La nuit, sur un quai au bord d'un lac. Des bougies ont été soigneusement disposées sur le côté du quai pour éclairer un chemin. Adèle se tient au bout d'un quai, tenant une urne qui contient les cendres de son mari. Elle enlève le couvercle de l'urne et se met à répandre les cendres sur l'eau.
The interior of a thumping, vibrating gay nightclub with obligatory disco ball and coloured strobe lights. A middle-aged gentleman is sitting at the bar, back to the audience, lost in his thoughts and seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. The truth is he isn't used to going to clubs, or hasn't since th...
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...
In a shack surrounded by barren fields, a dying father and his son drink their last bowl of water. They need oil for the machines that will keep them alive and purify their water. A truck rolls past with a huge barrel of oil in the back. The son flags it down, only to discover the person driving the truck is a monstrous c...
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.
Avertissement de contenu : génocide, colonialisme, mort, violence armée, mort d'un enfant, violence contre les animaux
« Rien n’est aussi réconfortant que la captivité ».
Beth, a young diplomat, and her husband Andrew are stationed at a Canadian Embassy in Africa. They are troubled by news of political upheaval, forced migrations and indiscriminate slaughter. They ...
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.
Avertissement de contenu : maladie, mort, colonisation
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...
Avertissement de contenu : violence sexuelle, incarcération, abus religieux, homophobie, thérapie de conversion
Through several vignettes, Forbidden examines the idea of rules and taboos. Do they protect people, or do they control them? Are they of any value, or do they simply exploit the powerless?
A young girl, punished with repetition of religious tex...
C'est le « gotcha day » – terme utilisé pour la première rencontre entre parents biologiques et enfants adoptés - et Adam est sur le point de rencontrer sa mère biologique, Eileen. Les retrouvailles tournent mal et ils commencent à se demander qui s’est réellement fait avoir.
Singer-songwriter Josie works on a song in her shared Portland apartment, a girl-at-the-guitar on the cusp of leaving for New York City and a long-anticipated big break. Though her luggage is packed and she’s almost out the door, her boyfriend interjects with objections—he’ll miss her. Josie’s reassurances, dreams of him visiting her on the East...
Avertissement de contenu : langage explicite, violence sexuelle, contenu sexuel, alcool, consommation d'alcool pendant un black-out
Hook Up tells the story of three friends who have made it to university, each with their own unique desires and inner conflicts. Mindy is just excited to keep her high school friend circle together and finally get some privacy with her boyfriend. T...
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...
Avertissement de contenu : maladie en phase terminale
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...
Simone lutte contre une dépression post-partum non diagnostiquée et est en train de perdre. Elle décide de partir, de faire ses valises, et son mari Marc essaie de lui demander des explications. Alors que leur fils dort dans la chambre voisine, elle part, et Marc n'essaie pas de l'arrêter.
Avertissement de contenu : mort, meurtre, mention d’abus sexuels d’enfants
Lisa a douze ans et fréquente une école de filles où elle est la meilleure amie d’Annie et de Caroline. Ensemble, elles forment un groupe appelé les Teacher’s Angels, composé de filles qui obtiennent des notes parfaites à leurs examens.
When Lisa scores a nine out of ten on a math test, she is kicke...
Un récit moderne de la célèbre histoire d'amour entre Hélène et Paris. Dans une chambre d'hôtel et après un certain temps dans leur relation, l'ardeur d'Hélène et de Paris semble fluctuer.
Un jeune enfant se réveille seul sur la plage. Il cherche sa mère. Le bruit des vagues étouffe les voix des gens qui s’inquiètent des nouveaux arrivants et de l’effet qu’ils auront sur leur société. D’autres voix prennent le relais : d’autres enfants disent que sa place est avec eux maintenant.
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...
Le vieux Merk sent son âge. Il va bientôt mourir. Il essaie de préparer Pauline, sa fille adulte handicapée mentale, à l'inévitable. De quoi, le cas échéant, se souviendra-t-elle de lui ? De la maison qu'ils partagent ? De leur vie commune ? Se souviendra-t-elle de l'amour de son père ? Se souviendra-t-elle de l'étreinte de la maison ? Est-ce qu'elle comprendra...
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 ...
Juste avant d’atteindre le sommet du Mont Everest, sur la crête sud du sommet, Jackie et son partenaire Pasang célèbrent le fait qu’elle est la première femme à atteindre le sommet sans oxygène. Puis quelque chose change. Serait-ce Mère Everest qui punit les alpinistes ?
