Stage Door News

Toronto: Tapestry Opera launches COR – the Canadian Opera Resource

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

The discoverability of great Canadian arias and operas is seriously upgrading. No longer will performers, musicologists, and producers have to rely on myriad obsolete library collections; Tapestry Opera has launched the Canadian Opera Resource (COR): a brand new wiki-style website with a searchable database of all things Canadian Opera to make finding great works and opera creators easy and intuitive.

COR is an online tool for Canadian opera, including Tapestry’s 40 years of commissioning Canadian operas and growing to include all Canadian operas as new operas are premiered and existing Canadian creators and producers add their works.

At canadianoperaresource.com, artists can search for works by different creator identities - women, IBPOC, LGBTQ+ - in addition to types of works and voice parts. Producers can discover celebrated Canadian artists, and creators can promote their work to create new and lasting opportunities.

The intelligent features of this collection allow users to like & recommend works and artists. Over time and usage, this feature will empower COR to have smart crowd-sourced lists for arias, duets, operas and creators, further facilitating the discovery and profile-raising of great creative artists and works.

Opera creation is one of the most expensive processes in the performing arts, taking 3 to 10 years and a sizeable investment of public and private funds. Yet, most contemporary Canadian operas are only performed once and heard locally. COR allows producers, students, and performers to quickly research, explore media samples, purchase scores, and secure the rights to perform selections in recital, study in class, or re-mount full works.

With COR, the diverse world of Canadian Opera is at your fingertips.

This dynamic tool will be a force for not only making Canada’s greatest operas and opera creators more discoverable, but by supporting the works that resonate the most, it will help reinforce the contemporary potential of an artform that suffers from outdated negative stereotypes.

Young artists, in particular, will have unique opportunities to find creators and stories that resonate with their experience and world and easily share them with colleagues. What scores previously may have languished in physical collections are now available to be discovered in seconds.”

- Michael Hidetoshi Mori, General Director and the COR concept creator