The COC announcement of the 2026/27 season dropped this morning with zero fanfare; not even an embargoed presser in advamce. It’s pretty mixed and, rather to my surprise not far off what I predicted; at least in my more pessimistic version. So…
The fall season sees revivals of Arin Arbus’ La traviata and Atom Egoyan’s Così fan tutte. Both are decent productions but very safe choices! There’s a return to something we haven’t seen in a while for La traviata; ten shows split between two casts that have a decidedly A cast, B cast look to them. The Così has Joel Allison as Guglielmo. I’ve been following his exploits in Berlin and I’ll be happy to see him back in Toronto.
The winter season has two of my possible Strauss/Britten picks and neither of them is a revival. In fact they are both rentals; The Turn of the Screw from Garsington where it was very favourably reviewed, and an Ariadne auf Naxos from Bologna and La Fenice. Curiously only the ladies have been announced for the Britten; Jane Archibald, Adrienne Pieczonka and Kirsten LeBlanc. The Strauss is very strongly cast with Rachel Willis-Sorensen, Clay Hilley, Julie Roset (past winner of the Laffont prize at the Met and Operalia) and a very welcome return for Ema Nikolovska. This is really what I want to see from the COC.
Spring is a bit of a good news/ bad news story. Ian Cusson’s Empire of Wild has made it onto the schedule which is excellent. And it’s an all Canadian cast to boot. The not so good news is a revival of James Robinson’s rather feeble Elixir of Love. OK, it’s a harmless romp as long as you leave any sense of Canadian history at home (the director certainly didn’t have one) but it seems a bit cloth eared in the current climate. Playing “O Canada” on opening night would just be the ultimate irony.
Also in June there’s a restaging of Ryan Trew and Rachel Krehm’s Come Closer in the COC Theatre.
The Elixir aside it’s reasonable mix of the safe and the bolder and there’s a decent mix of Canadian and international talent. No ladies on the podium though which is a bit last century!
operaramblings 
The biggest surprise for me is that there are two chamber operas. For that stage. Are the Screw and a new two-singer opera (which I expect will be – or will it? – orchestrated for the full orch) going to fill up the FSC? For how many nights? Hm.
Ah right, I see the Krehm thing is in the small space. Still…
Looks like they are only doing three performances of “Come Closer” so not a big problem to sell.
The Curran Ariadne looks like something we’ve seen many times before https://operatraveller.com/2024/02/25/taking-wing-ariadne-auf-naxos-at-the-teatro-verdi-trieste/