Digital Svabda a ritualistic enigma, with some confusion

Review

I have to admit, after a while, the music did draw me in. This is an opera I suspect some people will have to sit with, but it will pull you into its language. And when it does, it does feel remarkably transformative afterwards.

Enchanting Production Brings Calgary Opera Back to Live, In-Person Audience

Review

On this night, the company’s full roster of emerging artists (now branded as the McPhee Artists in honour of the company’s longtime Artistic Director and CEO) enchanted the audience with a whimsical production that the whole family would enjoy.

Helios Opera brings hilarious Service Provider home

Review

Service Provider is essentially an opera all about cell phone use; the characters are on cell phones for most of the run-time, pretty much ignoring everything around them.

Obscura Nox: Plato meets Mozart and Iman Habibi in remarkable short film

Review

Under Mary Birnbaum's assured direction this harrowing and cerebral story moves in a refreshingly linear way. The extraordinary melding of music, voice, dance and photography, not to mention Plato's philosophical discourse, have melded in a way that leaves us artistically and emotionally sated.

HGO Carmen "the epitome of unity"

Review

Everything about this production went out of its way to imbue the whole with artistic cohesion and integrity, even the elements that might have seemed vaguely avant-garde out of context.

Enigma Opera’s Curlew River a transcendent experience

Review

I chose my words very carefully when I call this Curlew River a transcendent experience: I am afraid I cannot fully explain the power that this particular production had and why it had that power, but I remember leaving the Cathedral Church of St. Paul feeling somewhat transformed by the experience.

Installation La traviata intimate and effective production

Review

La traviata hosts what is probably opera's most well-beloved idiot plot: all of the characters make some fairly idiotic choices for the plot to progress as it does, and some characters can really come off as extremely unlikable as a result.

Les Délices presents Song of Orpheus: The Music Speaks For Itself

Review

The music is beautiful and speaks for itself. French Baroque rarities by Rameau, Dandrieu and Courbois dance with subdued, exuberant and often tremulous elegance around the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

A subtle burn: Garden of Vanished Pleasures

Review

Garden of Vanished Pleasures is available to stream through October 10, and you should watch before it's gone. I'd say this is one of the more mature, well-produced digital items I've seen, and I'm not really surprised that it comes out of Soundstreams.

BLO Cavalleria a welcome, if not triumphant, return

Review

I think the night, strangely, was best summed up by the opening act: BLO elected to open the evening with the prologue from Cavalleria's much-beloved double-bill partner, I Pagliacci, with Arrey singing Tonio's line.