Browsing: Vocal

Chamberfest is, above all else, a celebration of form. With this festival, Artistic Director Carissa Klopoushak aims to highlight both the best of what chamber music is, and what it can be. “Chamberfest uses a very broad definition of chamber music,” she says. “It’s purposefully done, and it’s carefully done, too.” Chamberfest aims to create a milieu where chamber music builds connections among its performers, and between artist and audience. The smallness of the presenting ensembles and the intimacy of the venues shrink the distance between stage and house, allowing listeners to feel truly absorbed by the music. “We use…

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In 2007, internationally-acclaimed operatic tenor Richard Margison and celebrated violist and stage director Valerie Kuinka started Highlands Opera Theatre. At the time, according to Kuinka, they noticed a significant drop-off point for aspiring professional Canadian opera singers because they were unable to connect to the next level. Their first season consisted of a two-week training program with seven singers, presenting Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and von Suppé’s Die schöne Galathée. Over the years, thanks to funding from the Vanda Treiser Initiative, the Azrieli Foundation, the Government of Canada, and the Ontario Charitable Gaming Association, the program has grown greatly, encompassing both…

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What might the end of our human days look like? What might happen if we reach a solar minimum? These are questions posed by composer Cecilia Livingston and librettist Duncan McFarlane’s Parḗlios, a work that sits somewhere between opera, oratorio, dance, and installation. The piece, which premieres on June 12 as part of Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival, “imagines a population in an imaginary Britain that is losing the sun.” Will those people end up staring at a semicircular screen, a ceiling of mirrors, artificial mist, and aluminum frames to experience an illusion of the sun? This possibility was suggested…

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This summer, Festival de Lanaudière is set to deliver yet another of its signature musical moments. Alongside Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Orchestre Métropolitain, opera lovers can anticipate the Canadian debut of the exceptional soprano Saioa Hernández, who will portray the titular Lady in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheatre in Joliette, Que. Originally from Madrid, Hernández has spent most of her career in Europe. Her appearance at Lanaudière may be a local debut, but it represents a reunion of sorts with her stage husband, Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis who will sing Macbeth. Indeed, the soprano and the baritone had previously joined…

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Ottawa’s summer cultural calendar will once again come alive with the 16th season of the Music and Beyond festival, which runs from July 4–17. Now firmly established as one of North America’s most distinctive classical music and multidisciplinary arts festivals, Music and Beyond continues to redefine what a classical music festival can be by linking music with a wide range of other art forms and cultural disciplines. Presented in venues throughout the Ottawa area, the 2026 edition offers a wide-ranging and ambitious program. As always, audiences can expect internationally celebrated artists, innovative thematic programming, and performances that move fluidly between…

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A new Toronto indie collective unveiled its first production on May 22. Benevolence Opera Project presented an adapted version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the east end Redwood Theatre as a benefit for The Redwood, a shelter for women and children fleeing abuse. Chatty recitativo was replaced by a spoken narrative that recast the dramma giocoso as a chess game. The truncation affected character relationships, ironically making them more difficult to decipher. It was left to the singers and their formidable vocal gifts to ignite the drama, which they did with considerable success and in some cases, much more than…

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Review of Constance: A Confession, a new multi-author opera created by the “Writers’ Room” of the Experiments in Opera company; viewed May 18, 2026, with further performances having run through May 22. What would happen if you assembled four writer-and-composer teams, challenged them to write an episode each about the life of a charismatic charlatan, gave them a deadline, and fired the starting pistol? You might get a comic-operatic morality tale such as Constance: A Confession, which just concluded its run at HERE Arts Center in New York City’s Soho district, the latest product to emerge from the cunningly conceived…

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Review of VANESSA, by Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti; presented by Heartbeat Opera at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center, New York City; viewed May 16, 2026; further performances are scheduled through May 31, 2026. Heartbeat Opera, the innovative and protean company that’s been mounting striking productions since 2014, has crafted a beautifully performed and arrestingly staged condensation of Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1958 English-language opera, Vanessa. By turns passionate, spooky, enigmatic and thrilling, the gothic-inflected story centers on the title character, a middle-aged aristocrat living in a provincial enclave “in a northern country,” who,…

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From May 22-31, Nova Scotia’s choir Capella Regalis will go on tour for the first time outside of the Maritimes, in collaboration with festivals, cathedrals, and churches in Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, and Toronto.  Capella Regalis—founded and directed by Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal winner Nick Halley—is steeped in the European tradition of church choir training. Halley, born in New York City, brings a background as a percussionist, keyboardist, composer, and conductor in jazz and classical performance. As well as being artistic director of Capella Regalis Choirs, Halley’s work with cathedral-style choirs extends to the Cathedral Church of All Saints,…

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On May 17, Matthias Maute led Ensemble ArtChoral in a concert of a cappella Beatles tunes at Montreal’s Maison symphonique. Maute shared anecdotes about the Fab Four throughout, enhancing the show’s warm and genial atmosphere. What you missed Besides the diverse poetry of the lyrics, Beatles songs are filled with complex instrumental arrangements, inspired melodies, and rich harmonies. For the most part, the arrangements did justice to the Fab Four, drawing out the wealth of musical richness already present. Using the sopranos to act as violins in Eleanor Rigby was fresh and thoughtful, as was the alternating staccato and legato…

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