On October 2, we launched the Festival of Contemporary. It runs to October 31. We have introduced rare, archival, unique and most moving film of 21st C Canadian artists active in song, drama and theatre, composition and collaboration, fusion and fantasy, opera and dance and cinema. And more. We have offered the work and imagination […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mgw8pV4iPM We think of the great Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt as a master of Bach, and rightly so. Her clarity, her command of architecture, style, and substance make it so. Bach has made her name, and she has honoured his. But listen to this: her Ravel. It is remarkable in its colours and contours, its […]
Charles Ives never knew the work of Jacob Intilé, but would surely have been inspired. Today we switch gears, and move from collage in music to its precursor in art and design. This fascinating clip is from a CBC Arts online series, Paper Cuts. Hint: wear gloves.
Appearing today at the FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY: Bella Ciao! a remarkable film by Carolyn Combs, set in East Van, on Commercial Drive, in perilous times. Starring Carmen Aguirre, Tony Nardi, Alexandra Lainfiesta, Marie Clements, and Taran Kootenhayoo. It has an earned intimacy, an honest clarity, that refreshes and compels.
Here, the wondrous Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman with her friends Jennifer Tung, George Koller and Felix Deak, being musical, themselves, and dealing with current circumstances. The real fun starts about 5:50.
Bumblebees are aeronautically impossible. But they fly anyway. And Bach can be played on the double bass, as the great Joel Quarrington illustrates in a new video made just weeks ago. Joel plays a 1630 Giovanni Paolo Maggini double bass, an instrument normally tuned in fourths. He follows the unusual practice of tuning in fifths, […]
Bumblebees are aeronautically impossible. But they fly anyway. And Bach can be played on the double bass, as the great Joel Quarrington illustrates in a new video made just weeks ago. Joel plays a 1630 Giovanni Paolo Maggini double bass, an instrument normally tuned in fourths. He follows the unusual practice of tuning in fifths, […]
He is one of our wittiest, slyest, most honest and influential of writers and musicians. A one-man tour de force, Tomson Highway is famed as a novelist and playwright, pianist and composer, librettist and speaker. Himself Cree, and holder of degrees in music and English, he has written two operas to date: Pimooteewin (2008), and […]
A sly and witty comic opera, Burnt Toast is a masterpiece of Canadian humour. This episode stars Barbara Hannigan and Mark McKinney, with music by Alexina Louie to a libretto by Dan Redican, and sly nods to Tristan. Fully assembled, Burnt Toast is a set of eight comic operas, each depicting a different stage of […]
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside incorporates remarkable and unexpected talent. Many years ago, it also incorporated a Black district, Hogan’s Alley. It was razed in the name of ‘urban renewal’ and obliterated by a viaduct. Even so, in 2011 a renaissance began in poetry and song, identity and memory — here led by two of its residents, […]
The new chamber opera Missing premiered in 2017, and has received 22 performances since, including a first tour. Directed by Peter Hinton, conducted by Timothy Long, with music by Brian Current and libretto by Marie Clements, it is a tale based on terrible fact: the murders of more than 1,200 Indigenous women and girls in […]
One of the most exciting achievements in Canadian theatre was that of Kidd Pivot and the Electric Company Theatre, five years ago. They collaborated on Betroffenheit, and gave the world a shattering and vivid examination of tragedy, grief, and inexplicable loss. Since its Canadian premiere, it has been staged in Seattle, Portland, Dallas, Dublin, London, Perth, […]
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
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