Opera-goers heading out of the current COC production of Wozzeck wondering what makes the show’s director/designer William Kentridge tick should make their way to the online Kentridge Studio – a website that is yet another layer to his art. If you do, check out the 1988 essay by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in the Reading Room titled William Kentridge’s Ubu Projects.
Single tickets of Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary season production of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan went on sale January 13, 2025 and within minutes of the announcement, OA’s Marshall Pynkoski was there in our editorial inbox as well – his enthusiasm even more contagious than usual.
A feminist before the term existed, an intellectual and art connoisseur, a friend of René Descartes, a modern woman demanding freedom to live her life as she pleases, most likely a lesbian? The Montreal Opera - Canadian Opera Company co-production La Reine-garçon, libretto by Michel-Marc Bouchard based on his eponymous play, would suggest so. How historically accurate is it, though? I consulted Veronica Buckley’s Christina Queen of Sweden: The Life of a European Eccentric (2004) to start finding out.
In a canny move, the Canadian Opera Company takes their orchestra, music director Johannes Debus and four soloists on the road for five concerts previewing the COC’s upcoming fall and winter productions: Nabucco, Faust, Madama Butterfly and Eugene Onegin. Gripping stuff, but not exactly light summer fare, so the performances also include a generous sprinkling of Broadway, from shows such as Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
Somehow “We’re going to the opera!” doesn’t even just mean the building or the performance. It’s about both, and the alchemy of the immersive and transformative experience we anticipate. We go to the opera for the music and for the story, familiar or not. We go for the visual stimulation of the sets and costumes. But we also go for the shared experience and the shared excitement, and because one way or another, the experience is always larger than our own lives.
