This season’s main stage production from Tapestry Opera will be Ten Days in a Madhouse; music by Rene Orth, music by Hannah Moscovitch. It’s based on the true story of 19th century journalist Nellie Bly who pretended to be insane in order to expose the conditions women patients were being kept under at New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum. It’s the Canadian premiere of a Tapestry/Opera Philadelphia commission co-presented with the COC and Luminato. This follows a critically acclaimed run last year at Opera Philadelphia.
Tag Archives: tapestry opera
Tapestry Briefs: Under Where?
So LIBLAB is back and the pick of the fruits of the latest version form Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? currently playing at the Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre. There are eleven sketches involving four composers, three librettists, three singers plus Keith Klassen who does all three. Also two pianists and two directors.
Tapestry is back with a bang
Tapestry Opera has announced its first full season since leaving the Distillery District and it looks like “back to the future”. Most of the usual (much missed) stuff is there. So here’s the line up:
- October 16th-19th – Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? – Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. Briefs is back with a new line up of composers and librettists including, I’m delighted to say, the Gray sisters. Basically this is the performance end of the LibLab where we get to see the best of what the workshops produced. Always worth seeing.
- January 16th and 17th – LOL: Laughing Out Lonely – Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. This is a solo opera by the Danish company OPE-N. Created by Matilde Böcher and Asger Kudahl and starring Morten Grove Frandsen inhabiting multiple on-line personas, it explores the darker side of social media.
- March 26th – 29th – Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs – Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. Soprano Xin Wang takes us on a muklti-lingual journey through love and loss in a version of the Sokolovic work adapted for the stage by Michael Hidetoshi Mori.
- June 16th – 21st – Super Sekret Opera – Bluma Appel Theatre. This yet to be announced opera will be fully staged with orchestra and chorus. All I can tell you is that is “the creation of a Canadian playwright you already admire and a composer the New York Times has hailed as one of the most important voices of our time”.
Welcome back Tapestry!
Queen of the Night Communion
There was a time when site specific productions were very much part of the Toronto opera scene but, like much else, they seemed to disappear with the pandemic. So it was especially pleasing to see Tapestry Opera, Luminato and Metropolitan United Church combining for just such an event.
Elephants and Circuses
Tapestry Opera are currently presenting a production of Sanctuary Song (music by Abigail Richardson-Schulte, words by Marjorie Chan). It’s a piece that premiered in 2008 and this revival, directed by Michae Mori, represents Tapestry’s first major production in the new Nancy and Ed Jackman Performance Centre.
May 2025
Here are my top picks for May.
- The Cunning Linguist opens at Factory Theatre on May 1st. Previews are April 26th, 27th and 30th and it runs to May 11th. A young queer Mexican woman, with her sidekick God, decides to move to Toronto…
- Eugene Onegin in the Robert Carsen production opens May 2nd at the COC. Runs until May 24th.
- On May 3rd Confluence has a Teiya Kasahara curated show called Project T: Home Video (this is a change from the originally scheduled May 2nd/3rd show).
Quest
All the news that fits…
There have been a lot of announcements in the last few days. Tapestry announced that they had two companies “in residence” for next season at their new home at 877 Yonge Street. They are Opera Q ;led by Ryan Macdonald and Camille Rogers, who produced the pandemic video Medusa’s Children and Cultureland which is led by Afarin Mansouri and was responsible for Echoes of Bi-Sotoon. Continue reading
Tapestry officially opens 877 Yonge Street
Tapestry Opera and Nightwood Theatre’s new digs at 877 Yonge Street are now officially open. I was unable to attend Saturday nignt’s opening gig and party but I did get to attend the free concert for the local community in the afternoon and get a tour of the premises.
March 2025
- March 1st (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant) Apocryphonia have a “classical meets punk” concert called Brews, Beauties and Brawlers at St. Olave’s Anglican Church at 7.30pm. PWYC.
- March 5th Canadian Art Song Project have their annual gig at noon in the RBA.
- Crow’s Theatre have a new adaptation of Measure for Measure in the Studio Theatre. Previews on the 6th and 7th, opening on the 8th and running to March 16th.






