Parlando: The COC Blog

For Episode 13, the “Singers… UNITE!” edition, we welcome back Opera Canada editor, Wayne Gooding, together with three new guests: soprano Teiya Kasahara; Stephan Bonfield, popular opera presenter from Western Canada; as well as our fantastic COC education intern, Maddie Wilkinson! Gianmarco Segato, the COC’s Adult Programs Manager is your host.

Here are just some of the “opera hot” topics we covered this week:

• Singer protests in Germany – the “Art, but Fair” movement
• Stephan’s take on the 12/13 opera seasons at Calgary Opera and Edmonton Opera 
• The biggest operatic scandal of the spring: reactions to Deutsche Oper am Rhein’s “Nazi Tannhäuser” as it has infamously become known
• Opera is now the #1 attraction in event cinema – should we be applauding… or booing?

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On Sunday, May 26 we held our final Opera Connect event of the season: Salome: Two Perspectives. In Cinema 3 of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, an international audience listened to, and watched, a fascinating trans-Atlantic discussion about Richard Strauss’s opera Salome.

CBC Radio’s Brent Bambury was on hand to interview celebrated Canadian filmmaker and director Atom Egoyan, who staged the COC’s production of Salome this spring. Participating from Oslo via live video-link was Norwegian stage director Stefan Herheim, whose own take on the opera is being mounted by the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet from May 25 to June 23. The directors were joined by opera scholars Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby (University of Oslo) and David Levin (University of Chicago).

Here are some highlights from the 2 hour event:

• Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby’s confession of her love affair with Salome!
• Atom Egoyan’s reflection that in re-visiting his production for the third time, he’s a different person today than he was in 1996 when the staging was new.
• Stefan Herheim’s expert summation of his incredibly complex, wide-ranging influences: everything from Marilyn Monroe to Broadway to Sci-Fi.
• Two great directors sharing their ideas about Salome …because they could!

Missed the event? You can stream the video here:

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By Jennifer Pugsley, Media Relations Manager

The COC’s free noon-hour Les Adieux concert last week on May 23 was a bittersweet farewell to this season’s graduating artists of the Ensemble Studio Program: sopranos Mireille Asselin and Ambur Braid, mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb, bass-baritone Neil Craighead, tenor Christopher Enns and intern coaches, pianists Timothy Cheung and Jenna Douglas. We’re sad to see them go, but at the same time it’s going to be very exciting to watch what happens next in their careers as their stars continue to rise. Here’s a little primer of what the immediate future holds for these exceptional young artists.

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