If you want to see the strength of Canadian opera talent, you can catch it all next year at the Canadian Opera Company.[briefbeak]
The company’s upcoming season, announced Wednesday (January 21) by general director Alexander Neef at the Four Seasons Centre, offers seven operas – three Italian, three German (an unusually large number for the COC) and one French work – that range from 18th-century Mozart to 20th-century Strauss and Poulenc.
It’s a given that the company usually presents works of high musical and dramatic quality, but the cherry on the top is the inclusion of so many Canadian singers, both international stars and up-and-coming talent, in its 2012-2013 roster.
The 63rd season opens September 29 with Verdi’s blood-and-thunder Il Trovatore, with Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas in the title role, the troubadour Manrico Canadian baritone Russell Braun sings his first Verdi role as Manrico’s rival, the Count di Luna.
The second fall production is Johann Strauss Junior’s operetta Die Fledermaus, featuring Canadian tenor Michael Schade as the two-timing Eisenstein. Also in the cast are Canadians Laura Tucker, Ambur Braid, Mireille Asselin, Peter Barrett, Christopher Enns and James Westman.
The winter operas begin with director Peter Sellars’ production of Richard Wagner’s epic love story Tristan und Isolde, with Canadian tenor Ben Heppner returning to the company mainstage for the first time in 17 years. His Isolde is German soprano Melanie Diener.
Up next is Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito, with Schade as the benevolent Roman ruler Titus he’s joined by, among others, Wallis Giunta and Robert Gleadow. More Canadians will perform in the single performance featuring members of the COC Ensemble Studio it’s become a tradition for the Ensemble to have this opportunity to perform on the mainstage.
First up in the spring season is Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with soprano Anna Christy in the demanding coloratura title role.
It’s followed by Richard Strauss’s Salome, in a production by Atom Egoyan that has played the COC twice before. But it’s now a decade since its last performance, and Egoyan will revise the production to make use of the latest technology. Erika Sunnegardh stars, with Canadian Richard Margison debuting as her lascivious stepfather, Herod.
Closing the season is Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites, directed by Robert Carsen and designed by Michael Levine, cast largely with Canadian singers, among them Isabel Bayrakdarian, Judith Forst, Adrianne Pieczonka and Frederic Antoun.
Lots to look forward to here, especially the Tristan, for which video artist Bill Viola has created a full-length video as part of the stage action, and Carmelites, a drama set during the French Revolution. Here it’ll be propelled both by a powerful cast and the always-fascinating collaboration between Carsen and Levine, two of our greatest stage artists.
For more information, see coc.ca.
