Pacific Opera Victoria is a professional Canadian opera company in Victoria, British Columbia. It designs, builds, and stages original opera productions at the Royal Theatre with the Victoria Symphony. The company also presents smaller scale works and community programming at the Baumann Centre. [1]
Pacific Opera Victoria emerged out of the Vancouver Island Opera Society, which staged its first production, The Marriage of Figaro , in November 1976. In 1979, the company adopted a new name, the Pacific Opera Association, and mounted its first production as a professional opera company – The Merry Wives of Windsor by Carl Otto Nicolai. In 1987 the company was renamed Pacific Opera Victoria. [2]
By 1990 Pacific Opera Victoria had moved from two annual productions to three. After expanding to four mainstage productions each season from 2009 to 2012, it reverted to three productions in the Royal Theatre, complemented by chamber operas and concerts in other venues, including the Baumann Centre. [3]
In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, Pacific Opera increased its online programming and began to produce and record chamber and concert works for digital distribution, including films of The Italian Lesson and Bon Appétit! [4] by Lee Hoiby and The Garden of Alice [5] by Elizabeth Raum.
Pacific Opera’s founding Artistic Director, Timothy Vernon, C.M., LL.D (Hon), DMus (Hon), [6] led the company for 43 years until his retirement in 2023. [7] He conducted most of the company’s productions and curated an approach to repertoire that encompassed classic favourites as well as lesser known works, [8] ranging from Baroque to contemporary operas, plus new commissions, co-productions, and collaborations with other companies. [3]
As of 2024, Pacific Opera’s leadership [9] includes CEO Ian Rye, [10] Artistic Director Brenna Corner, [11] and Principal Conductor Giuseppe Pietraroia. [12]
Pacific Opera’s productions were originally staged in the 772-seat McPherson Playhouse. By the 1990s audiences had grown to the point that a larger venue was required, and the company began to move its productions to the 1400-seat Royal Theatre, which is now the main venue for Pacific Opera’s mainstage opera productions. [13]
The opening of the Baumann Centre [14] in 2015 provided Pacific Opera with its own venue for small-scale chamber productions as well as opera rehearsals, concerts, artist training, and community programming.
The Baumann Centre’s main space is Wingate Studio, a 2,500 sq ft performance space. The studio’s ceiling features a 1000 sq ft cedar installation that functions as an acoustic canopy. The installation, called Mind, Body, and Spirit, [15] was created and donated by Kwagiulth and Coast Salish artist Carey Newman (Hayalthkin’geme), a former opera singer. [16] The Baumann Centre also houses Pacific Opera’s administration and box office and is used by other community groups, including the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra and the Victoria Children’s Choir. [1]
Pacific Opera Victoria is notable for constructing its own sets and costumes and retaining its own production facility. In its early days the company had to construct its own sets because the small stage of the McPherson Playhouse meant that renting sets from other companies was not practicable. [17]
As it grew, the company continued to build its own productions and also began to rent its productions to other companies. [18] Sets, costumes, and props for each production are created by a team of local theatre professionals in the company’s 10,000 sq ft warehouse space, The Opera Shop. [1]
Pacific Opera Victoria has staged more than a dozen Canadian and world premières, including four commissioned or co-commissioned operas. [3]
Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. The city of Victoria is the seventh most densely populated city in Canada with 4,406 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,410/sq mi).
La bohème is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.
Lilies is a play written by Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, which premiered in 1987.
Canada's contemporary theatre reflects a rich diversity of regional and cultural identities. Since the late 1960s, there has been a concerted effort to develop the voice of the 'Canadian playwright', which is reflected in the nationally focused programming of many of the country's theatres. Within this 'Canadian voice' are a plurality of perspectives - that of the First Nations, new immigrants, French Canadians, sexual minorities, etc. - and a multitude of theatre companies have been created to specifically service and support these voices.
Helijet International is a helicopter airline and charter service based in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Its scheduled passenger helicopter airline services operates flights from heliports at Vancouver International Airport (YVR), downtown Vancouver, downtown Nanaimo and downtown Victoria. It also operates a charter division serving the film, television, aerial tour, industrial and general helicopter and corporate jet charter markets, as well as helicopter and jet air ambulance services. Its head office and main hangar is Vancouver International Airport (YVR).
Meridian Hall is a performing arts venue in Toronto, Ontario, and it is the country's largest soft-seat theatre. The facility was constructed for the City of Toronto municipal government and is currently managed by TO Live, an arms-length agency and registered charity created by the city. Located at 1 Front Street East, the venue opened as the O'Keefe Centre on October 1, 1960. From 1996 to 2007, the building was known as the Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts. From 2007 to 2019, it was known as the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. On September 15, 2019, it was re-branded as Meridian Hall.
The Rape of Lucretia is an opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, written for Kathleen Ferrier, who performed the title role. Ronald Duncan based his English libretto on André Obey's play Le Viol de Lucrèce.
Mary Zimmerman is an American theatre and opera director and playwright from Nebraska. She is an ensemble member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and also serves as the Jaharis Family Foundation Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.
Dejan Miladinović, was a Serbian opera director. He was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in a family of opera artists. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Theatre Direction from the Academy for Theatre in Belgrade and received the title Master of Theatrical Arts from the same Academy. He died in Belgrade on 3 August 2017.
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.
Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
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.
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.
Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian author, playwright, filmmaker, and theatre director.
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.
Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) (1961) is a Canadian playwright, director, actor, and educator based out of Saskatchewan, Canada. She was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She has contributed significantly to the creation and performance of Indigenous theatre in Canada.
Joel Ivany is a Canadian stage director and the founder and first artistic director of Against the Grain Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. In November 2021, he was named artistic director of Edmonton Opera.
La Princesse de Trébizonde is an opéra bouffe with music by Jacques Offenbach and text by Étienne Tréfeu and Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter. The work was first given in two acts at the Theater Baden-Baden on 31 July 1869 and subsequently presented in a revised three-act version at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 7 December of the same year.
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.
Kurt Max Runte is a Canadian actor, based in Vancouver, British Columbia.