New Favourite Canadian Blogs...

Happy New Year everyone!  Like all Canadians (or at the least the ones covered in snow) it is that time of year to hunker down and enjoy the winter with a good book and a cup of something hot.  Or in my case, a good blog. Recently I have found two new blogs that are fun and informative.


All Time Coloratura reviews the opera scene in Toronto with a smart and funny voice. She blogged about tweeting and the opera last summer - she seems to bring voice to her generation (20-somethings) and their need to be social all the time (think FB, twitter, and even blogging!):

I have mixed feelings about this. It drives me nuts when I can see someone’s glowing smartphone screen from three rows away. If you’re really that bored, stay home, I usually think. And it’s been a while since I’ve attended a performance where at least one cell phone didn’t go off (followed by panicked attempts to silence it). The substance of Dylan Tweney’s tweets doesn’t do a whole lot to argue his case: he mostly tweeted plot details, which don’t really benefit from a live account (imagine live-tweeting the contents of a book). On the other hand, I think a new breed of discourse is emerging on twitter, and opera companies ignore it at their peril. Opera-listening can be enhanced by communal experience, whether it’s an appreciative nod to the friend sitting next to you after a particularly well-executed high note, or chatting with a fellow opera-lover while listening to a recording or watching a DVD. 

As the COC Social and Interactive Media Coordinator, Cecily maintains their blogs as well. Check them out!

The second blog is The Cardinal's Nest written by a Canadian singer who wants to talk about MONEY.  She writes in her first blog:

I want to talk about the thing in which I have not been educated. The thing that I have had to teach myself, or, find out the hard way. That thing? MONEY. THE BUSINESS of MAKING MONEY as an entrepreneur in Canada. More specifically, as a SINGER. Did your Music Degree supply you with a semester on that?  

SAVING MONEY in a financial climate that is ever changing. SAVING MONEY in an industry that is feast or famine. We all know it. We don’t talk about it. I’m fascinated, and slightly terrified of this topic but, it does no good sitting here alone in my thoughts.

She is funny, honest and addresses something I really believe we don't deal with as professionals ...not just singing professionals but ALL professionals that are educated in commerce and finance!


So...for 2011 I will be checking in with both the Coloratura and the Cardinal to read their thoughts on the opera world in Canada.  I hope you will too!