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...

Seeking his wife Eurydice in the underworld, Orpheus implores Hades to let him bring her back to life. Hades gives in reluctantly, on condition that Orpheus not look back at Eurydice while she is being led back to earth. The reunited couple begin their journey back. Hades praises the peacefulness of the underworld over the turbulence of life on ...

Pirate Song raconte l'histoire vraie de deux femmes pirates du XVIIIe siècle, Mary Read, Anglaise, et Ann Bonny, Irlandaise. Pour prendre la mer, elles se déguisèrent en hommes et mêlèrent affaires et plaisir en devenant amantes en 1720 à bord d'un navire pirate commandé par Calico Jack Rackham. Attaquées par la couronne britannique plus tard cette année-là en Jamaïque….

Content warning: abduction, sexual assault, violence

Europa was a Phoenician princess who was seduced and borne off to Crete by Zeus. There she bore him three sons, who became the founding fathers of Europe. It's telling that European civilization, which has been a mixed blessing for the rest of the world, was founded upon what could be seen ...

The contemporary youth opera Pandora’s Locker is inspired by the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box, in which a young woman’s curiosity leads to the unleashing of all the world’s evils. It is a simple, archetypal myth, which reflects our own hunt for knowledge and the potential for disaster upon its discovery. This search for information - keys to the ...

Il Giudizio di Pigmalione (The Judgment of Pygmalion) was inspired by the myth of the sculpture Pygmalion as told in Ovid’s Metamorphosis:

“He made, with marvellous art, an ivory statue, As white as snow, and gave it greater beauty Than any girl could have, and fell in love with his own workmanship.”

This setting of the myth (the libretto ...

This children's opera adapts Tolkien's beloved classic The Hobbit.

Inertia is a story about elderly isolation and perceptions of death and a meditation on stagnation, dying, love, and friendship. It tells the story of two elderly neighbours, Evelyn and Addison, who live next door to each other for decades but have little interaction with each other or anyone. When Death comes to collect the two, he instead deci...

Trois jeunes archéologues, perdus dans le désert égyptien, se penchent sur le mythe antique d'Isis pour tenter de sauver leur professeur mourant. Plongés au cœur d'une lutte épique d'un passé lointain, ils découvrent le pouvoir guérisseur de la sagesse ancestrale.

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: abuse, death, incarceration, sex trafficking, sex work

Angel's Bone follows the plight of two angels whose nostalgia for earthly delights has, mysteriously, brought them back to our world. Battered and bruised from their long journey, they are found by a husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. X. E.

Facing a financial crisis, the c...

Content warning: attempted suicide, death, drowning, natural disaster

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was an explorer, nomad, journalist, novelist, passionate romantic, Sufi, and one of the most unique and unusual women of her era. At age twenty, after the death of her mother, brother and father, she left her life in Switzerland for a nomadic ...

Content warning: death, injury, paralysis, sexual violence, suicide attempt, violence

Based on the film by Lars von Trier, Breaking the Waves tells the story of Bess McNeill, a religious young woman with a deep love for her husband Jan, a handsome oil rig worker in 1970's Scotland. When Jan becomes paralyzed in an off-shore accident, Bess’s m...

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...

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...

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...

JFK explores the final twelve hours of the 35th president’s life and time spent in Fort Worth, Texas. But far from being a musical biography, JFK is a portrait of a precipice. The fleeting moments of hope before a cosmic page turned, optimism faltered, and America was forced into a new and uncertain era. The opera is a portrayal of the man as we...

Content warning: ableism including ableist slurs, abuse (familial/sibling) alcoholism, cannibalism, disordered eating, drug use (marijuana), fatphobia, gun violence, sexual harassment of a minor, starvation, strong language

Based on a short story by Judy Budnitz, Dog Days tells a post-apocalyptic tale of a typical American family. The country...

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: colonization, death

Inspired by interviews with Houston–based NASA astronauts, scientists, and engineers, O Columbia traces a history of dreamers and explorers–from Sir Walter Raleigh journeying to the New World, to a Houston teenager experiencing communion, and later, heartbreak, with a Columbia space shuttle astronaut, to f...

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...

Content warning: attempted suicide, death, PTSD, war

Based on the real-life experiences of US Marine Christian Ellis, Fallujah follows the story of fictional USMC Lance Corporal Philip Houston. After a failed suicide attempt, Philip experiences flashbacks to the horrors of the Iraq war while waiting out a 72-hour holding period in a veterans ...

Content warning: death, sexual harassment and violence, suicide, violence
Set on Pelee Island, Lake Erie, Canada near the end of the 18th century, The Vinedressers is based on true stories and an Indigenous myth from Pelee Island. Taking place at the Vin Villa vineyard, home, and wine cellar, as well as the Pelee Island lighthouse amongst the m...

Pauline explores the life and final days of write and performer E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913).  Johnson was of Kanien'keháka (Mohawk) and English heritage, and wrote and performed poetry that explored her biracial identity.

"In the libretto for Pauline, Margaret Atwood reconstructs the scene of Pauline’s final days in her adopted home, Vanco...

In this short and intense scene, Anna begins singing quietly about her lover Yuri. Her husband Alexei enters, jarring her, but she recovers and offers him food. Passion fruit, like when they first met. Alexei is unmoved and pushes the dish away. He’s taken the children away somewhere safe. Anna is shocked and devastated, crying out for her child...

Content warning: mentions of death, murder of a child

Teenagers Léa and Ivy explore a struggling travelling carnival while waiting to meet up with Léa's overworked mother Manon. In the run-down haunted house the girls stumble upon the ghost of Marcel, a young boy who met a violent end in the basement of his school. Marcel asks to the girls to...

A dialogue for three voices and a messenger, serving as a prequel to Shakespeare’s King Lear.  Sisters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia discuss their plans and hopes as they wait to be summoned for an audience with their ageing father.

The Weaving Maiden is based on the Chinese folk tale of "The Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden."

The Cowherd, a kind and hardworking peasant whose only friend is a water buffalo, falls in love with and then marries a Weaving Maiden who is really a celestial princess. They start a family and live happily together until her royal family comes to f...