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...

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 ...

Avertissement de contenu : mort, infanticide, meurtre

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 ...

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...

An estranged father and daughter re-establish their relationship after he has suffered a stroke and can no longer speak. He tries to convey to her that he loves her and is sorry for the harm he caused her. She is still too hurt from their past to see what he is trying to say. Instead, she passes the time by reading a book. He finds another way o...

Avertissement de contenu : meurtre, mort, cadavre

Le compositeur Gareth Williams et le librettiste David James Brock ont créé un opéra-promenade in situ inspiré du plus ancien pub de Glasgow, Sloans. Le public se déplace dans ce pub vieux de 250 ans et découvre une série de scènes racontant des histoires d’amour, de perte, de vengeance et de pardon.

Avertissement de contenu : erreur de genre, mentions d'agression sexuelle et de violence implicite

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...

Avertissement de contenu : décès, 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...

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 ...

La société technologique fictive RUR, fondée par le couple Helena et Dom, domine le marché des logiciels d'IA et alimente les androïdes désormais omniprésents au service de leurs propriétaires humains.

As Dom becomes more focused on growing R.U.R’s profits, Helena’s creative research leads to an unexpected technological breakthrough that pits the couples’ visions square...

Avertissement de contenu: mort, travail du sexe

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...

Avertissement de contenu : descriptions d'esclavage, de violence, de violence sexuelle, de mort

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, ...

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...

Avertissement de contenu: violence coloniale, colonialisme, mort, maladie

1828, baie Notre Dame, sur la côte nord-est de Terre-Neuve. William Cormack, explorateur et anthropologue, a récemment créé le Beothuk Institute : un organisme destiné à prévenir l'extinction des premiers habitants de l'île. Après avoir appris qu'un Béothuk...

Un homme d'affaires attend un tramway, le dos tourné à une femme sans abri. Les deux hommes se jugent en silence. L'homme est agacé de voir quelqu'un qui veut quelque chose pour rien et la femme se sent jugée pour une situation sur laquelle elle n'a aucun contrôle. Les deux se reconnaissent enfin, et nous découvrons leur expérience commune.

Une danseuse aveugle et l’ombre de sa vue perdue partagent une dernière danse.

Chloe et Eddie sont au lit lorsqu'ils sont interrompus par Matt, l'ex-mari de Chloe, un athlète. Matt demande où se trouve leur fille Ava, et reproche à Chloe d'avoir abandonné Ava pour un homme anonyme.

Avertissement de contenu : feu, mort

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...

Une sœur et un frère fouillent dans les affaires de leur mère récemment décédée et trouvent une vieille boule à neige de leur jeunesse. Tous deux veulent absolument la garder. Une dispute amère s’ensuit et la sœur laisse échapper par inadvertance un secret très douloureux.

Tard dans la nuit, Allie se fait hanter par sa meilleure amie décédée, Karen.

La scène est divisée en deux parties : une dispute tendue entre une mère et son enfant et un aria tendre pour la mère alors qu'elle révèle enfin à son fils une réalité douloureuse quant à l'absence prolongée de son père.

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...

Avertissement de contenu : mort, guerre

Pendant une guerre, deux femmes se parlent au téléphone. Elles paniquent en regardant l'aîné de la ville défiler dans la rue, télégramme en main. Le message porte toujours une nouvelle horrible : la mort d'un fils. Les deux femmes espèrent presque à contrecœur qu'une autre famille recevra le télégramme. N'importe qui, sauf elles.

En vérité, le télégra...

Charlie et Robert se tiennent au-dessus des toilettes, examinant le caca de Charlie et réfléchissant à leurs êtres chers disparus.

Avertissement de contenu : maladie, décès

Charlotte works to prepare a Thanksgiving meal while her sister Margaret, who is ill, rests. When Margaret drops some china, the sisters are forced to confront the fact that Margaret's illness is likely terminal, and they will soon be separated. They sing a heartfelt duet, vowing to say hello to a new closeness...

Avertissement de contenu : racisme, colonialisme, violence, mort

En Chine dans les années 1880, Lai Gwan, une jeune femme appauvrie, est à l'aube d'un énorme changement. Sa mère mourante la presse de respecter et d'honorer la mémoire de son père, Manli, dont la disparition au Nouveau Monde les hante tous les deux.

Armed with the hope that she will find her father aliv...

Content warning: war, death, gun violence

A young mother with her infant daughter is threatened by an armed military officer escorting prisoners. She wants to wait for her husband, but the officer tells her he is probably already dead. The woman sings a lament to her baby, then pleads with the officer to take her baby and raise her as his own.

Avertissement de contenu: maladie, perte de mémoire

Une mère et son fils soupent ensemble. La mère souffre d'Alzheimer, et son fils a de plus en plus de mal à faire face à la situation.

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 ...

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...

Glimmer attempts to address the urgent matters and seemingly irreconcilable coexisting realities at the core of queer existence through multiple frames and lenses. Taking full advantage of an all-queer cast of performers, with whom the piece was developed organically through a series of discussions and workshops, this work intertwines the autobi...

Love Songs is an intimate story about love in five “thematic” movements: pure love, tender love, children’s love, mature love and love for a person who has been lost. The lyrics are sung in five languages: English, French, Serbian, Irish and Latin. There are interludes between the movements in which the phrase “I Love You” is delivered in 100 di...

Un père surprend son fils au lit avec sa petite amie, Eva. Un combat à trois éclate, le fils professant son amour pour Eva et vice versa, tandis que le père prévient qu'ils vont bientôt se trahir l'un l'autre. Ils quittent, et le père regrette sa perte.

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 is back in the Alzheimer...

Avertissement de contenu : mort, meurtre, suicide, xénophobie

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...

Elvet est frappé de chagrin par la mort de son nouveau-né, qui n’a pas encore de nom.

Avertissement de contenu : maladie, décès, VIH/SIDA

Dark Star Requiem is a poetic chronicle of the 25 years (as of 2010) of HIV-AIDS, reflecting the many faces of the disease and those affected by the pandemic.