City Opera of Vancouver is a professional chamber opera company in Vancouver, Canada, founded in 2006. Its past productions include the Vancouver premiere of Nigredo Hotel by Ann-Marie MacDonald and Nic Gotham; commission and premiere of 'Missing', by librettist Marie Clements and composer Brian Current, given in co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria; the premiere of a 'new' Mozart chamber opera, 'The Lost Operas of Mozart'; the world premiere of Pauline , a chamber opera with an original libretto by Margaret Atwood; the commission and workshop premiere of 'Fallujah', with music by Tobin Stokes and libretto by Heather Raffo, and supported by the Annenberg Foundation of Los Angeles; the Canadian event premiere of Sumidagawa and Curlew River in double bill; and, the British Columbia premiere of Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis .
City Opera of Vancouver led efforts to restore Vancouver's Pantages Theatre as a home for the company as well as the Vancouver Cantonese Opera and Vancouver Moving Theatre. Built by Alexander Pantages in 1907, the building was considered to be the oldest remaining vaudeville theatre in Western Canada and was listed as one of Vancouver's heritage buildings. [1] [2] However, after Vancouver City Council voted to refuse restoration in 2011, the structure was demolished, and the company now uses other proscenium houses in Metro Vancouver as its performing venues.
City Opera is managed by an incorporated non-profit Board of Directors, headed by President Janet Lea. It is a member of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver, and a Community Partner of the Canadian Music Centre. Its staff includes Conductor and Artistic Director Dr Charles Barber, and General Manager Victoria Wilcott. Roger Parton serves as Staff Coache and accompanist, and David Kerr as Production Manager. The company's musical advisors were the late Sir Charles Mackerras, and remain Sean Bickerton, Robert Baker, and Colin Miles of the Canadian Music Centre. City Opera's honorary patron is Evgeny Kissin.
On 1 February 2009, City Opera gave the British Columbia premiere of Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis ( Der Kaiser von Atlantis ). It was attended and addressed by the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, the Honourable Steven Point. Subsequent remarks and analysis were provided by Dr Jaap Hamburger, a child of Auschwitz survivors. This chamber opera, professionally produced, was undertaken in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. It was written at Theresienstadt in 1944, and has been recorded by Decca. [3]
Opening 26 May 2010, City Opera (together with co-producers UBC Drama and Film, and Blackbird Theatre) gave the Canadian premiere of Sumidagawa together with the opera it inspired, Benjamin Britten's Curlew River . The first, drawn from the 15th-century Japanese noh play, starred Butoh artist Denise Fujiwara as Madwoman in a choreography by Natsu Nakajima. The second starred tenor Isaiah Bell as Madwoman, together with John Minágro, Sam Marcacinni, Joel Klein, and members of the Vancouver Cantata Singers. It was directed by John Wright of Blackbird Theatre, with scenography by Robert Gardiner of UBC Theatre and Film. [4]
On 21 February 2011, it was announced that City Opera Vancouver had received the largest opera commission grant in Canadian history. The Annenberg Foundation of Los Angeles, in collaboration with its Explore.org affiliate, awarded City Opera $250,000 US to create a chamber opera based on an original story about the war in Iraq. That story was inspired by the life and work of USMC Sergeant Christian Ellis. [5] The new opera, using the working title Fallujah, was created over a period of two years, with its workshops held in Vancouver. The fourth and final workshop set was given before an invited audience at the Frederic Wood Theatre on 13 May 2012. It is scored for nine singers and eleven players. The librettist is Iraqi-American Heather Raffo, of New York City, and the composer Canadian Tobin Stokes of Vancouver. On 2 July 2012, the work was officially launched via a long-form feature published by The Associated Press. At the same time, the Annenberg Foundation's explore.org affiliate began the online release of a series of filmed excerpts from the opera. On 9 July, it was announced that the foundation had granted City Opera Vancouver an additional $100,000 toward the making of these film materials. In March 2016, "Fallujah" received its US premiere, produced in Los Angeles by Long Beach Opera and, in November 2016, its New York premiere at New York City Opera. A KCET television documentary about the work received a Los Angeles Emmy in July 2017.
