Welcome to City Opera Vancouver

A  professional  chamber  opera  company

City Opera Mission Statement

Our goal is to bring chamber opera to a wide audience. Our repertoire spans four centuries, from chamber opera’s beginnings to contemporary and commissioned works, with a special interest in Canadian music and artists.

Opera is music drama: we present outstanding singers whose talent for tragedy and comedy will bring opera’s human stories to life. We will give singers new repertoire to explore, and create new opportunities to hear voices that are at their best in an intimate setting. Accessible and innovative, City Opera offers a unique musical experience to Metro Vancouver audiences.

City Opera Vancouver was organized in 2006 in tandem with efforts to restore the century old, 650-seat Pantages Theatre in the Downtown Eastside.

~~~~

Coming Next

City Opera Vancouver is committed to great productions of extant music, and the commissioning of new. Here’s what’s coming:

* We have commissioned Margaret Atwood and Christos Hatzis’ first opera, Pauline. It is set at Vancouver in March 1913, in  the last week in the life of the celebrated Canadian artist Pauline Johnson. This new work, with the kind assistance of the Canada Council and numerous private donors — and special thanks to the late Abraham Rogatnick — was created for the wonderful Judith Forst in its starring role.

 

* With a grant of $250,000 from the Los Angeles-based Annenberg Foundation / Explore, we are now workshopping a new chamber opera set at Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. This project, with the working title Fallujah, is based on a story by Christian Ellis (USMC, ret’d), with music by Tobin Stokes and libretto by Heather Raffo. The workshop director is John Wright. Fallujah is in two acts, with 9 singers onstage, 11 players in the pit, and will be finished by June 2012.

 

* We are now planning to give the world premiere of Brokeback Mountain in its chamber version in 2015. This work is well underway, with libretto by Annie Proulx and music by Charles Wuorinen. Many more details to come.