Forgive the grammar, you get the idea.

So at today’s COC season launch there was an exchange that went roughly like this:

Alexander Neef: Any questions?

Bald academic dude in jacket and tie: I’d like to ask about progress on the two commissions (unannounced) to Margaret Atwood and [somebody else] and more generally when are we going to see a Canadian opera on the Four Seasons stage? makes unflattering comparisons to the SF Opera announcement yesterday.

Clique of Canadian Academic Composers: Here, here, rhubarb etc.

Alexander Neef: That’s become a ritual question so I’ll give you my ritual answer “When we have something concrete to announce we’ll announce it”.

Grumpy female: Claims that there are “many” Canadian composers who could compose something better than L’Amour du Loin (though mentions no names).

More rhubarb etc.

In principle I can see that it’s part of the remit of a national opera company to produce operas by its nationals though to what extent the Canadian Opera Company is a national company is well open to question. It only plays in Toronto. It raises just about all its funding there and it gets next to no support from either the federal government or the hockey channel which masquerades as a national public broadcaster. That said, I doubt one Canadian in a million could name a Canadian opera composer and if they could it would likely be one that no sane opera house would consider working with. So there’s a problem. No company can afford to give a seventh of its season to a guaranteed flop and no-one in Canada is going to pay for a vanity production by an unknown composer even if the libretto is written by Atwood or Ondaatje. I don’t hear solutions. I just hear over-entitled academics demanding that someone else throw away a couple of million bucks.

Rant over. Normal service will now be resumed.