn't return.
Composer: Darren Fung
Librettist: Dave Deveau

Unfamiliar
Unfamiliar
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Sweat
“Made in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Italy, China, India…the U.S.A.”  Who sews our clothes, who makes our shoes? Where do they live? How much are they paid? What would you dream of, sewing sleeves all day? Is life better in the village you left behind? Sweat is a kaleidoscope of characters and stories collected from factories around the world. Plunging...
Composer: Juliet Palmer
Librettist: Anna Chatterton

Sweat
COR
Excerpts
The Virgin Charlie – “Charlie, please listen…” (aria)

The Virgin Mary explains to Charlie why he has been chosen to carry the child of God.

Unfamiliar – Workshop Version

A night out celebrating midterms takes a turn when one student doesn't return.

The Virgin Charlie – “Step ever so softly now…” (aria)

Drag performer Charlie sings a number in the persona of the Virgin Mary.

The Virgin Charlie – “Little one I aim to help you” (aria)

Charlie sings gently to his child, the Messiah, who he has been chosen to bear.

The Virgin Charlie – Scene 1

In his dressing room, drag performer Charlie puts on his Virgin Mary costume, witnessed by the real Virgin Mary inside his mirror.

The Virgin Charlie – Scene 2

Charlie performs the first number of his act: Mother Mary in the nativity scene, with the worries of a new mother carrying the son of god.

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 Perfect Screw – Act 2, Scene 3

Amalia critiques the two screwdrivers and chooses the Robertson.

The Translator – “You can understand all you want” (aria)

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."

The Virgin Charlie – Scene 3

In his dressing room, Mother Mary explains to Charlie that he is pregnant with the son of god and offers him tips from her experience. Eventually, Charlie accepts that he will be a parent, and vows to protect the new messiah.

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 5

Qu Yuan wanders into the southern wilderness. As he travels, he composes a lament for himself and his lost position in court. In the present, Xiao Lian’s Father senses his end is near. Summoning up his strength, he joins with the spirit of Qu Yuan to tell the final chapter.

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.

Where You Live – 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.

Snow Globe – 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.

You and Meme – You and Meme

An awkward first date seems destined for failure, until the two bond over a mutual love of memes. The result? A hot, steamy connection over goats.

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 9

The combined spirits of Qu Yuan and Father return and ask the audience to release them from their servitude. That freedom granted, they ascend into the heavens triumphantly.

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 8

Xiao Lian performs the Qingming ceremony to honour the spirit of her departed father and mother. Love and fellowship combine in the running of a dragon boat race. Xiao Lian joins her friends and crosses into her future.

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 7

All hope is lost as the villagers return and collect Qu Yuan’s possessions. They take the scrolls containing his famous poetry to the Daoist temple, where they will be preserved forever. Xiao Lian returns to the present at the bedside of her dying father. With his encouragement and love, she finally recognizes the value of honourin...

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 1

A young Chinese/Canadian woman (Xiao Lian) faces a difficult choice: Honour her family’s traditional past or embrace a more modern future. Her father dwells on the memory of his deceased wife and honours her by performing the Qingming funeral tradition. Meanwhile, Xiao Lian’s two friends want her to get out and be more social. Her ...

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 2

Xiao Lian’s father bitterly reveals that he will die soon. Xiao Lian’s mother appears in spirit form and asks her to forgive her father. She speaks of their happiness together as a family in earlier times. As a child, Xiao Lian had a close connection with the Dragon Boat Festival, known as Duanwu and its hero, the ancient poet Qu Y...

Dragon’s Tale – Dragon’s Tale – Scene 3

Xiao Lian vows to look to the past and summons the great spirit of Qu Yuan. His spirit rises and assumes the form of Xiao Lian’s father.

Mousetrap – Mousetrap

In a video game, two mice are navigating through a house when suddenly they encounter a giant squirrel.

Opposites Attract – Scene 8

Two couples on a resort patio watch and comment on each other.

Opposites Attract – Scene 7

Erica and Keith have an awkward meeting in a cafe.

Opposites Attract – Scene 6

Erica is angry with Keith for having an anxiety attack as they host a party together.

Opposites Attract – Scene 5

We hear Keith teaching a child to play violin. Alex listens happily while Jackie wishes she was still at work.

Opposites Attract – Scene 4

Keith tells Erica he has taken a vow of chastity to become a priest, but Erica still tries to seduce him.

Opposites Attract – Scene 3

Jackie demands Alex say something, but Alex doesn't. Erica paces.

Opposites Attract – Scene 2

At a bar, Erica laments the men she chooses. Jackie looks for a rich man- and a rich man walks into the bar.

Opposites Attract – Scene 1

A couple argue: Keith is trying to interrupt Erica's rant.

Perfect Night – Perfect Night

A middle-aged couple's romantic night: the Man, reading poetry to the Woman, is distracted by the need to hunt down a mosquito in the room.

Love Redux – Paris’s Aria

Paris professes his love to Helen.

Love Redux – Love Redux

Two lovers discuss what love is.

Little Miss All Canadian – Little Miss All Canadian

Two mothers in the audience for a beauty pageant: while Eunice's daughter performs, Samantha reads an article about a murdered 11-year-old girl.

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.

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 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 – 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 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.

The Perfect Screw – Act 1, Scene 2: “Fates, I curse you” (aria)

Robertson in his shop, Amalia (present day) in her bathroom with her antique vanity, Phillips in his workshop, also injured by a screw driver slip.

The Theory of Everything – Theory of Everything

At a restaurant, a man flirts with a woman he thinks he recognizes. She is emotionally frank with him, but it turns out she isn't who he thinks she is.

The Perfect Screw – Act 3, Scene 4

All sing the praises of the Robertson screwdriver.

The Perfect Screw – Act 3, Scene 3

Amalia at home, mounting her vanity. She praises the Robertson's screwdriver as he observes from heaven.

The Perfect Screw – Act 2, Scene 2

Ford and Phillips celebrate while Robertson is chagrined and depressed by his failure to get the contract. Amalia finally finds the screwdriver aisle in the store.

The Perfect Screw – Act 1, Scene 3: “Wandering Endlessly” (aria)

Wandering in a big box store, Amalia dreams of what can be accomplished with hardware.

The Perfect Screw – Act 1, Scene 2

Robertson in his shop, Amalia (present day) in her bathroom with her antique vanity, Phillips in his workshop, also injured by a screw driver slip.

The Perfect Screw – “Double slit Phillips” (aria)

Amalia critiques the two screwdrivers and chooses the Robertson.

The Perfect Screw – “Wandering endlessly” (aria)

Amalia dreams of what can be accomplished with hardware.

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.

She Sees Her Lover – Scene 2

Waking early, Agnieska admires her new lover Sumana as she is sleeping. When Sumana wakes, the couple share an intimate conversation and eventually descend into fits of laughter.

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.

She Sees Her Lover – “Cinnamon Limbs” (aria)

Waking early, Agnieska admires her new lover Sumana as she is sleeping.

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

Agnieska questions why all of her previous relationships have failed.

She Sees Her Lover – “Oh, it’s beautiful” (aria)

Excited by the possibility of a night with a new lover, Sumana anxiously expresses her anticipation.

Rip – Rip

Peter is leaving Carla for another woman. Carla, sensing she will have a breakdown if he leaves, insists that he take their son to live with him.

Pursuit – Pursuit

A female barista is infatuated with a male customer and stalks him. He thinks he recognizes her from his neighbourhood.

COR

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