Vancouver Opera unveils 2023-24 season of large-scale classics The Magic Flute, Don Pasquale, and Carmen
A vivid pop reimagining, a critically acclaimed mezzo, and Ashlie Corcoran and Rachel Peake in directors’ chairs
Vancouver Opera’s just-released imagery for its three-show mainstage season.
A TRIO OF classics are on the roster in Vancouver Opera’s just announced 2023-24 season.
This October, it kicks off with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s fairy-tale-set The Magic Flute.
That’s followed by a “vivid pop reimagining” of Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in February 2024
And Georges Bizet’s Spanish-set warhorse Carmen closes the season with five performances in April and May 2024.
“Two of the operas have not been seen in over a decade and one has only been produced once in our 64-year history,” Vancouver Opera general director Tom Wright said in the announcement today. “Each of our productions feature returning directors who wowed VO audiences in the past and understand the magic and passion that courses through these stories.”
Arts Club theatre director Ashlie Corcoran, who also has experience helming opera, will direct Mozart’s whimsical work, with celebrated conductor Tania Miller on the podium. Owen McCausland plays Tamino, with Vancouver-born soprano Kirsten MacKinnon debuting at VO as Pamina.
Mezzo soprano Sandra Piques Eddy plays Carmen. Photo by Cory Weaver
Donizetti’s comedy Don Pasquale will see a wild, pop-art-Technicolor makeover by acclaimed direction-choreography-and-design duo André Barbe and Renaud Doucet, who last brought their lush vision here for La Bohème. The all-Canadian finds conductor Jacques Lacombe on the podium, with Gregory Dahl as Don Pasquale, Elizabeth Polese as Norina, Phillip Addis as Dr. Malatesta, and Victoria native Josh Lovell in his VO debut as Ernesto.
Celebrated Vancouver theatre and opera director Rachel Peake, who just helmed the Arts Club’s rollicking update of Sense and Sensibility and a uniquely reframed staging of VO’s The Pearl Fishers (also by Bizet), will direct the grand-scale, passionate classic Carmen. Maestro Leslie Dala, who’s on tap to conduct The Flying Dutchman starting April 29 for the VO, will take the podium. American mezzo Sandra Piques Eddy takes the title role; her past interpretations of Carmen have been described as “powerhouse”, “sensuous”, and “sensitive”. Carolyn Sproule and Jonelle Sills alternate as Micaëla, with Alok Kumar and Matthew White performing Don José.
Vancouver Opera has also announced the return of Opera in the Park on July 16, 2023, featuring music director emeritus Jonathan Darlington in a wide range of repertory. The free, family-friendly event with activities beginning at 3pm, and the concert beginning at 7:30pm in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby.
And the VO is stepping in to partner with local innovators re:Naissance Opera and H.R. MacMillan Space Centre to help stage the world premiere of Sanctuary & Storm, November 17 to 19 as the opener for IndieFest 2023. The chamber opera by Tawnie Olson and librettist Roberta Barker centres on an imagined debate between the two most powerful women in Medieval Europe—Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of the Normans.
In another partnership, Vancouver Opera and Pacific Opera Victoria are remounting their co-production of The Flight of the Hummingbird, resuming a school tour across the province in 2024. The opera is based on an Indigenous parable from the Quechuan people of South America, with elements of the Haida-Manga graphic novel written by acclaimed Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas.
Vancouver Opera’s mainstage tickets go on sale July 12. Subscribers have until June 9 to renew their subscription for the 2023-2024 season. For more information, head to vancouveropera.ca.
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