On 23 May 2014, the company presented the world premiere of Pauline , a chamber opera composed by Tobin Stokes to a libretto by Margaret Atwood. Starring dramatic mezzo-soprano Rose-Ellen Nichols, soprano Sarah Vardy, and tenor Adam Fisher, it sold out all five nights. Commissioned by City Opera of Vancouver, the opera is set in Vancouver in March 1913 during the final days in the life of the Canadian writer and performer Pauline Johnson. [6] At the invitation of the literary festival Québec en toutes lettres, the work was performed in concert version at Le Grand Theatre du Québec on 16 October 2015 featuring the original cast. [7]
The company produced its first comedy, its first Mozart, its first production at Christ Church Cathedral, the first appearance of Bramwell Tovey in an opera, and the premiere of a 'new' Mozart opera, on 27, 28 and 29 October 2016. Based on the scholarship of Raphaël De Vos, John Drummond, Jane Oakshott, and Richard Rastall, these were re-constructions of three operas Mozart started, but never finished. Two were Italian comedies ( Lo sposo deluso , and L'oca del Cairo ), and the third a German Singspiel ( Zaide ). They were conjoined in an original play by Maria Reva, and all founded on a concept by stage director Alan Corbishley: an impresario is sitting in a theatre, considering his next project when – to his amazement – the Gates of Limbo open. Out pour lost souls, spirits who have been waiting 200 years for Mozart to give them life. They beg for a chance to sing, but the impresario is unimpressed.
Missing , City Opera Vancouver's third commission, premiered on 3 November at the York Theatre in Vancouver. After a five-performance run, the opera moved Victoria, the home of Pacific Opera who co-commissioned the work, and ran until 26 November. A chamber opera composed by Brian Current to a libretto by Marie Clements, Missing explores how the murders and unexplained disappearances of at least 18 women along the Highway of Tears and over a thousand Canada-wide, most of them Indigenous, affected the people in their lives. [8]
The Vancouver premiere of this "bizarre operatic thriller" was given by City Opera Vancouver in September 2018, at The Cultch Historic Theatre. Nigredo Hotel was written by Canadians Nic Gotham and Ann-Marie MacDonald, and originally premiered in 1992. Directed by Alan Corbishley, and starring baritone Tyler Duncan and soprano Sarah Vardy, this production featured a giant head conceived and lit by John Webber. Barbara Clayden designed the costumes, and Malcolm Dow the sound. The four-player combo performed onstage throughout.
City Opera created the recording series, Canadian Classics, a survey of Canadian art music from c. 1800 to the present. It is designed in four genres: symphonic, chamber, instrumental, and vocal/choral/operatic repertoire. A national panel of a dozen advisors has recommended worthy Canadian repertoire. Naxos Records is the lead partner in the long-term endeavour. Violinist Mark Fewer, pianist Rena Sharon, the Vancouver International Song Institute, clarinetist François Houle, and other artists have agreed to join the Canadian Classics roster. The series manager is Raymond Bisha. Canadian Classics was officially launched at the opening season gala concert of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at that city's Orpheum Theatre on 24 September 2011. The first CD released in the new series, Fugitive Colours, featured the music of Jeffrey Ryan, with the VSO led by conductor Bramwell Tovey. The series plans the release of 6 to 8 new CDs every year.
City Opera has offered special events, concerts, and recitals at neighbourhood and service institutions. As of April 2019, there have been 131 such events.[ citation needed ] In October 2007 the company produced Canada's first Sing-Along Carmina Burana .[ citation needed ] In May 2009, City Opera produced the first in a series of New Canadian Chamber Opera workshops. This event, with twelve guest artists and recorded on DVD, workshopped the new chamber opera Sea Change, with music by Constantine Caravassilis of Toronto, and libretto by Nora Kelly. In November 2010 the company began a new opera recital series at Minoru Chapel in Richmond, B.C.
Der Schauspieldirektor, K. 486, is a comic singspiel by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, set to a German libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie, an Austrian Schauspieldirektor. Originally, it was written because of "the imperial command" of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II who had invited 80 guests to a private luncheon. It is regarded as "a parody on the vanity of singers", who argue over status and pay.
L'oca del Cairo is an incomplete Italian opera buffa in three acts, begun by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in July 1783 but abandoned in October. The complete libretto by Giambattista Varesco remains. Mozart composed seven of the ten numbers of the first act, plus some recitative, as well a sketch for a further aria; the extant music amounts to about 45 minutes.
Curlew River – A Parable for Church Performance is an English music drama, with music by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by William Plomer. The first of Britten's three 'Parables for Church Performance', the work is based on the Japanese noh play Sumidagawa by Kanze Jūrō (1395–1431), which Britten saw during a visit to Japan and the Far East in early 1956. Beyond the noh source dramatic material, Britten incorporated elements of noh treatment of theatrical time into this composition. Curlew River marked a departure in style for the remainder of the composer's creative life, paving the way for such works as Owen Wingrave, Death in Venice and the Third String Quartet.
