The Frankfurt Connection
Aspiring opera singers in Canada are quick to learn the grim truth: it’s nearly impossible to eke out a living at home.
We have full-sized, ‘year-round’ opera companies in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montréal, and Québec—yet the seasons are short. Canadian Opera Company in Toronto is by far the country’s most industrious house, producing six operas per season, each receiving about eight performances. But even if you include small, ‘indie’ companies like Calgary’s Cowtown Opera Company and Toronto’s Against the Grain Theatre, which put up one or two productions annually at most—that’s still not a lot of work to go around.
Canada is home to incrementally more places for singers to earn a music degree than there are opera companies to hire them once they’ve graduated. So, savvy young singers who hope to make a full-time career on the opera stage start to look for professional opportunities abroad.
In the 2017/18 season, Canada was home to 199 opera performances, country-wide; that’s 5.6 performances per million Canadians, a lower rate than in New Zealand, Israel, and Croatia—yet
