All our hard work researching, creating and workshopping our opera ‘Llandovery Castle’ in 2018 will come to fruition in the first staged performance this weekend. Opera Laurier, which produces highly polished student performances at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, will perform the opera three times – Friday Feb 28 and Sat Feb 29 at 7:30pm, and Sunday March 1st at 3pm, 2020.
If you recall, this is the opera that tells the story of 14 Canadian nurses who lost their lives when their WW1 hospital ship was torpedoed in the Celtic Sea in June 1918. The opera had its fledgling workshop production exactly 100 years after the event in 2018.
I’ve been communicating with some of the student performers through Facebook, and they’ve sent me some photos from their tech rehearsal. This photo just sends shivers down my spine. I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing the double-cast show. I’ll be at every performance on the edge of my seat.
Thanks to Laurier’s Kimberly Barber who heads the opera division, to Liza Balkan stage director, Holly Meyer-Dymny design, and Kira Omelchenko who will conduct the performances. I am sure the layers of pedagogy go deep here, and that many of the vocal and instrumental teachers at WLU have been coaching students through the material. I am grateful to them all, and to Glen Caruthers, Dean of the Faculty of Music for supporting these productions.
WLU has changed a lot since I was a student back in the last century. Our Music Faculty was housed in a former residence, our practice rooms being the former dorm rooms. The building is about to go through another grand stage of its development with a major renovation and expansion planned to ‘Make Space for Music’. I’m looking forward to coming back for some future production in a brand new hall.
To all the students getting ready for the big night – ‘Toi toi’ and ‘break a leg’ and I am so proud of you!
Truly an outstanding achievement in writing an opera about such a tragic and troubling event, in the midst of the “war to end all wars,” that has for too long been forgotten.
So true James. I feel it’s important to acknowledge the women caught up in that dreadful conflict, and especially these nurses who died, not in combat, but healing and giving back life to wounded on both sides of the war.
Congratulations Stephanie, on your opera. You may recall you contacted me in the research phase, and although we never did find a time to get together, I’ve watched with interest your achievement. I attended the Saturday performance and was delighted and moved by your achievement. I hope that some day a professional company will pick it up and perhaps expand it to a fully length production. If so I hope you come to Ottawa with it. I and other historians of nurses would be delighted to attend
So glad you could see it and I regret not greeting you in person. Thanks for your support, and hopefully Llandovery Castle will go forward!