So here we go with a round up of what’s been going on and the best things I saw and listened to in 2025.  I’m picking from 165 live performances and over 100 recordings so there was some competition!

Opera

The Toronto opera scene is recovering slowly from the pandemic but there’s still way less going on than pre 2020.  Opera 5 continued their comeback in 2025 and Opera Revue made their eclectic contributions but the indie opera scene is pretty thin.  The ring is pretty much held by the well established; the COC, Opera Atelier, OIC, Tapestry and the student programmes.  It looked like Against the Grain was emerging fro hibernation but that’s been kicked into the long grass now too.

So my favourites:

• Tapestry Opera’s remount of Luna Pearl Woolf and Royce Vavrek’s Jacqueline in February showed that this work had legs and deserved it’s, by now, multiple appearances around North America.
• Julien Bilodeau and Michel Marc Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon at the COC in March was a substantial and excellent new Canadian opera in a fine production and performance.
• The highlight of the year at the COC and likely one of the highlights of the decade at the COC was William Kentridge’s searing production of Berg’s Wozzeck in April.  It was everything one could want from a 20th century classic with some great performances from the likes of Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Ambur Braid, Matt Cairns and Michael Schade backed up by Johannes Debus and the COC orchestra in the finest form I have heard them in.
• The first site specific performance in a while was the rather weird but very satisfying Queen of the Night Communion staged by Tapestry Opera and Luminato at Metropolitan United Church in June.  There were some unique arrangements of well known pieces, cool staging by Michael Mori and a strong cast headlined by Krisztina Szabó.
• In July Toronto Summer Music showcased a touring production of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in a production by Cappella Mediterranea that transcended the limitations of being “semi-staged” to offer a proper period take n the composer’s masterpiece.
• TSM also gave us the long awaited Toronto appearance of Brian Current and Marie Clements’ MISSING; about murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.  The powerful performances and evocative use of video transcended the limitations of a semi-staged performance.
• October’s revival of Robert Carsen’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice in October combined Carsen’s minimalist but beautiful production with fine performances to create a very satisfying overall result.

Brooklyn Marshall and Ambur Braid in Wozzeck – Photo: Michael Cooper

Concerts

The concert scene continues strong with major players like the TSO and Soundstreams backed up by an assortment of groups presenting song recitals, choral music, chamber music and more with much more new music than one sees in the opera scene.  Here are my picks of the year.

• In January Sam Chan and Rachael Kerr gave a fascinating lunchtime recital titled Identität/個性 which explored how Sam’s experiences of performing opera for german audiences had influenced his sense of identity as a Chinese-Canadian.
• In March Brad Cherwin curated a fascinating concert for Soundstreams called with you and without you.  Soprano Danika Lóren and some of Toronto’s best young chamber musicians dished up a programme of mostly contemporary music with great skill.
• Asitha Tennekoon’s recital with piano quintet at the Women’s Musical Club in May was a beautifully sung and cunningly constructed exploration of the idea of “belonging” through art song.
• Schmaltz and Pepper continued to impress with very fun concerts in May and July.  They keep piling on the new material and the level of musicianship is amazing.
• October saw a performance of Andrew Balfour’s L’Empire Étrange at Hugh’s Room.  It’s a fascinating work with a perspective on Louis Riel you have liely never encountered before.
• Performances of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices for soprano, soprano and soprano again are pretty rare so I felt privileged to be one of about a dozen people who experienced it produced and performed by Lindsay McIntyre at Arrayspace in Novemember.

Danika Loren in with you and without you – Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

Theatre

The Toronto theatre scene is really busy.  I don’t usually see the most commercial end of it (i.e. Mirvish) but it still keeps me super busy with seasons from high quality outfits like Coal Mine, Crow’s Theatre and Canadian Stage and a bunch of much more experimental stuff from smaller theatre companies and festivals.  Here are some favourites from 2025.

• In January Canadian Stage put on Roland Schimmelpfennig’s play Winter Solstice which was a challenging but searching examination of the rise of Fascism in contemporary Europe and “liberals” inability to deal with it.
• In February Duncan Macmillan’s play People, Places and Things at Coal Mine theatre was a visceral examination of treatment for addictiion and what happens when the patient(s) don’t buy into the psychobabble aspects of it.
• In a completely different vein Veronica Hortigüela and Annie Luján’s Monks, seen at the Fringe in 2024, got a remount at the Theatre Centre.  It’s a brilliant play/clown show about delinquent Benedictine monks and was just as hilarious second time around.
• RED by John Logan played at the Theatre centre in March.  For ninety minutes Mark Rothko wrestles with is conscience and his assistant over the morality of his commission to decorate a restaurant in the Seagram Building.  It was surprisingly moving.
• The epic two part adaptation of The Mahaharata played at the Bluma Appel Theatre in April in a Canstage production.  Miriam Fernandes and Ravi Jain (this year’s Simonovich Prize winner)blended story telling, acting, music and dance into a spectacular and compelling theatrical experience spread over two evenings.  It was large scale theatre at its finest.  Part 1. Part 2

Meher Pavri, Neil D’Souza and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu in the Mahabharata – Photo by David Cooper.

