Ever since American-Canadian soprano Midori Marsh won First Prize and the Audience Choice Award at the 2019 Canadian Opera Company Centre Stage competition, her career has been on a remarkable upward trajectory. After graduating from the COC Ensemble Studio in 2023, she has twice made her way to the semifinals of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition. This year, she was one of two Canadians who competed in the semifinals of that prestigious Met competition.
Marsh is drawn to a wide range of repertoire, and her two upcoming performances in Toronto represent her diverse artistic styles and interests. In April, she presents a song program for the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto entitled Sister, Sister. Marsh explains that sisterhood is not defined just by blood. She was inspired to explore the theme in terms of her relationship with her own sister as well as other women in her life. The curated collection looks at both the relationship between sisters and women’s friendships through songs sung in English, Spanish, French and Italian, including one composed by a nun, another form of sisterhood.
Midori Marsh. Photo: Sam Gaetz
The program also features pieces written by pairs of sister composers—Pauline Viardot and Maria Malibran; Nadia and Lili Boulanger—exploring how their music influenced each other. As Marsh explains, the program includes emotionally difficult material that speaks about the pain of losing a sister to illness or violence. This portion of the recital includes a selection from Songs for Murdered Sisters composed by Jake Heggie, set to a searing text by Margaret Atwood. Marsh hopes this inclusion will spotlight an important social issue and honour the victims of domestic violence, as well as missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
Following her WMCT recital, Marsh will sing the role of Sydney in Tapestry Opera’s May production of Sanctuary Song, the opera brainchild of composer Abigail Richardson-Schulte and librettist Marjorie Chan. The contemporary, accessible score has been written to appeal to all ages. Based on a true story, the opera explores the journey from captivity to freedom of the elephant, Sydney. Marsh says of the opera: “It is about the natural world, and the way that we affect it as human beings—our capacity for destruction and cruelty for the living beings around us, especially animals that are really intelligent and social, like elephants.
“Sydney … was exploited, forced to perform and had to lose parts of herself to survive.” The character makes Marsh think of her own identity as a performing artist and she hopes the audience can see themselves in Sydney.
Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, Sister, Sister., April 3. www.wmct.on.ca
Tapestry Opera, Sanctuary Song, May 9-25. www.tapestryopera.com
