Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Joan Baillie Archives of the Canadian Opera Company

The Canadian Opera Company’s archives celebrates half a century this season. What better excuse to dive into the stacks with us as we go on an operatic treasure hunt?

Currently based at the COC’s Front Street headquarters, the archives were founded in 1974 by Joan Baillie, an opera enthusiast and the company’s original archivist, after whom the collection is named. Many early materials were also contributed by Joan’s husband, Robert L.T. Baillie, who was President of the Canadian Opera Association from 1971-1972.

Mrs. Baillie’s personal collection formed the cornerstone of a rapidly growing trove of riches related to COC productions and artists. (The correspondence of former General Director Herman Geiger-Torel alone occupies no fewer than 320 boxes!). 

Today, some of the most precious items—such as a dress worn by legendary Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland—are stored off-site because of space limitations. Still, countless historic gems remain in our main collection at Front Street East. Here are just a few:

This 1909 signed photograph of German soprano Lilli Lehmann keeps a stern watch over the first of two rooms housing the archives.

Among an extensive scrapbook collection is this album documenting the 1960 Western Tour—where, one article informs us, Canadians learned to enjoy opera over the course of 40 performances of Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Many items, such as this 1972 season poster, were signed by the artists—can you spot Canadian mezzo-soprano Judith Forst’s?

Set paintings can be small works of art in themselves. This one was created for our 1980 production of Berg’s Lulu.

These costume sketches were made for our 1983 production of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène.

A set of puppets based on operatic characters includes this arresting model of Adriana Lecouvreur, the French actress immortalised in Cilea’s work of the same name.

This blueprint of a curtain design for 1984’s Anna Bolena is captioned “Colour as model, plus crest as drawn in velvet to match colour of Boleyn’s (Dame Joan) Sutherland Ac 1 sc. 1 dress."

A Bean Design maquette for 1985’s Così fan tutte sets the scene for a production staged at the Bluma Appel Theatre.

Set model pieces from Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (1993) were created by set and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich.

Interested in contacting the archives? Shoot the team an email at info@coc.ca