toronto — Blog — Emily Trace

Immersive 'Salome' Opera in Van Gogh Exhibit Space

“It was the last show I did before the world shut down,” says international opera sensation Ambur Braid of Oper Frankfurt’s production of Salome, playing the princess who wins the head of John the Baptist by performing the infamous Dance of the Seven Veils for King Herod. But the global shutdown has presented artists like herself and creative talents in the live concert industry with an opportunity to reimagine how opera is presented and delivered to audiences beyond the constraints of shuttered traditional venues. In partnership with musician/producer Dan Kurtz and visual designer Isaac Rayment, she will resurrect the Covid-cancelled character for an operatic experience staged at the same venue where Lighthouse Immersive’s Van Gogh projection installation is currently dazzling Torontonians.

'The 9th!' presented by ProArteDanza

“Even the worm was given desire” declares Friedrich Schiller’s soaring poem written for Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the iconic climax of his 9th symphony and score of ProArteDanza’s The 9th!: a finely yet boldly crafted treatise on the defiant human spirit, by Roberto Campanella and Robert Glumbek.

Ethering the Storm - White Mills Theatre Company's Thrilling Collaboration with New Playwright Brendee Green

Much like the contained intensity of a therapy room, limbo offers a venue parallel to reality in which the soul can confront its deepest shames and the self-reproaches. Playwright Brendee Green avoids the comforting myth that love can heal all wounds, instead exploring the circumstances in which a soul might forgive themselves for ambiguous transgressions, or might choose not to return to their body at all.