Coming this fall, Tapestry will serve up Tapestry Briefs: Tasting Shorts from September 13 – 16, 2018. A perennial favorite, this edition of Briefs pairs new opera shorts with a flight of drinks and tapas.
Crossing into the world of theatre in partnership with Theatre Passe Muraille, Tapestry presents the world premiere of Hook Up, by composer Chris Thornborrow and librettist Julie Tepperman. Three friends hit university — no parents, new friends, new rules, and a new normal. Hook Up raises questions of consent, shame, and power in the lives of young adults navigating uncharted waters. Freedom is complicated. Starring Alicia Ault, Nathan Carroll, and Jeff Lillico under the Direction and Dramaturgy of Richard Greenblatt and the Musical Direction of Marketa Ornova at Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace from Jan 29 – Feb 10, 2019.
Tapestry’s annual Songbook will enjoy its 9th edition in March featuring a cast of emerging opera professionals in tandem with leading stars, following three days of masterclasses in New Opera 101. Songbook works are selected from Tapestry’s growing canon of beautiful, tragic, and absurd Canadian operas.
The highlight of Tapestry’s 2018-19 Season is Shanawdithit, a radical new opera project commissioned in partnership with Opera on the Avalon, starring Marion Newman in the title role. Opening in May 2019 in Toronto before touring to St. John’s, the work is centred on the story of Shanawdithit (1801-1829), the last recorded surviving member of the Beothuk Nation in Newfoundland, and the extinction and erasure of her people. In 1829, Shawnadithit is taken in by William Cormack, a self-styled explorer who is fascinated by Shanawdithit’s people. In the last months of her life, she created a series of coded drawings that speak of the loneliness of survival and lost history. Collaboratively interpreted by Indigenous artists from across Canada, including Aria Evans, Michelle Olson, Jerry Evans, and Lori Blondeau, led by librettist Yvette Nolan and composer and Newfoundlander Dean Burry, these drawings asks us to acknowledge the ways that stories are told, who gets to tell them, and how they are heard. Shanawdithit is a work unlike anything in opera.
ABOUT TAPESTRY OPERA
Tapestry Opera is a Toronto-based company that creates and produces opera from the heart of here and now. For 39 years, the company has presented award-winning works by preeminent artists, brought to life by some of the most talented and versatile performers of the contemporary stage. As Canada’s leader in opera development, Tapestry Opera is committed to cultivating new creators and performers to serve the evolution of the art form and build a lasting Canadian repertoire.
