Canadian Opera Company makes rare move to feature two new Canadian works for 2026-27 season

“Empire of Wild,” a co-production with the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, will be the first of the two new Canadian works, opening in May 2027. Co-written by Métis artists Ian Cusson and Cherie Dimaline, the opera is based on Dimaline’s novel of the same name, which retells the myth of the “Rogarou,” a Métis werewolf-like creature that haunts Indigenous communities.

The COC’s world premiere production will be directed by theatre director Yvette Nolan and will star Canadian soprano Elisabeth St-Gelais as Joan, who embarks on a search for her missing husband, believed to have been claimed by the rogarou.

The following month, the COC will present “Come Closer,” a new opera by Opera 5, the COC’s company in residence. The chamber work, created by Ryan Trew and Rachel Krehm, is a meditation on grief inspired by Krehm’s experience of losing her sister Elizabeth to drug addiction.

The opera was previously presented at the 2025 Toronto Opera Festival, where it was met with positive reviews. The arts-focused publication Opera Canada called it “a remarkably brave and vulnerable piece of theatre.” 

“We’re in a very specific time, and we are the Canadian Opera Company, so we’ve always made an effort to feature Canadian artists — whether they be designers, the members of our chorus, musicians in the orchestra and, of course, singers on the main stage, but also Canadian composers and librettists,” COC artistic director Roberto Mauro said of the Canadian-heavy programming. “And for us, it’s very exciting to be able to do that.”

The 2026-27 lineup will also include several remounts of classic works. Opening the season is a revival of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” directed by Arin Arbus and last seen at the COC in 2022. Sopranos Kathryn Lewek and Lucia Cesaroni, both making their company debuts, will share the role of Violetta Valéry, a Parisian courtesan whose passionate love affair with the nobleman Alfredo, played by Chinese tenor Long Long, threatens to tear her world apart.

Later this fall, Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s production of “Così fan tutte” will also return, starring Canadian bass-baritone Joel Allison and Australian soprano Lauren Fagan as the lovers Guglielmo and Fiordiligi respectively.

In January, the COC will bring to its stage Benjamin Britten’s gothic opera “The Turn of the Screw,” based on Henry James’s novella of the same name, about a governess convinced that the two children in her care are possessed by ghosts. The company previously presented this opera in 2002 at the Harbourfront Centre. But this production marks the first time that Britten’s 1954 work has been presented on the COC’s mainstage. 

The production will be directed by Louisa Muller and is set to star Jane Archibald, marking her return to the COC for the first time since her breast cancer diagnosis. Muller’s staging originates from Garsington Opera in England, where it debuted in 2019 and has received multiple five-star reviews.

Running concurrently with the Britten opera will be Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” a production from Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Teatro la Fenice and Teatro Verdi Trieste. Director Paul Curren’s production will feature Braun, Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Clay Hilley. 

The season will then conclude in May 2027 with a remount of Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore,” with Duke Kim, Emily Rocha and Luca Pisaroni leading director James Robinson’s production.

All productions will run at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, with the exception of “Come Closer,” which runs at the smaller Canadian Opera Company Theatre on Front Street.