Canadians abroad: the quarterly report

Editorial

It's been invigorating to hear such exciting voices that are new to our ears. Perhaps it's our bias showing, but the conclusion we draw is that Canadian singers are pretty fantastic. It's not a better-than situation, and we don't waste our time comparing the voices onstage over versus back home; but really, for a country that can struggle with niggling inferiority complexes, it's a neat thing to see that Canadian singers hold their own among the great voices working in one of the world's most established artistic centres.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, musicals, and great timing

Editorial

With a few years of unsettled music direction, and a real need to try something actually new (perhaps veering towards what many opera fans would call "pandering"), it seems like a perfect opportunity for the Met to take a serious try at adding musicals to their heavy roster of over 20 productions per season. There's perhaps an untapped, enthusiastic potential audience that would love to pair the grandeur and the chandeliers with the kind of onstage action that is less foreign to their eyes and ears.

Great ideas: Snappy Operas

Editorial

This week at Pembroke House, Wake-Walker and composer Emily Hall worked with a group of young opera enthusiasts on Snappy Opera I, called The Itch Witch, an opera about head lice. The young singers were split into groups, collectively representing characters like nits, strands of hair, and a comb. With the help of Snappy Operas Music Director Timothy Redmond, the kids spent a full day learning music by rote, and staging the short opera with Wake-Walker himself.

Child-free opera singers & happiness

Editorial

Basically, when the work isn't going well, it can be quite devastating when it truly is the most important thing in an artist's life. It seems a lame excuse for moping, though, and it's easy to compound the guilt of being a "bad artist" with the guilt of "not having anything else going for you"; after all, compared to singers with "real" responsibilities outside of their work, a child-free singer should remember that they're among the lucky ones, right?

What we've learned by talking with 108 opera singers

Editorial

Since we started Schmopera in late 2013, we have interviewed 108 singers. One hundred and eight! We're proud of that number, and we're by no means done. This site began partly out of our huge admiration for what singers do, and our respect for their skill and thick skins. We thought it might be a good milestone, at roughly 100 conversations with 100 singers, to take stock of what they've told us.

4 ways that opera really is life

Editorial

The link between human behavior and art is so strong and so complicated that it's even an understatement to call it a "link" at all; art comes from humans, and humans are part and a product of our environments, natural and otherwise. There's a potential regression from La traviata to single-cell organisms, if you step back far enough.

Morbid musings: art & death

Editorial

Does it mean that all art is rooted in the morbid? A desperate attempt to sweep the dust of life under a beautifully crafted rug? A shout into the constant turnover of individual humans sharing their time on Earth, asking "does anyone care that I'm here?"

5 important roles who don't get an aria

Editorial

There's no leading lady without a maid, right? No star tenor without his best friend? Not all operatic roles get their moment in the spotlight: just ask any comprimario. But there's even a grey area, between title role and character tenor, where there are important characters hanging out onstage saying important lines, but they're not granted a full-blown aria by the composer.

Freedom of press & journalistic integrity

Editorial

In a story that was apparently about freedom of press, it's frustrating to read Lebrecht's posting of incomplete stories, full of opinions and phrases like "suppressed review," "protest," and "sniffing glue," all of which are clearly biased against the Canadian Opera Company. We're really glad to see how the COC was quick to be transparent, and to clarify the errors and omissions by Lebrecht.

One more reason we don't envy singers

Editorial

The story of Bartoli's Bernstein, plus Netrebko's evaded Norma, combine in an example of one big plight of opera singers today: they're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't. Bartoli did; she took a role that seemed an odd choice, and plenty of unfavourable reviews of McKinley's West Side Story seemed to have an undercurrent of "I told you so". She should have shown more self-awareness, more respect for the demands of Bernstein's score, right?