The After School Opera Program (ASOP) is a core outreach initiative of the Canadian Opera Company’s education and outreach activities. ASOP is an exciting community arts program that involves children between the ages of 7 and 12 in the creation and presentation of opera! Under the guidance of award-winning Canadian composer Dean Burry, choreographer, director, and conductor, Markus Howard, and other guest artists, participants learn all about the different elements that make up opera – music, drama, theatre and design – during the 10-week session. Along the way, they create and rehearse their own mini-production, and perform it before an audience of friends and family at the end of the program. Currently the program runs out of five community centres in Toronto, Etobicoke, North York, and in partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of East Scarborough. ASOP celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with a special celebration in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on June 13, 2013. Each week until then we’ll take special look back to some of the participants, artists, program partners, and volunteers who have made the program such a huge success over the years!
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Posted by Meighan Szigeti / in Education / comments (1) / permalink
With the 2012/2013 season coming to a close, we're also bidding "adieux" to our graduating members of the COC's Ensemble Studio. Today, Les Adieux will be their final concert as Ensemble members at the Richard Bradshaw Ampitheatre, but we are looking forward to following their blossoming careers!
We asked some of our graduates what their favourite moments were, and what they'll remember most as they embark on their rising careers! Mireille Asselin "When I try to think of one defining memory of my time at the COC, I come up instead with a slideshow of moments: seeing Russell Braun in rehearsal for Iphigénie en Tauride last season running sideways on the walls of the set, aided by the strong arms of a dozen dancers; my first day in the school tour van at 7 a.m.; the efficiency of the dressers who helped me during the Ensemble show of Semele, as I quick changed into a harness... and then subsequently singing a Handel aria soaring above a centuries-old Chinese temple. Gratefully, the list goes on and on. Thank you to everyone who made my time here so very memorable indeed."
Posted by Meighan Szigeti / in Ensemble Studio / comments (0) / permalink
There's only a week left of our 2012/2013 season and we have three world-class productions running almost every day at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts! The critics are raving about our spring season, which is full of obsessive desires and gut-wrenching devotion. Read what they are saying and watch our exclusive behind-the-scenes videos for each production!
Atom Egoyan's dramatic interpretation of Strauss's dark opera was described as "one of the dark jewels of the Canadian Opera Company" and that the third time must be a charm because Stage Door said "if you have seen this production before, you will find that it has only grown in richness of interpretation".
With knock-out performances by Erika Sunnegårdh who performed with "power and beauty" and Richard Margison who sang "magnificently" in his role debut, the music left the Toronto Sun saying that "under the baton of Johannes Debus, the COC Orchestra is on hand to give a finely-etched and sensitive reading of Strauss’s complex score." Read more critical acclaim for Salome here.
Posted by Danielle D'Ornellas / in Opera Appreciation / comments (0) / permalink
Sara Fulgoni in the COC production of Bluebeard's Castle. Photo: Michael Cooper © 2001