Spotlight on: Sarah Vautour

Interview

"It's important to find the perfect balance between being professional, and not taking yourself too seriously. We are all human. What this means in the professional world is that its okay to make a mistake, but important to learn from it. On the same token, I have learned to take more seriously the role of servant to my art."

What are your irrational stage fears?

Humour

One singer admitted an irrational fear of finding himself standing downstage centre, unable to do anything but open and close his mouth silently and dumbly, like a carp. A conductor told me that he rarely uses a baton, for fear of letting it slip out of his hands and fly into the eyeball of his concertmaster. A certain director is afraid of accidentally preparing the wrong opera.

Self-Doubt: The Accidental Manual

Op-ed

I can a) quit doing this thing I love and just sit in a corner, or, b) do a diffident, guarded, joyless job of it because I'm hyper-aware of their negative opinions, and making room for their big important opinions is more important to me than my own fulfilment and mental health. (The latter is my default — that's where I'm most likely to go when the self-doubt gets to me.)

#Doras2017: "yes, and..."

Editorial

None of this is to minimize the work and merit of the 2017 Dora Award nominees. Yet it's a list that's desperately incomplete. Perhaps the juror qualifications exclude too many people with knowledgeable and unbiased connections to the Toronto industry. More importantly, maybe the TAPA membership qualifications are prohibitive to what much of Toronto's opera and theatre scenes can manage.

Don't miss: In the Alps with the Aurora Orchestra

Interview

"The girl in the Ayres piece In the Alps is a rather odd character; sometimes comic, sometimes sad but also whimsical and passionate. She has been brought up by goats in the wilds of the mountains and at the start, can only sing as the animals do. But then as she grows up, so her longing for human contact also grows and she is drawn to the sounds of the bugle coming from the town below."

In review: Hipermestra at Glyndebourne

Review

Fifty brides, a giant flying peacock, and appropriated costumes from the middle east are all present in Glyndebourne’s new production of Hipermestra by Cavalli. Long-established Glyndebourne veterans William Christie and Graham Vick collaborated to bring this opera to life for the first time since the seventeenth century.

"Why is it ugly?" & other good questions about new opera

Editorial

After all, opera isn't just music, and it isn't just theatre. If it's well-written opera, the music we hear is directly connected with the action and text. I often wonder: if people had heard famous film scores - Psycho, Star Wars, etc. - without having ever seen the films, would they find the music appealing? Would they find the Imperial March catchy, or full of wrong notes? If they thought those sawing strings from Hitchcock's shower scene sounded screechy and ugly, could they be blamed?

Talking with composers: Ivan Barbotin

Interview

"I don't really believe in inspiration. If what you are referring to by that word is a state of mind allowing for a free and easy flow of ideas, then I think it can be activated by simply sitting down and doing the work at hand. If at first nothing interesting comes to mind, I think the process itself eventually activates the neural circuitry required for being 'in the zone'."

Spotlight on: Abigail Levis

Interview

"Once you are out of school, and as you move through your training programs, you find that there is no definite way to be an artist and there is no right way to be an opera singer. It's about making choices and standing by them. It's about trying new things and finding what works for you in this moment and what does not."

Spotlight on: Dion Mazerolle

Interview

"Good singing for me means communicating. In and after school, we learn how to sing, breathe, how to create legato, vocal colour, control of sound, pronunciation but we do all this toward the ultimate goal of communicating something to our audience. Whether it is from opera, recital or oratorio, we are here to tell a story. When you achieve it, you feel like you have a purpose."