Our winter season ended on Sunday with the last performance of Otello. And the hockey game, of course. As a service to the loyal patrons who had actually come to the opera rather than staying at home to watch the game we projected the results on our SURTITLES screen. Another COC premiere!

Both Carmen and Otello have been extremely successful thanks to great singer personalities like Rinat Shaham, Anita Rachvelishvili, Jessica Muirhead, Bryan Hymel, Clifton Forbis and Scott Hendricks. Over 40,000 patrons attended our 21 performances. The cheering at the end of each performance is a great reward for the artists and for everybody at the COC. And it inspires us to work even harder to produce opera of the highest standards for you.

There were also a few illustrious visitors who attended our performances: Jonathan Friend and Lenore Rosenberg from the Met; Anthony Freud, the General Director of Houston Grand Opera; Greg Henkel, the Artistic Administrator of San Francisco Opera; and my collegue Bob McPhee from Calgary Opera. Some of them visited for the first time and all of them were impressed with the quality of our performances and our wonderful opera house. I am proud and happy about the increasing interest the national and international opera community takes in our work.

Also, on Sunday we held the final workshop of Creative Connections, an initiative of Opera.ca that enabled three Canadian composers, Andrew Paul Macdonald, Allan Gilliland and Aaron Gervais, to develop new pieces for Pacific Opera Victoria, Calgary Opera and Tapestry new opera works. The COC was happy to host the workshop in our Jackman Rehearsal Studio and to provide the services of our orchestra and the young singers of our Ensemble Studio. We spent a very interesting Sunday evening listening to excerpts of these operas in three very different and distinct musical languages. It will be very interesting to follow the development of each of them until their completion.

Finally, last Friday at the Four Seasons Centre we hosted one of our most important fundraisers, or simply the best party in town, Operanation 6 Habanera. Despite the Olympics we were able to draw a fantastic crowd—and we raised an impressive amount for our Education and Outreach programs.

As of tomorrow, I will be off for a week to take my family to Turks & Caicos. I have vowed to switch off my BlackBerry, but do expect to hear from me upon my return to the office on Thursday next week.