Avertissement de contenu : meurtre, violence, maladie mentale
The story begins with a distressed Paul being interviewed about his missing parents. It switches to two weeks earlier with Harold and Julia in the airport after sending him off. Julia worries that something is wrong with their son. Harold is sure that he'll be back to his old self after the tr...
Partition in 1947 drives Naila’s family to the new country of Pakistan while her best friend Lolo must remain in India. In a child’s-eye view of this world event, the significant concerns for these two nine-year-olds are custody of a tin box with important valuables (“marbles and flowers and keys and rings”), and the care and feeding of a pet ra...
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...
Noor Over Afghan is set in Afghanistan, and tells the story of two young Afghani sisters, Noor and Jaan. But Jaan is dying, and begs Noor to take her place in the marriage and have her child. By the time the groom finds out, Jaan will have died. They swap places, Noor disguised by the veil.
Avertissement de contenu : captivité, traite des personnes, travail du sexe, violence sexuelle, violence, mort
The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. is a fictional dramatic opera built on extensive factual research. Set in Ukraine in 1997, it is the story of Oksana, a young woman lured into the world of sex trafficking by a Russian recruiter, Konstantin, who ...
In a country torn by war, a woman works as a bell-ringer. There used to be many more in the tower, but one by one the bells were taken: metal for the war-machine. A man climbs the tower after hearing her play the one remaining bell. What seems at first a meeting of two lovers turns dark as the man tries to claim the bell. They need the metal for...
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...
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.
Une femme est examinée par différents médecins. Faiblement, elle chante ce qu'elle était. Un médecin lui met du rouge à lèvres. Elle ne veut pas disparaître.
Rocking Horse Winner primarily explores the relationship between Paul, a young adult, and his emotionally distant mother, Ava.
Paul is driven to bridge the relationship with his mother, but Ava sees Paul’s attempts to engage as fussy and considers motherhood an obligation. She remains distant, trapped in a m...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Agnieska et Sumana partagent une soirée ensemble après s'être rencontrées dans un bar. La nuit, aussi intime soit-elle, a des significations très différentes pour chaque femme. Tandis que Sumana déborde de l'excitation d'une première chance amoureuse, Agnieska est hantée par les souvenirs de son passé amoureux.
The next morning, Agnieska wakes early and admires her new lover Sumana as sh...
Une famille nucléaire à la dérive dans l’ère atomique. Depuis que Prométhée a volé le feu aux dieux, l’humanité joue avec la dangereuse beauté de la science. Dans cette fable caricaturée, un père protège sa famille à tout prix.
Thomas and Claire fall madly in love at a fundraising party. Thomas has decided to “find a wife, get a life,” whi...
Une femme et son fils adulte quittent leur maison. Il est l'heure de se coucher, mais le garçon insiste pour qu'ils jouent une dernière fois à son jeu préféré. A contrecœur, la mère acquiesce. Ils inventent des moyens de tuer une femme anonyme.
When the game is over, the boy asks what would happen if they killed the woman “for real,” if it would make his father love them ag...
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.
Avertissement de contenu : antisémitisme, génocide, Holocauste, infanticide, meurtre, nazis, violence sexuelle, travail du sexe, violence, guerre
Still the Night tells the fictional story of two Jewish Polish cousins, both named Bryna, who have escaped from the Nazis and joined the Partisans. Along the way they are hung on crosses, raped, almost shot and forced to tu...
Avertissement de contenu : violence armée, mort, fusillade de masse
Dans la Salle bleue de l'Assemblée nationale du Québec, Denis Lortie tue et blesse des personnes avec une mitraillette pour protester contre la souveraineté du Québec.
Avertissement de contenu: abus sexuel d'un enfant, inceste, meutre, mort
Judith et Daniel, frère et sœur séparés depuis longtemps, sont réunis par le décès de leur père. Après tout ce temps passé, il semblerait que Judith n’ait pas changé du tout. Daniel tue sa sœur alors qu'elle veut reprendre leur relation sexuelle d'enfance.
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.
Avertissement de contenu : mort, meurtre, violence
This opera explores the interior realm of a woman’s response to a crisis. The Laurels plays with audience assumptions and expectations; it is well into the piece before we realize the stranger is not the person he appears to be. While it is important that Laurel’s understanding of the Stranger is consi...
