Content warning: death

Trapped and encased by an avalanche, a man thinks only of his wife and finding a way out. Meanwhile, his wife is filled with suspicion. She thinks he’s having an affair, and his silence is the proof. Between the two, Death sings of the ways it brings about disaster.

Anna and Michael are successful young filmmakers from Alberta, married in life and in art. Their latest project is a movie about Martin Frobisher, Elizabethan pirate and explorer who made three perilous journeys to the Arctic in the 1570s.  History says that Frobisher failed in his attempt to find the fabled Northwest Passage, a quick route thro...

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 As festivities proceed, Filumena seems withdrawn, stunned by her new husband’s brusqueness.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. ...

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...

Content warning: death, infanticide, murder

A rumble of hooves. A family is fleeing, but the baby is slowing them down. The mother is forced to choose between her husband and her child. She chooses the husband and tries to get the baby to sleep before letting it go over a waterfall. At the last minute, the baby awakes, and the mother’s grief ...

Content warning: descriptions of enslavement, violence, sexual violence, death

A father will do anything to save his daughter. Of the Sea follows the story of Maduka, his daughter Binyelum, and fellow Africans thrown overboard during the Middle Passage who now populate mythical underwater kingdoms that span the ocean floor. Amidst the waves, ...

Content warning: sexual harassment, violence, fire

A northern land, the end of winter. A cold, dusky pre-dawn on the edge of a mountain; across the valley roars a mighty waterfall. In this valley there are two farms, one poor - owned by Runa, a single woman - and one rich, owned by Olaf, who wishes Runa for his bride.

Olaf proposes to Runa...

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.

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...

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...

Two miners are making their way into the heart of the mountain. There, they discover another world.

Content warning: death

Just below the summit of Mount Everest on the south summit ridge, Jackie and her partner Pasang are celebrating that she is the first woman to reach the summit without oxygen. Then something changes. Could it be Mother Everest punishing the climbers?

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...

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...

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...

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...

A historical reenactment: Prime Minister Stephen Harper sets off to the Arctic to claim dominion over a particular ice floe. Mr. Valernikov, a Russian seal, mistakes Harper for a full-figured female seal and propositions him. After sorting out the misunderstanding, Valernikov claims Harper is in Russian waters. Harper, chagrined, tries to make h...

"My real voice is my cry: OPEN YOUR EYES."

The Hydrophis is a Deep Sea Submergence Vehicle (DSV) that takes scientists on extreme-depth expeditions to research and explore. During a recent expedition, a rare jellyfish, Stygiomedus Gigantea, has been captured on film. It is rarely seen but thought to be one of the largest invertebrate predator...