Here's something to whet your appetite for Wednesday's Opera 101 event:

Last Friday, we invited a select group of media backstage at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts to get a first glimpse of the set for Semele, an authentic 450-year-old Chinese temple. The temple was assembled backstage by a team of 10-12 stagehands at the Four Seasons Centre over a period of four nights, and in this time-lapse video you can see the entire process in four minutes:

The temple weighs approximately 17 tonnes and required a specially-built crane to assemble (which you can see in the video). It was also built on top of a special rolling platform so that it can easily be moved on and off the stage to accommodate performances of The Tales of Hoffmann and A Florentine Tragedy/Gianni Schicchi.

In this video from Global News, you can see parts of the temple in close-up as well as interviews with Alexander Neef, Jane Archibald (Semele), and Allyson McHardy (Juno/Ino).

In addition, clothing blog Fashion is My Muse took a closer look at the wigs and costumes, barczablog shared some thoughts about director Zhang Huan and the overall concept for Semele, and CharPo Canada used the event as a springboard to think of the larger question of storytelling in opera, and how to make the story compelling and satisfying. I encourage you to read them all as Semele's opening night (May 9!) draws closer.