We’re just going to go out and say it: Joel has been a bizet man (hard to resist the pun) this season. In just a few days, he makes his mainstage directorial debut with the Canadian Opera Company’s Carmen, and the AtG team couldn’t be prouder. Read the links below to find out more, and don’t forget to book your tickets. Carmen runs April 12 to May 15 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
By night, Ivany is the founder and one of the artistic leaders of Against the Grain Theatre, perhaps Toronto’s most creative opera producers, responsible for their great and highly original Mozart adaptations.
Although the sets date back to that 2005 production, he and set/costume design coordinator Camellia Koo have tweaked it to create, as he puts it, “a Carmen 2.0.” In preparation, Ivany sat in every section of the 2,000-seat hall to see what the stage picture would be like.
Photo: Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen (centre) as Alain Coulombe as Zuniga looks on (at left) in the Canadian Opera Company production of Carmen, 2016. Conductor Paolo Carignani, director Joel Ivany, set designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer François St-Aubin, lighting designer Jason Hand, and set & costume design co-ordinator Camellia Koo. Photo: Michael Cooper