• Shedding a Skin at Buddies in Bad Times in April showed that you don’t need a big stage and a big budget to have an impact.  Vanessa Sears’ performance as a young under achieving middle class black woman is a penetrating examination of the intersection of race and class in contemporary London.
• Sky Is The Limit Theatre’s Regarding Antigone which played at Tarragon Theatre was the best show of the Fringe for my money.  This one woman show; written and performed by Banafsheh Hassani, dealt with all the ways one can die tragically in a brutal, authoritarian state.  Gripping and moving.
• September saw Lucy Kirkwood’s  The Welkin play at Soulpepper.  It dealt with th
• e corruption and power relations around the trial of a young woman sentenced to hang for murder in 18th century England.  Visceral and compelling.
• Also in September at Soulpepper we saw King Gilgamesh.  It’s a high energy mash up of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the life stories (or some version of them) of the two actors; Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, who perform the show.  Most intriguing.
• Two2Mango’s Colonial Circus at Aki Studio expanded my idea of what clowning could be.  This show was not only very funny but deeply subversive!
• September was busy!  Buddies had another hot with the very clever The Green Line which weaves the story lines of a Beirut family separated by a generation to explore how chronic violence plays on ideas of class and gender.
• Perhaps the most transgressive thing I saw all year was Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play at Berkeley Street in October.  It deals with a controversial therapy for sexually dysfunctional couples acting out their fantasies on a former slave plantation.  Raunchy, funny and wrong in so many ways!
• Kaniuka Ambrose’s The Christmas Market at Crow’s in December used the “first winter in Canada” trope to explore the way Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker programme institutionalises the exploitation and degradation of people of colour.  Powerful but funny at the same time.
• Rogers v. Rogers, also at Crow’s Theatre in December was a worthy successor to The Master Plan.  Sharply written and directed with a brilliant performance by Tom Rooney as all the characters.  And laugh out loud funny.

A scene from Slave Play – Photo by Dahlia KKatz

Video recordings

It wasn’t a particularly great year in terms of DVD/Blu-ray releases but there were some excellent ones and also other performances that turned up as webstreams or in TV broadcasts (not in Canada of course!).  Here goes…

• Lydia Steier’s Paris production of Spontini’s La vestale on the Operavision Youtube channel was excellent and really begs the question why this opera isn’t performed more.
• The 2015 recording of David Alden’s production of Britten’s Peter Grimes with Stuart Skelton in the title role was rebroadcast on Sky Arts in the UK in August.  It’s one of the best Peter Grimes to make it to video in any format.
• New recordings of Wagner’s Ring cycle come along from time to time.  This years was a rather good version from Zürich.  It stays closer to the libretto than most modern productions without ever descending into Schenkery.  An excellent beginners’ Ring.
• The Criterion Collection released a sumptuous remaster of François Girard’s 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.  Well worth a look for an iconic Canadian music documentary (sort of).
• Miecysłav Weinberg’s The Idiot, based on the Dostoevsky novel, got a complex new production by Krysztof Warlikowski. at the Salzburg Festival in 2024.  The video recording is excellent and a great way to experience an almost unknown opera.
• There are a gazillion video version of Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann going back to the 1951 Powell and Pressburger film but this year’s release from the Royal Opera may be the best of the lot; certainly the finest Hoffmann in Juan Diego Flórez backed up by three first rate sopranos.

Screencap from La vestale

Audio recordings

So many audio recordings come my way that it’s impossible to keep up and only a handful are really outstanding.  My picks from what I did manage to listen to…

• Two new European operas made the list.  Cassandra composed by Bernard Foccroulle with libretto by Matthew Jocelyn really impressed me.  It weaves together the story of the Trojan princess, as told by Aeschylus and others, with the story of Sandra, a climate scientist.  Nobody believes either of them with tragic consequences.  Then there was Like Flesh; music by Sivan Eldar and libretto by Cordelia Lynn.  This also deals with environmental degradation through a take on the Ovid story of Daphne.  Both operas are modern in style but very accessible.
• OK so Orff’s Carmina Burana is a hoary old staple but the new recording from Zürich featuring Russell Braun as baritone soloist is excellent.
• Electric Fields features Barabara Hannigan and friends in a eclectic mix of experiments applying different vocal and electronic techniques to medieval source material.  It’s fascinating.
• If you are a fan of the late Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson the reissue of her Handel arias disk is a must.  It’s a wonderful piece of audio engineering and sounds superb.
• One of the most interesting disks of the year was Thibault Garcia and Antoine Morinière playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations on two identical, custom built guitars.  It’s really interesting how it does and doesn’t sound like harpsichord.  Also beautifully recorded.
• Finally, though it should have been on last year’s list, I want to mention Emily D’Angelo’s freezing.  I have fallen deeply in love with this album.  If I’m stressed out or just need some soul comfort as often as not this is what ends up getting played.

Other

I can’t conclude this list without mentioning Ambur Braid’s masterclass at UoT on April Fools Day.  I know (because I asked them) that is was a positive experience for the students but it was also a hoot for the audience.  That doesn’t happen much at masterclasses!

Statistics

It was a busy year.  I reviewed 165 live shows (69 concerts, 36 opera performances and 60 plays).  I also published reviews of 42 opera videos and 63 audio recordings with a few more of each in the pipeline at various publications.  So, this relatively long list of “best ofs” makes up roughly 7.5% of what I saw so maybe I should do a really short list of the absolute best.  Bachtrack‘s star rating rubric defines 5 stars as “One of your best experiences ever. An event that you will remember happily and be talking about in five years time” which is a pretty high bar.  I think three shows were that good…

• Wozzeck at the COC
• The Mahabharata at Canadian Stage; Part 1. Part 2
• Slave Play, also at Canadian Stage.

It’s also been a good year.  Despite publishing a lot of potentially high traffic reviews elsewhere, traffic here is up 20% over 2024 and is now well above pre COVID levels.

And so onto 2026…