So is that it for Against the Grain?

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question_markEdmonton Opera today announced that Robin Whiffen, Executive Director of Against the Grain (though on mat leave for a while now) is joining as their new Executive Director; teaming up again wiith Joel Ivany, Artistic Director, in Edmonton.

Now all the original forces behind AtG have left and what was supposed to be the stability and continuity team has lost its leader (and pretty much everyone else as best I can tell)..  AtG have only produced one live show since COVID and that wasn’t really their’s, it was Theatre of Sound’s production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle which played in Toronto in March 2023.  Add to that that they have been without artistic leadership since Ivany left in July 2023 and that’s officially.  He took up his Edmonton post in November 2021.

The only work in development is Ian Cusson and Royce Vavrek’s Indians on Vacation which, curiously enough, is a joint project with (you guessed it) Edmonton Opera.  I think that leaves some legacy films which get rereleased from time to time and Opera Pub (in Toronto and Vancouver).  Which, frankly, is not a lot.  Even Opera Pub; at least in Toronto is a very pale shadow of its pre-COVID self when it rocked out the Amsterdam Bicycle Club every time.

AtG produced some great shows over the years; a staged Messiah; the transladaptations of the Mozart/DaPonte operas, that Bohème that started it all at the Tranzac, Vivier’s Kopernikus and more.  If this is the end, and it looks like it, it will leave a sizeable gap in the already seriously attenuated indie opera scene in Toronto.

1 thought on “So is that it for Against the Grain?”

  1. Pretty much. It’s all gone, the entire indie renaissance from ten years ago, apart from the occasional random production by Opera 5. We can analyze one day what constellation of factors propelled all those young artists to form companies, plan seasons and seriously engage with the art form on unreliable, patchy or no funding. It was probably a unique constellation of factors, not likely to repeat. Some of that spirit I see in The Happenstancers, but contemporary music is a much much harder sell.

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