CHINATOWN a new opera by Madeleine Thien, Alice Ping Yee Ho, and Paul Yee 13 – 17 September 2022 / The Vancouver Playhouse preserving the legacy / telling the story CHINATOWN is a story of family and neighbourhood, racism and resistance, history and ourselves. Set in 1961, it pivots to the building of the CPR, […]
Chinatown / 13 – 17 September 2022 / Vancouver Playhouse Join the 1000+ people who have already watched a preview trailer from our new opera Chinatown. It stars Erica Iris Huang as the Hoisan Singer, and will amaze. Tickets go on sale in July. Please join us, and bring someone you love. Concerts in 2022 Last year, […]
COVID and concerts… Musicians improvise. COVID demands improvisation. In 2021, we gave 33 PoPUpOpera concerts. These included two at Cottage Hospice, three in support of vax clinics at the Convention Centre, and four at Sun Yat-Sen Gardens. Below, two of the staff who came outside for our concert at the DTES Coastal Health Clinic. They […]
On October 20th, Canadian pianist Bruce (Xiaoyu) Liu performed the Chopin E minor Concerto at the 18th Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, to an astonished and delighted audience; shortly afterwards, he was declared the first Canadian ever to gain the prestigious First Prize – a tremendous win both for the young champion and […]
Marie Clement’s National Film Board documentary, The Road Forward, is a stirring combination of documentary and musical. Originating in the story of Canada’s first Indigenous newspaper, the Native Voice, the film weaves its many strands masterfully, giving vital testimony, in songs of hope and loss, to the expressive power of art and its ability to […]
In this breathtaking recital, livestreamed early in 2020, Canadian master pianist Marc-André Hamelin took us on a grand tour of repertoire from C.P.E. Bach to Debussy, dazzling with his astounding technique and perpetually questing imagination. We were left wanting more – and you will be, too.
Canadian songwriting legend Joni Mitchell has taught us all to better hear the quiet places. Seen here performing one of her most beloved songs for an entranced audience over fifty years ago, she speaks across the years, delighting and enchanting us today, just as yesterday.
Montreal organization La Gang à Rambrou has a mission: to support, through the performing arts, the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder. In December of 2019, sponsored by L’Opéra de Montréal, they premiered a show, Prends garde à toi!. Inspired by Bizet’s Carmen, with a strong anti-bullying message at its core, […]
Chutzpah, Marxes, & City Opera Chinatown Preview • Virtual Studio Missing in Alaska DTES PoPUpOpera • 14th AGM Chutzpah Festival. Marx Brothers. City Opera. None had more chutzpah than the Marx Brothers. In their 1935 MGM classic, A Night at the Opera, their absurd and subversive humour is in full bloom. Join City Opera as we open […]
Louis Lortie’s 2010 Juno-nominated recording of the Mendelssohn Piano Concertos, paired with that composer’s Reformation Symphony, was revelatory. Working with the OSQ in Québec City’s Salle Raoul-Jobin du Palais Montcalm – a more intimate hall – meant that Lortie already had an advantage in his quest to present the works with a lighter, fleeter sound, […]
In a potent mixture of Arabic, Spanish, and Sephardic tradition, Osvaldo Golijov’s 2004 song cycle Ayre draws on folk material of 15th century Andalusia, juxtaposing the texts’ wide expressive ambit with music full of unexpected detours and lashing eloquence. Here, in an arrangement by Roberto Occhipinti, the Gryphon Trio accompanies the legendary Lebanese-Canadian soprano Miriam […]
Says composer Jeffrey Ryan, “From the first moment I heard Jan Zwicky read from her work—richly layered poems that evoke nature, music, and profound distilled emotional moments—I hoped someday to have the chance to set her words to music.” Thanks to a commission from baritone/piano duo Tyler Duncan and Erika Switzer, the composer’s desire became […]
City Opera Vancouver is grateful and honoured to work, create and perform on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Xwməθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Sḵwxw̱ ú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl ̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
City Opera Vancouver
PO Box 46922 Stn D
Vancouver, BC, Canada
V6J 5M4