Good and bad news in the land of Canadian Opera

I just read today about the situation at Ottawa's Opera Lyra.  Apparently they are so financially squeezed that they have had to cancel the remainder of their 2011-12 season - two full productions (of only four for the season) and thus laying off singers, stage managers, chorus, an orchestra, costumers, make up artists, and the list goes on.  In this world of constant cuts because of a depressed economy, is it any wonder that it would seem like a bleak outlook for young singers.

That all being said, on the opposite side of the coin (or the swing of the pendulum) are a whole new crop of young opera companies run by singers trying to provide opportunity to themselves and others.  I guess the old saying of "those that get the most help, help themselves" is true in this case.

So check out these upstarts for yourself...

Metro Youth Opera (Toronto)

Essential Opera (Toronto)

Wish Opera (Toronto)


Opera Kitchener (Kitchener)

The plethora of small companies in BC (and big, thriving ones too!)

Maritime Concert Opera (Nova Scotia)

I know there are MORE but these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head....feel free to add to my list here but...the moral of the story: for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction!

Opera as real life...this just in from Ottawa

Opera Lyra patrons at The Magic Flute yesterday witnessed how scary opera can be to real life. The Ottawa Citizen reports:

Quick-thinking patrons at Opera Lyra Ottawa’s performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute Monday helped save a distraught woman who climbed over the railing of one of the boxes at the National Arts Centre.

It happened in a matter of seconds and the performance was not interrupted, but about 10 minutes before the end of the opera, shortly after a character in the opera is contemplating suicide, a woman left her seat in the amphitheatre, entered a box close to the stage and started climbing over the railing, about seven metres above the floor, NAC spokesman Carl Martin said. He said patrons near the woman said she seemed to be trying to call out to one of the characters on stage. A patron in the box held the woman, and patrons in the box below grabbed her and lowered her safely into the lower box.

Read the full article.