Last week, the COC and the Art Gallery of Ontario co-hosted the AGO's monthly live twitter chat, #ArtHour. The topic was about muti-disciplinary approaches to art, and what happens when artists work outside the disciplines for which they're best known (for example, visual artist Zhang Huan's turn as an opera director in our Semele this spring).
The AGO preserved the questions and answers through Storify, and we hope you'll enjoy reading the discussion:
[View the story "June #ArtHour, with co-hosts the Canadian Opera Company" on Storify]
Posted by Cecily Carver / in Opera Appreciation / comments (0) / permalink
The COC is excited to announce the SYI Video Contest!
If you are 13 to 18 years of age, you have the chance to win a scholarship to attend the second week of Summer Youth Intensive (SYI) plus BMO Financial Group Student Dress Rehearsal tickets for the entire 2012/2013 season! The contest begins today, June 19, 2012 and ends on Sunday, July 1, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. Get your video up early so that you have more time to share it with friends!
Contest details are available here.
SYI is a two-week program that gives youth between the ages of 13 and 18 the unique opportunity to learn about the various aspects in opera from professional artists. Week one focuses on skills and techniques, allowing participants to develop as emerging artists. In the second week of the program, participants get an intimate look at creating and producing an opera by exploring libretto writing (writing the text of an opera), musical composition, and design. Participants will create an opera from the ground up and present it to family and friends at the end of the week.
More information regarding the Summer Youth Intensive is available here. Registration is available for both weeks for $350, or register for only Week One or Week Two for $200.
Posted by Alexandra Hong / in Opera Appreciation / comments (0) / permalink
What she's singing with us: Anna Christy will be singing the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. She plays a young, fragile woman hovering on the boundary between sanity and breakdown who is forced into a marriage with a man she does not love.
Where you might have seen her: She's sung Lucia at the English National Opera, in the same gothic David Alden production you'll be seeing on our stage. She's particularly noted for dazzling, high-flying coloratura roles like Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann (which she sung at the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago) and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos (which she sung at the Lyric Opera of Chicago).
Interviews and profiles: In this interview with Opera Brittania, she talks about the visceral effect of a beautifully-sung high note or gorgeous lyric phrase: "it’s not just something you hear, you also feel it, you sit up on the edge of your seat and it fills you with excitement. That for me is what’s special and unique about bel canto opera."
Sneak preview: The Opera Critic has an excellent photo gallery of the production of Lucia di Lammermoor we'll be presenting (where Anna Christy also sung the title role), as well as a collection of reviews.
Christy shows off her coloratura chops – and a hot pink costume – in this famous aria from Leonard Bernstein's Candide, "Glitter and be Gay." Robert Carsen's production directly invokes Marilyn Monroe's iconic performance of "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," and Christy gives the audience her best Marilyn (if Marilyn were an operatic soprano).
Posted by Cecily Carver / in Lucia di Lammermoor / comments (1) / permalink
Sara Fulgoni in the COC production of Bluebeard's Castle. Photo: Michael Cooper © 2001