Children’s opera coming to Nunavik

The Canadian Opera Company’s Xstrata Ensemble Studio Tour, performs the children’s opera, Cinderella. Here the nasty stepsisters make life miserable for Cinderella. (PHOTO/MISSISSAUGA.COM)

The Canadian Opera Company plans to go where opera has never gone before when it visits two Nunavik communities next week.

The Toronto-based opera company will perform versions of the children’s opera production Cinderella at schools in Salluit and Kangiqsujuaq Nov. 16 and 17.

It’s certain that few, if any, students in these schools have ever heard opera, an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work that combines text, called a libretto, and a musical score.

The COC will also stop at Xstrata’s Raglan mine to perform a short program of operatic arias for staff there.

It’s all part of the Xstrata Ensemble Studio School Tour, a program which brings cultural and education opportunities to the communities where the mining company works.

“It is important to Xstrata that we expand the tour’s reach north to the communities in which we operate,” Michael Welch, vice-president of Raglan Mine, said in a recent news release. “We strive for our Raglan operations to provide more than just jobs to our local communities – we want to create sustainable value.”

Welch says the school tour introduces opera to children who may not otherwise have the opportunity to be exposed to the art form.

This is the farthest north that the COC has ever traveled to perform.

Cinderella features melodies and arias from two versions of Cinderella, by composers Gioacchino Rossini and Jules Massenet.
Students from kindergarten to Grade Six at Salluit’s Pigiurvik School and Kangiqsujuaq’s Arsaniq School will be treated to the 50-minute performance as well as a musical workshop.

This week, the Xstrata Ensemble tour’s Cinderella is travelling through the northern Ontario communities of Sudbury and Timmins.
“This tour is a remarkable opportunity for the COC,” says Alexander Neef, the opera company’s general director, in the same release.

“The company is extremely excited that our Ensemble Studio singers will be performing opera for children in these remote communities, and we are equally honoured to be given the opportunity to learn as much as we can about their culture from them.”