Content warning: infant death, suicidal thoughts

In the summer of 2007, CBC investigators Mary Wiens and John Nicol brought an enthralled listening audience the tale of a mummified baby found in the floorboards of an East Toronto home.  Further investigation to uncover the origins of the child, now known as “Baby Kintyre” revealed a cast of c...

Content warning: terrorism, racism

An adaptation of Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film of the same name, Adoration follows Simon, an orphaned high school student. As part of a dramatic writing exercise, Simon’s teacher encourages him to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an imaginary event perpetrated by his parents. When his stor...

Adapted from and further inspired by the short story Mermaid in the Jar by Sheila Heti, this triptych of short chamber operas (Mermaid in the Jar, Prairie Dogs, and Fine and Dandy) takes place entirely within an eleven-year-old girl’s bedroom as she overhears her parents’ volatile conversations. Over the course of a few days, a mermaid she recei...

Content warning: homophobia, sex, sexual harassment, strong language

Strip Mall is part of a serial dramatic work... with librettist Royce Vavrek called Strangers in Many Ways, which is comprised of short operatic episodes such as this. Other episodes include A Song for Wade (This is not that song), written for Alarm Will Sound, and Bluetooth...

Based on the 1970s television movie and novelization by Gail Rock, The House Without a Christmas Tree follows the story of 10-year-old Addie, whose one wish for Christmas is for her father to finally allow a Christmas tree in their family home.

In December of 1946, Addie is thrilled to win the class Christmas tree in a contest, but is disappo...

Content warning: sex

Based on Carlos Reygada’s Acclaimed 2007 film Stellet Licht. Set within a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, the opera follows a pious husband and father, Johan, who’s strongly held spiritual obligation to his marriage, family, and community is put to the test when he falls in love with another woman from his faith.

Content warning: cannibalism, gun violence, starvation

Based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, Dog Days tells a post-apocalyptic tale of a typical American family. The country has fallen into chaos as an undefined war rages on U.S. soil. Roads are closed except for military use. There is no work. Progressively, the schools close. Food runs ou...

Avertissement : ce contenu contient des scènes de maltraitance, de mort, d’incendie et de violence.

Fanny et Alexandre est un grand opéra en deux actes, adapté du film d'Ingmar Bergman par Mikael Karlsson et Royce Vavrek, avec le soutien de la succession Bergman et la consultation artistique de Cinematograph AB (Ingmar Bergman Jr. et Claes du Rietz).

ACTE 1

Noël chez les Ekdahl. Hélène...

Content warning: apocalypse, death, depression, suicide

At her wedding reception, the beautiful but depressed Justine spots a red star in the sky. It is the planet Melancholia, which is on a collision course with Earth. The bridegroom Michael tries to calm her down with his love, her mother Gaby poisons her with her darkness, and her sister C...

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...

Inspired by the Italian fairy tale Giricoccola by Italo Calvino, Angela and Her Sisters tells the story of a sweet girl who is wickedly teased by her stepsisters.  She eventually is recused by the Moon, but finds her new home no better than the first.  Finally her search leads her to a lonely princess who becomes a true friend.

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 ...

The Bells of Baddeck follows the great inventor Alexander Graham Bell from his fledging start, through his inspiring teaching, his experiments, and his love for his wife Mabel, to their settling in Baddeck, Nova Scotia. They meet the Scots of Cape Breton Island and fall in love with their music and Gaelic charm!















Bu...

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...

Avertissement : contenu explicite (exécution, inceste, meurtre, agression sexuelle, esclavage, torture, violence)

Beatrice Chancy est un drame historique inspiré de l'histoire vraie de la famille Cenci à Rome, vers 1600. L'histoire se déroule dans une plantation de Nouvelle-Écosse, aux derniers jours de l'esclavage, vers 1800, et met en scène l'héroïne, Béatrice, fille métisse de...

Acte I
En 1980, dans les montagnes de Colombie-Britannique, Irène et son fils Jimmy vident le chalet qu'Irène affectionne tant, en prévision de son déménagement en ville pour qu'elle reçoive de meilleurs soins. Jimmy découvre une vieille toupie. Irène lui confie qu'elle a appartenu à Lillian Alling, une femme mystérieuse disparue dans la nature sauvage il y a plus de cinquante ans….

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...

Acte I, Scène 1
Automne 1915


Dans le parc d'une petite ville du col de Crowsnest, famille et amis célèbrent le mariage de Filumena Costanzo et Charlie Lassandro. Au fil des festivités, Filumena semble distante, déconcertée par la brusquerie de son nouvel époux. Charlie lui a donné un nouveau prénom “ canadien ”, Florence, qu'elle refuse catégoriquement.

Une réinterprétation multiculturelle du Conte d'hiver de Shakespeare.

"Hermione, l'épouse jalouse du roi Léontes, est accusée d'adultère avec son meilleur ami, Polixène, et emprisonnée. Peu après, leur jeune fils meurt avant la naissance de leur fille Perdita, qui est exfiltrée du pays après la mort d'Hermione.

Content warning: child neglect, death, migration, strong language, trauma, war

When her mother dies, an adult Sophia confronts half-forgotten traumas from her childhood growing up under the shadow of war. A young Sophia and her sister Emma attempted to escape their grim circumstances – the adult world of violence, death and displacement – thr...