Soundstreams: Garden of Vanished Pleasures performed at Crow’s Theatre (Photo: Claire Harvie)

OPERA America has announced the Finalists for the Creators in Concert: Canadian New Works showcase event. Toronto’s Soundstreams and their production of Garden of Vanished Pleasures is on the list.

The finalists were chosen by an independent jury to perform at the event, which is held in partnership with OPERA America’s New Works forum. The AOC & OPERA America – Creators in Concert: Canadian New Works showcase takes place on January 9 at OPERA America’s National Opera Centre in New York City.

OPERA America’s New Works Forum is a popular event open to organizational and individual members by invitation only. Performances at the showcase have the potential to expose the new works to a wide range of attendees at all levels of the opera world.

The Finalists

The finalists are noted by the name of the producer.

Soundstreams: Garden of Vanished Pleasures

The staged song cycle is inspired by the life and work of Derek Jarman, an English filmmaker, artist, and queer rights activist. He’s considered one of the most important independent filmmakers of the late 20th century.

U.K./Canadian director Tim Albery spearheaded the project, which combines the music of two artists, Canadian composer Cecilia Livingston and English composer Donna McKevitt. The 75-minute production incorporates projections and digital techniques. Garden of Vanished Pleasures was staged for digital broadcast as part of Soundstreams’ 2021 Digital Residency at Crow’s Theatre.

Jarman was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, and died of its complications in 1994, but the piece is about hope, resilience and solace, just as he found those qualities in a special retreat at the historic Prospect Cottage in Kent by the sea — his titular garden of vanished pleasures.

Donna McKevitt

Donna toured and released albums with the band Miranda Sex Garden for several years through Europe before turning to classical music. Translucence, her first classical composition, is a song cycle set to Jarman’s poetry she began composing when scoring the music for his last film, Blue (1992).

Composer Cecilia Livingston

Cecilia Livingston specializes vocal compositions, and she was appointed composer-in-residence at the Canadian Opera Company in 2022. Prior to that position, she served as composer-in-residence at Glyndebourne (2019-2022). Her melodic music is emotional, and characterized by its juxtaposition of lyricism and unexpected elements. She studied composition at the University of Toronto, where she was awarded the Theodoros Mirkopoulos Fellowship in Composition while earning her doctoral degree.

Libretto by Duncan McFarlane, Cecilia Livingston, Walter de la Mare, and Derek Jarman.

Other Canadians in the showcase…

Julia Dawson: Obscura Nox

Soprano Julia Dawson’s 26-minute “création lyrique” combines Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate (KV 165) and new music by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi, with original Latin text by Elin Rummel, in an exploration of isolation, perception vs. reality, and our addiction to screen-time.

Mathilde Côté: La nuit est ma femme

Côté’s chamber opera is based on the writings of Jack Kerouac, focusing on his French-Canadian origins and the way it informed his identity. The work contrasts Jack, the American writer, with Jean-Louis, (Kerouac’s actual birth name), a Québécois who lives with his mother and dreams of writing a great novel in French. Ivan Bielinski’s libretto is based on Kerouac’s work.

re:Naissance Opera: Eurydice Fragments & Inferno: A Hip Hop Opera

Hip-hop, rap, beat boxing, sampling, R&B, and contemporary opera blend in Inferno, a celebration of IBPOC voices. The story is a reworking of Dante’s Inferno with a lens that is feminist, anti-establishment, and anti-colonial, and where the levels of hell are systems of oppression. Inferno was composed by Anju Singh in collaboration with Leo D.E Johnson, Teiya Kasahara, and Debi Wong, with a libretto by Omari Newton, and Amy Lee Lavoie.

Eurydice Fragments is a musical theatrical work co-commissioned by re:Naissance Opera and Arkora. It’s a contemporary version of the Orphean myth, with Eurydice as a multimedia artist. Benton Roark and Brian Topp are the composers for Eurydice fragments, with a libretto by Luke Hathaway, Omari Newton, Teiya Kasahara, and Debi Wong.

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Anya Wassenberg

Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto City Editor at Ludwig Van. Previously, she was a freelance writer with a specialty in culture and travel for three decades, and a creative writing instructor for Ontariolearn.