Volume 8 Issue 7 - April 2003

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BVILT ON GOOD BEGINNINGS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28 .
emerged as one of the leading opera centres in North America.
Through April and May you can, by my count, take in almost 20
different works mounted by locally based companies. While the
Canadian Opera Company is our largest company, it is emphatically
not the only game in town. There's also Opera Mississauga, Opera
Ontario (though not Toronto-based, it is part of the local scene),
baroque specialists Opera Atelier, Opera in Concert and Toronto
Operetta Theatre, Soundstreams Canada, Tapestry New Opera
Works, The Canadian Children's Opera Chorus, Autumn Leaf
Performance and the newly minted Amphion Opera. All of these
have something on stage over the next two months, though the roster
. ofTorontq-based companies is actually longer. There's Queen of
Puddings Music Theatre, for example, as well as the University of
Toronto's Opera Division, which mounted the first complete
performance of John Beckwith's Taptoo! early iµ March, and the
opera unit of the Royal Conservatory of Music's Glenn Gould School,
which mounted a version of Mozart's Die 'Zauberjlote at the end of
the month.
The latest productions of the city's two opera schools, encompassing
classical European and contemporary Canadian works, are also
symptomatic of the vitality of the local scene. There's plenty of
traditional opera in upcoming performances, of course, but there's
also a great deal that's new and innovative. Soundstreams Canada,
for example, has organized a mini-festival of operas, aimed at young
people, that come from as far away as Finland. Tapestry New Opera
Works is mounting Facing South, a new opera about the explorer
Robert E. Peary, as part of the Harbourfront World Stage series.
Autumn Leaf is mounting Kafka. in Love in the University of
Toronto's Hart House swimming pool, also as part of the World
Stage program. Amphion Opera harks back to ancient Greece when
it presents the premiere of a newly composed chamber opera,
Cassandra.
This brief survey only covers works that are formally dubbed opera,
presented by companies that largely consider themselves opera
companies. If you broaden the scope to other forms of music theatre,
the argument that Toronto is an especially vibrant centre just
becomes stronger. Why not, for example, Canadian Stage
Company's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (a
written-for-Broadway musical that increasingly figures in operacompany
repertoire, including, this season, Lyric Opera of Chicago)?
Or the music theatre of another World Stage presentation, Broomhill
Opera and Wilton's Music Hall, which will meld the vocal traditions
of South Africa in a retelling of both the Chester Miracle Plays and
Bizet's Carmen. Come to think of it, why not even add recitals; such
as that of tenor Michael Schade at Roy Thomson Hall or the
Aldeburgh Connection series, to the realm of music theatre? Under
the sway of singers who are equally at home in opera, after all, the
concert stage can be just as dramatic as the opera house. ·
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30 www.thewholenote.cqm April 1 - May 7 2003