Opera and National Identity: New Canadian Opera

Abstract

Much has changed on the Canadian stage since 1969, when composer Barbara Pentland lamented to Musicanada that “[w]hat comes from outside the country must de facto be superior. Prime example: the opening of our multi-million-dollar ‘National’ Arts Centre with an imported French ballet company dancing to a score by a Greek composer conducted by an American born in Germany” (qtd. in Kallmann and Potvin 1033). In fact, by 1969 things were already changing – at least on the operatic stage. The centennial year 1967 had made government money available for commissions, and as a result there was an explosion of new operatic productions: Murray Adaskin’s Grant, Warden of the Plains, Kelsey Jones and Rosabelle Jones’s Sam Slick, Robert Turner and George Woodcock’s The Brideship, Raymond Pannell’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey and, perhaps the best known, Mavor Moore and Harry Somers’s Louis Riel.