COR
Operas
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
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
Content warning: ableism, institutionalization, medical abuse, mental illness, sanism, sexual violence
10 Days in a Madhouse is a psychological opera that plays with notions of madness, inspired by the life of Nellie Bly, a trailblazing reporter who in 1887 faked madness in order to be admitted to Blackwell’s Asylum for the Insane and report ...
10 Days in a Madhouse is a psychological opera that plays with notions of madness, inspired by the life of Nellie Bly, a trailblazing reporter who in 1887 faked madness in order to be admitted to Blackwell’s Asylum for the Insane and report ...
Composer: Rene Orth
Librettist: Hannah Moscovitch
A young refugee panhandling on the street shares her true frustrations with and feelings towards the people who walk by, and occasionally give her small change or an online donation.
Composer: Prokhor Protasoff
Librettist: Sarah Henstra
Content warning: blood, gun violence, murder
Pedro Carmona, a young surgeon and son of a prominent Portuguese general, has escaped military service in Angola in 1968 by fleeing to Toronto with his upper-class wife Constanza. In order to survive, he has taken two jobs while he retrains to qualify as a doctor. The opera begins as Constanza—sick...
Pedro Carmona, a young surgeon and son of a prominent Portuguese general, has escaped military service in Angola in 1968 by fleeing to Toronto with his upper-class wife Constanza. In order to survive, he has taken two jobs while he retrains to qualify as a doctor. The opera begins as Constanza—sick...
Composer: James Rolfe
Librettist: Paul Bentley
This opera for children combines three fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers: Rapunzel, Little Red Cap, and Rumpelstiltskin, all woven together with some of the brothers' real-life history.
Composer: Dean Burry
Librettist: Dean Burry
Three young archaeologists lost in the Egyptian desert unravel the ancient myth of Isis in an effort to save their dying professor. Immersed in the epic struggle of a distant past, they discover the healing power of ancient wisdom.
Composer: Dean Burry
Librettist: Dean Burry
Proving Up, based on a story by Karen Russell, is an opera about the American Dream, told through the story of Nebrasken homesteaders in the 1870s. A family dreams of "proving up" and obtaining the deed to the land they've settled. They obsessively list the requirements of the Homestead Act: five years of harvest, a sod house dwelling, and perha...
Composer: Missy Mazzoli
Librettist: Royce Vavrek
COR
Excerpts
Ma Zegner, after doing all that’s required of her as stipulated by the Homestead Act, confronts the deaths of her children and rails against fate.
Purchase score here.
Purchase score here.
A deranged, dirt-covered man sings obsessively about the infinite promise of westward expansion. He speaks of his family and how they couldn’t make it, but that doesn’t seem to matter to him because he has fulfilled all the requirements of the Homestead Act. It’s possible that he came to see his family as an impediment to “proving up” and has ki...
Johannes Zegner sings of the “queer little trees” at a neighbor’s abandoned homestead. These trees are actually gravestones – crosses made of human bones.
Purchase score here.
Purchase score here.
Johannes Zegner, an alcoholic homesteader in drought-ridden 1870s Nebraska, tries to convince his son to make a dangerous journey that will help the family obtain the title to their land.
Purchase Score here.
Purchase Score here.
Miles saddles up his horse, Nore, and sets off on his own hero’s journey, determined to help his family “prove up” and attain the title to their land. His youthful optimism is counteracted by the inhospitable environment and the presence of mysterious supernatural elements.
Purchase score here.
Purchase score here.
Miles, an adolescent boy, reflects on the meaning of home as his family struggles and fails to build a homestead.
Purchase score here.
Purchase score here.
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.
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 he h...
Akakiy gets caught in rush hour and arrives late to find the head the department telling a sad story about encountering a homeless vagrant. Annoyed at being interrupted, the head of the department grills Akakiy on his little notebook of numbers. Akakiy explains he was using it to find ways to save money, which gives the head an idea. He’ll cut c...
Petrovich declares Akakiy’s coat is completely unfixable, but also that this is the chance for Akakiy to choose something new. Of course, he’ll have to pay.
Akakiy reveals his fascination with numbers, and the chorus announces they’ll help keep track of things. His landlady enters to bring him some cabbage soup- and something more, which he refuses.
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