There’s a grassroots revolt brewing among Toronto’s new music community over the continued absence of Canadian operas on Canadian Opera Company’s seasons. It’s been 13 seasons and counting since there’s been a Canadian work on its mainstage, and that’s beginning to rankle.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Meanwhile, as big companies like the Liceu in Barcelona yesterday, announce major cuts in their seasons in response to cuts in government support and reduced donations, opera presenters as well as symphony orchestras need to ensure they can sell as many tickets as they can and get as many patrons as possible enthused enough to part with large chunks of their savings.
New is always risky, and these are risk-averse times, especially when it comes to opera, where a big production can easily cost $1 million and up.
But there’s another issue to add to the stew in Toronto, I think. This has become an international city that is not able to help its hundreds of talented, creative and enterprising artists make the leap from the local to the global.
In other words, Toronto culture often thinks globally, but fails to act locally.
At the same time, Canada thinks locally but, with cuts in arts programmes that helped artists and writers tour their creations outside our borders, does less and less to help boost our considerable talents abroad.
I’ll use Tapestry New Opera Works and Queen of Puddings as examples of the opera world.
Tapestry tirelessly nurtures librettists and composers, building up their collaborative skills. They start with short scenes, move to longer scenes and, one every year or two, a new chamber-sized opera takes form.
Queen of Puddings tirelessly nurtures collaborators (frequently alumni of Tapestry’s programmes) to create new works.
One the pieces are ready, they’re presented locally in workshop form and, eventually, small-scale productions that are seen by, at most, 1,500 people. These shows feature Canadian singers, intstrumentalists, directors, set and lighting designers.
And then… the companies search hard to find presenting partners in other parts of the world without the benefit of anyone else’s marketing support — with only occasional success.
Along comes the Canadian Opera Company, which needs to sell 10,000 tickets to a production that, ideally, is co-produced with one or two other companies to help defray costs (the Toronto Symphony has increasingly co-commissioned new pieces of music with four and five other orchestras — and we’re talking about fees that would, in total, pay for something like the costumes for an opera cast).
Any sane opera manager can’t say, let’s take the people that created this excellent chamber opera, ask them to put together a mainstage work for next season and we’ll find a co-producer in, say, San Francisco, before the opera premieres.
Yet there’s no intermediate step, no incubator that can help the chamber-opera creators blossom into mainstage creative forces. No one officially recognizes this, and no one funds this in Toronto.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers and Chicagoans and Parisians and Milanese flock to the Four Seasons Centre to marvel at the beautiful new house, the great acoustics, the fabulous orchestra and, to COC general director Alexander Neef’s immense credit, incredible Canadian singers and directors.
Our opera company and singers are being recognized internationally. Toronto loves opera and, to our credit, Torontonians are good about supporting Tapestry, Queen of Puddings and everyone else who is busy with creating and nurturing new stuff. But now it’s time to fill the gap between fringe and mainstage.
If Canada won’t do anything to help raise our composers’ and writers’ profiles abroad, then Toronto needs to do so itself.
We are capable of a Canadian Amour de loin. And I can easily think of a half-dozen Torontonians who would do a fabulously engaging job in writing a Toronto Symphony, a task that is being assigned to a Bostonian.
But how, exactly, do we make this happen?
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
