Darren Sigesmund on the Mosaïque Project

Interview

"Although the piece is written for a classical ensemble, I composed using my own sensibility as a writer. Classical music is very much a part of my sound world, and there are similar compositional concepts that cross over into jazz and vice versa. It merely comes down to articulating those ideas on paper."

Sarah Slean on the Mosaïque Project

Interview

"It's always a treat writing music for master musicians and I'm thrilled to be in the company of such great composers, but I'm especially honoured to be part of this project, I think it's ambitious and timely and a beautiful tribute to Canada."

Layered comedy: Flight

Review

What struck me most about this work by Jonathan Dove and April de Angelis is the intricate, layered nature of the music and text. I could see numerous performances of this opera and discover something new about it everything single time. Great comedy should make us think, and Flight provides plenty of food for thought.

Strange inside: The Tender Land

Review

The Maytag hosts clearly took the term "Iowa Nice" to heart. Free snacks and beverages were supplied prior to the performance, as well as pie and ice cream afterwards. The atmosphere was welcoming and friendly, and I could sense that the Newton community had enthusiastically embraced their first opportunity to host the opera.

Canada sounds like: Mosaïque Project

Interview

"We dreamed of going on a nation-wide tour for our 10th anniversary, and realised that it was not going to be easy to pull off. So we came up with the idea of commissioning a piece that takes us across the country musically. One thing let to another, and we now have a nation-wide tour, and a great added visual dimension, including listeners from all across Canada."

Antoine Wagner: Gesamtkunstwerk in 2018

Interview

He remembers an early-1990s summer at the Bayreuth Festival, during the creation of the now-famed Harry Kupfer production of the Ring Cycle, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Antoine and Barenboim's son, David, had renamed all of their He-Man figurines after Wagnerian characters.

La Gazzetta: The Funny Papers

Review

All the antics amount to nothing more than a big helium balloon and to keep the whole enterprise on the ground, director and designer Josh Shaw has approached it as if it were a musical-comedy. Every "song" is a "number" filled with coordinated movements and choreography.

The TSO's joyful ode to Oundjian

Review

The symphony itself feels like an entire world, encompassing at once the life of one man - I always like it to be Beethoven's - and the lives of all people. It feels as though Beethoven offers up his story first, a conversation starter with humanity, letting us know of his hardships and his joys and his sense of humour, like an invitation for us to respond.

The Medium: opera as film noir

Review

The film deserves broader exposure. Seven decades after Menotti composed the score and wrote the libretto, both still sound ever so inventive and contemporary. As a film director Menotti nurtured a naturalistic atmosphere in which it appears inevitable that his characters sing and in the process he has created a finely honed example of operatic film noir.

Don't miss: La gazzetta

Interview

"I look at an opera like Gazzetta as a special case for myself and for the POP audience. It's almost certain that no one in the audience will have every seen this opera, and the story is pretty easy to relate to - a father seeking fame and fortune puts his daughter out in public to gain attention for himself - so I feel comfortable keeping the concept pretty 'traditional'."