Toronto: Tapestry opera announces its 2025/26 season
Thursday, September 11, 2025
Tapestry Opera, Canada’s leading producer of new Canadian opera, is thrilled to announce its 2025-2026 season. The lineup features four dynamic shows, including two world premieres, a North American premiere, and a Canadian premiere, showcasing the company's commitment to bold, boundary-pushing, and socially relevant opera, with leading creators such as Sarah Henstra, Ana Sokolović, and Roydon Tse. Three of the four productions will be presented in Tapestry's new downtown venue, the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre at 877 Yonge St.
The season begins with the site-specific world premiere ‘opera shorts’ in Tapestry Briefs: Under Where?, a collection of hilarious and absurd opera shorts from a new generation of Canadian creators performed underground at 877 Yonge St. This is followed by the North American premiere of OPE-N's (Denmark) LOL: Laughing Out Lonely, an opera that confronts modern online loneliness.
The season continues with Ana Sokolović's Love Songs - theatrical adaptation by Michael Hidetoshi Mori, a genre-bending work that blurs the lines between opera, dance, and ritual, and concludes with our flagship performance of the season, WE CANT TELL YOU THE DETAILS YET, though a sound investigative mind probably could... but trust us, it's incredible.
Tapestry Briefs: Under Where?
Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre | October 16–19, 2025
Tapestry Briefs: Under Where? is a collection of ten hot-off-the-press opera shorts that take audiences on an immersive, tragic, absurd, and beautiful journey. This intimate production features the work of nine dynamic Canadian creators—composers Rebecca Gray, Saman Shahi, Roydon Tse, Keith Klassen, and Prokhor Protasoff, with librettists Rachel Gray, Sarah Henstra, Pierre-André Doucet, and Christene Adina Browne.
The Briefs program has a history of launching successful productions such as The Overcoat, R.U.R. A Torrent of Light and Of the Sea. The new pieces feature a wide range of stories, from a mother with Alzheimer's and a sponge in a romantic duet with a yogurt container to a woman trying to eat alone despite a tenor’s best efforts. Directed by Michael Hidetoshi Mori and Mabel Wonnecot, with music direction by Hyejin Kwon and Gregory Oh, the production stars Reilly Nelson, Adanya Dunn, Keith Klassen and Jorell Williams.
LOL: Laughing Out Lonely
Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre | January 16 & 17, 2026
In its North American premiere, LOL: Laughing Out Lonely is a solo opera from the groundbreaking Danish company OPE-N. Created by Matilde Böcher and Asger Kudahl, this modern opera is a thought-provoking reflection on our digital age. Based on real social media posts, it gives a voice to the voiceless by exploring the dark corners of the internet where marginalized individuals find a distorted sense of community. Acclaimed countertenor Morten Grove Frandsen gives a “tour-de-force” performance as he embodies a series of online personas, including "The Fucking Ugly Face" and "The Lamb." The production uniquely combines opera with physical theatre, creating a powerful and relevant experience for audiences of all ages.
Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs
Theatrical adaptation and staging by Michael Hidetoshi Mori
Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre | March 26–29, 2026
Part opera, part dance, all heart, Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs, with a new theatrical adaptation by Michael Hidetoshi Mori, is a haunting, genre-defying journey through one woman’s desperate ritual to defy loss, featuring soprano Xin Wang. Sung in five languages and with declarations of love in over 100 tongues, Love Songs blurs the line between opera, performance art, and ritual. The production is a co-presentation with New Music Concerts and showcases the powerful interplay of two lovers in a visceral exploration of memory and healing.
Title of Opera (we can’t tell you yet!!)
June 16–21, 2026
Bluma Appel Theatre
An award-winning opera featuring some of our favourite soloists, a chorus(!!), and orchestra… that we can’t announce just yet.
Our flagship performance of the season 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.
Visit tapestryopera.com.