• Tomorrow at 1 p.m. on CBC Radio 2's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, you can listen to our spring 2010 production of Mozart's Idomeneo, featuring Paul Groves and Isabel Bayrakdarian. If you have other plans for that afternoon, not to worry: you can listen to the full broadcast anytime online at this link, courtesy of CBC Radio's Concerts on Demand.

• Our website redesign by digital design firm Delvinia has won two awards this week! Adam Froman, who has worked closely with us on the redesign, talks about the process in this month's issue of Vue magazine (here's a PDF of the full article).

• John Terauds of the Toronto Star spent some time watching the action at Summer Opera Camp: 

  Opera Camp ended with a bang last Friday at the company’s Jackman Theatre, filled to capacity with energized children and their proud guardians and friends.

  The kids sang and danced. They had created their own sets inspired by Semele and Iphigénie en Tauride, two operas on the company’s upcoming season schedule. They even fashioned their own soundscapes, edited and digitally manipulated from the hundreds of samples they’d recorded inside and out.

  That final performance was very well done. You could even call it slick.

  But the way to the finished product was anything but straight and smooth. [read the full article]

• Tenor René Barbera, who will be singing Rinuccio with us in Gianni Schicchi in our upcoming season, swept the top honours at the Operalia competition, winning the first prizes for both opera and zarzuela as well as the Audience Choice Prize. Operatoonity has more, including a video of his prize-winning performance of "Pour mon âme" from Donizetti's La fille du régiment.

Photo: Paul Groves as Idomeneo with the COC Chorus in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Idomeneo. © Michael Cooper 2010