So Opera Lyra in Ottawa has closed down.  Here’s the announcement.  I’m a little sad that the performance opportunities for hard working but under employed Canadian singers have been reduced but that’s pretty much the extent of it.  I’ve watched Opera Lyra as they have lurched along, season after season, with traditional productions of the most mainstream of mainstream operas.  Carmen has followed Traviata has followed Figaro.  All in the very expensive National Arts Centre; fully staged with a big, expensive orchestra even as their finances have tanked.  The strategy has shown all the imagination of a British general on the Western Front in 1916.

Continue reading →