Ignaz Jakob Holzbauer was an Austrian composer of symphonies, concertos, operas, and chamber music, and a member of the Mannheim school. His aesthetic style is in line with that of the Sturm und Drang "movement" of German art and literature.
Birmingham Opera Company is a professional opera company based in Birmingham, England, that specialises in innovative and avant-garde productions of the operatic repertoire, often in unusual venues.
Cheryl Ann Frances-Hoad is a British composer.
Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung is a one-act opera by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien. They collaborated on the work while interned in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) around 1943. The Nazis did not allow it to be performed there.
James Simon Rolfe is a Canadian composer of contemporary music.
Gotham Chamber Opera was a professional opera company located in New York City. The company was founded in 2000 under the name of the Henry Street Chamber Opera by Artistic Director Neal Goren and specialized in producing rarely performed chamber operas from the Baroque era to the present. In 2003, it changed its name to the Gotham Chamber Opera (GCO) after incorporating as an independent 501(c)(3) organization. Its Executive Director was Edward Barnes, who took over from David Bennett. It closed in 2015.
Timothy Long is a distinguished conductor, pianist, and composer of Muscogee and Choctaw descent who is Artistic and Music Director of Opera at Eastman School of Music, and an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. He is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee Nation and the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, and his mother is Choctaw.
OperaUpClose is a national touring opera company, led by Artistic Director Flora McIntosh, The company was founded in 2009 to produce its début production, Robin Norton-Hale's Olivier Award-winning adaptation of Puccini's La bohème at The Cock Tavern Theatre.
Tobin David Stokes is a Canadian composer and theatre creator, notable for his work in opera, theatre, choral music and television. His works have been performed by New York City Opera, Long Beach Opera, City Opera of Vancouver, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony. He also composes for television, including scores for documentaries by the BBC, ABC, and PBS.
Nigredo Hotel is a chamber opera in one act composed by Nic Gotham to a libretto by Ann-Marie MacDonald. It premiered on 13 May 1992 at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in a production by Tapestry New Opera Works who had commissioned the opera. The production won two Dora Awards and the work was nominated for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award. Subtitled "an operatic thriller", it is set in Room 7 of a run-down hotel which takes its name from the Jungian concept of Nigredo or "dark night of the soul". The story involves an encounter between the beautiful but crazed woman who runs the hotel and a brain surgeon forced to take refuge there after crashing his car.
Nicholas Ivor Gotham, known as Nic Gotham, was a Canadian jazz saxophonist and composer. His 1992 chamber opera, Nigredo Hotel, won two Dora Awards and was nominated for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.
As an old form of art in a new country, opera came to Canada relatively late. Although the first composition can be traced back to the seventeenth century it was not until 150 years later that Canadian opera caught up. Canadian opera became especially fashionable on Canada's 1967 centennial year. These celebrations set off an interest in operas among Canadian composers that was never seen before. This interest in opera, among composers and audience alike, is noticeable until today. However, most Canadian operatic works are not known internationally since many of them specifically concern Canadian themes and are small in scale.
Pauline is a chamber opera in two acts composed by Tobin Stokes to a libretto by Margaret Atwood. Commissioned by City Opera Vancouver, the opera is set in Vancouver in March 1913 during the final days in the life of the Canadian writer and performer Pauline Johnson. It premiered on 23 May 2014 at Vancouver's York Theatre.
New Chamber Opera is a professional opera company located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It specialises in the fields of chamber opera and music theatre, and produces rarely performed works from the Baroque era to the present. It is a member of the Opera and Music Theatre Forum. New Chamber Opera has received financial support from the Arts Council of Great Britain and The National Lottery.
The Chamber Opera Theater of New York was an American opera company located in New York City that operated from 1980 to 1986. The company mainly staged its works at the Marymount Manhattan Theater, but occasionally used other venues like the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Music critic Allan Kozinn stated in The New York Times that the company "built a reputation for intimately staged productions, mostly of works that are rarely heard in the larger houses; and earned both a steady following and enthusiastic reviews."
Michel Rostain (born 28 September 1942, in Mende, Lozère, is a French lyric and musical theater director as well as a writer.
Missing is a 2017 chamber opera with a libretto by Marie Clements and music by Brian Current. Co-commissioned by Pacific Opera Victoria and City Opera Vancouver, its topic is missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Further sources