OPERA NEWS: Rigoletto, Tosca highlight 2011/12 COC season
19 JAN/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

The Canadian Opera Company may have trotted out a new corporate look in time for its 2011-12 season announcement Wednesday, but for the rest, it’s business as usual. Which, of course, is very good news for anyone who’s been following the Toronto opera scene.

“The COC has always been defined by its big achievements,” the COC’s general director Alexander Neef told the crowd gathered at the Four Seasons Centre for the announcement of a season that will include four COC premières and three new productions. “And the coming season will see us explore repertoire we haven’t touched before.”

The new season kicks off with a production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS, featuring mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in her COC debut, under the direction of Robert Carson. A co-production of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the San Francisco Opera House, the work will be conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. It will be paired in the fall season with an all-new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s RIGOLETTO, directed by Christopher Alden, designed by Michael Levine and conducted by Johannes Debus.

To launch the winter season, the COC will revisit its 2008 production of Giacomo Puccini’s TOSCA to showcase soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, who will alternate in the title role with Julie Makerov. A co-production with the Norwegian National Opera And Ballet, it will be directed by Paul Curran and conducted by Paolo Carignani in his company debut. It will be paired with the Canadian première of Kaija Saariaho’s LOVE FROM AFAR, directed by Daniel Finzi Pasca, and will feature an all-Canadian cast that includes baritone Russell Braun and mezzo Krisztina Szabo, with Debus once again conducting. A co-production with the English National Opera, where the work has already premièred, it is, according to Neef, the first time the COC has tackled the work of a female composer.

Debus will also be conducting when the Spring season launches with the Vlaamse Opera’s production of Jacques Offenbach’s THE TALES OF HOFFMAN, directed by Lee Blakeley. The action then moves to Florence, the setting for a double bill that includes Puccini’s GIANNI SCHICCHI and Alexander Zemlinsky’s A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY — a work based on an unfinished play by Oscar Wilde — both under the direction of singer-turned-director Catherine Malfitano, with Sir Andrew Davies conducting.

The final offering of the season will be the COC première of SEMELE, by George Frideric Handel, a co-production of Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels and KT Wong Foundation that marks the first production of Handel’s work in the Four Seasons Centre. Directed by famed Chinese sculptor and performance artist Zhang Huan, who sets the work in an actual Ming Dynastry ancestral temple salvaged by Huan, it will be conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini and will also be performed, for one performance only on May 23, by members of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.

Subscriptions, priced from $175 to $2,240, are currently on sale at the Four Seasons Centre Box Office, while single tickets, priced from $45 to $318, are scheduled to go on sale Aug. 15. For further information, visit xhttp://www.coc.ca/Home.aspx