Canadian-Indigenous opera Shanawdithit unfolds the story of a woman who was the last of the Beothuk – the indigenous peoples of the island now known as Newfoundland. Supported by a powerfully evocative libretto and score (by Yvette Nolan and Dean Burry, respectively), the extraordinary Marion Newman sang the title role in a performance the Globe […]
Against the Grain Theatre’s Messiah/Complex premiered online in December of 2021 to critical praise. Incorporating newly commissioned translations into Dene, Inuktitut, Southern Tutchone, Arabic and French, Handel’s perennial favorite – accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – featured singers from every territory and province in Canada. Here, set against vibrant Vancouver locales, tenor Spencer Britten […]
Boldly reimagined and performed by librettist-tenor-translator Isaiah Bell, with Roger Parton at the piano, Poulenc’s classic La Voix Humaine takes on new relevance for our physically-distanced times in this City Opera production, filmed at The Cultch’s storied Historic Theatre.
Please join us in wishing national treasure Gurdeep Pandher the happiest of birthdays. Gurdeep continues to bring joy to us all, carrying Banghra into delightful fusion with many of the traditional dances found across Canada. Behind it all: a man of incredible hope and deep faith in the message he carries – acceptance and understanding […]
This program of songs by Métis composer Ian Cusson (who also curated it) and Diné composer Raven Chacon – sung by Métis mezzo-soprano Rebecca Cuddy – was presented in July as part of Soundstreams’s Encounters series, where the music of some of today’s most fascinating creators is performed and discussed virtually. The program is dedicated […]
Improvising remotely, members of Hard Rubber Orchestra recorded the various sections making up cellist/composer Peggy Lee’s Dissolver, with Melissa Hubert’s energetic animation illuminating the resulting track. “Each step of the process revealed qualities of the music that I hadn’t anticipated… Melissa’s beautiful video was the final revelation and I couldn’t be more happy with her […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So9_pPS1rzo Identity, memory, and culture are centred in these three commissioned dance works, filmed earlier in the year as part of the National Ballet of Canada’s Spotlight Series. Set to a diverse spectrum of music – from Max Richter to Bach to David Bontemps – the pieces showcase the immense talents of their creators, and […]
Canadian composer and educator Roydon Tse’s work has been performed in sixteen countries, to tremendous acclaim. One of CBC Music’s Top “30 under 30” Canadian Classical Musicians, Dr. Tse has recently been named Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s RBC NextGen composer for the 2021/22 season. In “Radiant Light”, commissioned in 2017 by the Shanghai Philharmonic, the sheng […]
Canadian folk singer Petunia revisits a strange episode in history: the 1518 Strasbourg “dancing plague”. Affecting as many as four hundred young women over its course, the outbreak remains unexplained to this day – and that’s where Petunia and his band of expert players step in. It’s old-timey musical yarnspinning at its finest, but with […]
Originally commissioned by arx duo for prepared vibraphone, Alyssa Weinberg’s “Tabletalk” wowed us all in this sparkling March 2021 performance by Vancouver percussion duo Infamy Too!, presented by our friends at Music on Main. Go hear what all the talk is about – you’ll be glad you did!
Leading Canadian choreographer and director Crystal Pite received a Sir Laurence Olivier Award for her astonishing single-act piece “Flight Pattern”, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2017. Set to the first part of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony no. 3, Pite’s enormous ensemble, in anguished, seething movement, portrays the European migrant crisis. “The story of […]
Filming at the Orpheum just prior to lockdown, the VSO – led by Maestro Otto Tausk – delivered a knockout Beethoven 5, in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. E.T.A. Hoffmann, writing a year after its 1809 premiere, called the Fifth an “indescribably profound, magnificent symphony”, and posterity has never faulted him for the judgement. […]
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.
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