One of our most buoyant and eclectic composers, John Korsrud has been commissioned and performed by the American Composers’ Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, CBC Radio Orchestra, Albany Symphony New Music Festival, Vancouver New Music, Turning Point Ensemble, The Standing Wave Ensemble, and such Dutch ensembles as LOOS, Combustion Chamber, and De Ereprijs. Here’s his […]
A Q&A at TIFF in September regarding Marie’s latest film: “An epic account of the life of Cree matriarch Aline Spears that spans generations, Marie Clements’ Bones of Crows is a powerful indictment of the abuse of Indigenous peoples as well as a stirring story of resilience and resistance.” Together with Pacific Opera Victoria, we […]
Often described as the most liveable city in North America, Vancouver has long suffered from tedious tower design. Everything seems to look like a vertical coffin covered in green glass, and utterly uninspired. But in recent years, when looking up, we see a dense urban core finally gaining distinction and character. Here’s a look at […]
Simple, elegant, moving on the wind. Marie-Claude Montplaisir, piano
Just a year ago, this extraordinary Canadian ensemble gathered at Banff to remind all who would listen of the eloquent and intimate power of chamber music.
The late mezzo Rose-Ellen Nichols died in January this year, age 41. In her brief life she had astonished and amused, lifted and roared, created and committed. She was vivid. For City Opera, she created three roles: Pauline Johnson in Atwood and Stokes’ PAULINE (2014). Distinguished Lady in THE LOST OPERAS OF MOZART (2016). Native […]
New opera is alive and very well, thanks to the enterprise and imagination of Tapestry Opera in Toronto, and Opera on the Avalon in Newfoundland. In 2019, they gave the world premiere of a powerful new piece set in 1829, “on a haunting journey through the last days of a Beothuk woman who had lost […]
Three years ago this month, the Canadian Opera Company gave the world premiere of a new opera, HADRIAN, starring Thomas Hampson and our own Isaiah Bell. Here is its trailer, and foretelling.
One of the breakout stars of City Opera’s new CHINATOWN was bass Matthew Li in the role of Xon Pon. He dazzled audiences and critics, for very good reason. A master of new music, he is also apprentice to the great canon. Here he is, just one year ago in an excerpt from Don Giovanni. […]
Our great friend, the late conductor Bramwell Tovey, had a long and deep ambition: to conduct at the famous BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. He achieved this in the summer of 2019, just weeks after concluding a very difficult course of radiation meant to treat his cancer, Ewing’s Sarcoma. With his usual conviction […]
Who says hockey isn’t musical? Our national anthem has, since Roger Doucet and the Montréal Canadiens and his first performance at the Forum on 13 October 1970, changed. Originally, it ended by falling to the sub-tonic and rising by half-step to the tonic and its traditional conclusion. So great was Doucet’s rendition, and so […]
The composer at the piano, with members of Symphony Nova Scotia, in a work of fusion, sounding semi-improvised and rhapsodic, direct and endlessly imaginative.
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