As the waves crash against the shore, two religious brothers go for a walk. The conversation is dominated by the older brother, and heavy with implication. The younger one announces his wish to leave the order, and is asked if his father’s death has something to do with this decision. The younger brother is furious; he could have spoken to his f...
Basé sur le témoignage de la peintre du 17ème siècle Artemisia Gentileschi sur l'instructeur qui l'a violée, Agostino Tassi. On nous donne un aperçu du viol, de la confusion et de l'oppression des femmes.
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.
Avertissment de contenu: mort, emprisonnement, interrogatoire, 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 -...
Avertissement de contenu : harcèlement sexuel, violence, incendie
Une terre du nord, la fin de l'hiver. Une avant-aube froide et sombre au bord d’une montagne ; à travers la vallée rugit une puissante cascade. Dans cette vallée, il y a deux fermes, une pauvre - appartenant à Runa, une femme célibataire - et une riche, appartenant à Olaf, qui souhaite que Runa soit son épouse.
Deux soeurs sont dehors, près de la rivière, en train de parler. Une sœur décrit le garçon qu'elle aime. L'autre sœur admet qu'elle est enceinte de lui. La jalousie est une émotion mortelle.
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...
Une méditation sur la discrimination et le dégoût dont les athlètes intersexués font l'objet dans l'esprit de leurs pairs. Une femme gagne une médaille d'or, mais ses efforts pour y parvenir ne signifient rien pour l'organisation et les autres athlètes. Elle est disqualifiée et honteuse.
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.
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.
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, ...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 longing and fear. The flight ...
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 ...
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...
"Drawn from an Irish saga of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster in the druidic era, the story tells of the doom of the ruthless Conochar, King of Ullah (Ulster), and the tragic death of Naisi and his brothers, the Princes of Ullah, as a result of the rivalry between Conochar and Naisi for the love of the foundling Deirdre."
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, ...
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 ...
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.
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
A multicultural retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.
"The jealous king Leontes’ wife, Hermione, is accused of committing adultery with his best friend, Polixenes, and Hermione is jailed. Soon after, Leontes and Hermione’s young son dies before she gives birth to a daughter Perdita who is smuggled out of the country after Hermione’s s...
Unwilling to marry a woman, a man fashions a lover from his own left side. He’s enraptured by her perfect beauty – a mirror of his own – until he discovers that this new woman longs for freedom and wildly desires another.
“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...
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...
A not-so-pure Maiden is sent to marry a not-so-manly Lord, who is advised by a not-so-celibate Priest, and protected by a not-so-insensitive Thug in an England ruled by a King who won’t get out of bed. Based on the award winning play by Moira Buffini.
Naomi’s Road, which details a young Japanese-Canadian girl’s experiences as her family is interned during World War II, is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the power of hope, cultural understanding and compassion. This compelling and emotional story is taken from one of our country’s most painful and complex social periods, a time that for ...
Consisting of 18 scenes, the opera covers 16 years in the life of Manitoba school teacher and Métis hero Louis Riel, from the Red River Rebellion (1869–70) to the North-West Rebellion (1884–85), and his trial and hanging in Regina in 1885. It also dramatizes the political scheming in Ottawa that resulted from Riel’s actions, as well as several ...
Une confrontation nocturne entre une mère et son fils. Le fils l'accuse d'avoir eu une liaison avec son oncle et d'avoir tué son père. Il a trouvé un médecin à Chinatown qui pourra prouver que son père a été empoisonné. La mère prétend qu'elle l'a fait pour mettre fin à sa douleur.
The interior of a thumping, vibrating gay nightclub. A middle-aged gentleman sips his drink and turns to watch the dancers on the dance floor. Under the disco ball a young man, stripped to the waist, is dancing with abandon. The young man approaches and establishes immediate physical contact, which is uncomfortable. The older man needs more pers...
Eurydice se porte volontaire pour tester une nouvelle technologie d'IA qui promet de capturer vos souvenirs les plus marquants et d'organiser votre au-delà virtuel parfait. Les techniciens du laboratoire distribuent des masques pour les yeux au public.
Eurydice C se souvient de différentes versions de son amant dans un Arioso, une Bourrée et une Passacaglia. Elle remet en question ce qui aurait pu être, avant que Calliope ne la rappelle au présent.
Eurydice C voit son Elysée avec Orphée dans le jardin – elle n'est pas sûre de le vouloir là, mais cela s'efface avant qu'elle puisse se décider. Le CEO la ramène à la réalité et clôt la présentation.