Opera program history by year:
| 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A Brief History of Opera in Banff
In 1949, senator Donald Cameron hired Ernesto Vinci of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto to teach singing in Banff, which attracted 28 students, an unexpectedly high number that surprised and pleased them both. That same year, Richard Eaton from the University of Alberta music faculty came on board to help the struggling choral program. He brought with him a whole new group of singers to Banff.
For the next three years, Vinci conducted master classes and Eaton choral concerts, until 1952, when it was decided a full-length opera production would be mounted – Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, a Canadian premiere. Leona Patterson of the Drama Department directed the production, while Clayton Hare’s string students provided the orchestra. The following year Eillen Higgin joined them as the operatic coach. Until this time, Higgins was the leading light of the musical world in Calgary and formed and sustained a group known as the Calgary Theatre Singers. It was she who had been prodding Cameron to bring opera to Banff.
Vinci continued to run the highly successful Opera Program until his retirement in 1968, when he was presented with an honorary degree from the University of Calgary. On of Vinci’s protégés, Jim Craig, ran the Opera Program for the next two years, followed by Bernard Turgeon, who had been a student in Banff during the fifties. He attracted Marie-Thérèse Paquin, the grande dame of opera in Montreal, who came to Banff as an operatic coach and accompanist. She was a strong personality at the school and opera’s greatest advocate over the next decade.
Alexander Gray took over in 1979 and brought in Leon Major, Walter Ducloux and Boris Goldovsky as summer faculty. With these hugely respected artists, opera in Banff had hit the big time. They produced Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring and critics agreed it was one of The Banff Centre’s finest productions.
Stretching into the late eighties, eminent director Stephen Lord attracted the highest level of Canadian singers to Banff. During this time three to four operas were being produced in Banff every year, becoming the highlight of the Banff Summer Arts Festival. The nineties began with the famous Mozart Opera’s – The Marriage of Figaro and CosÏ fan tutte – directed by Colin Graham with set and costume design by Susan Benson. During the mid-to-late nineties, director Keith Turnbull took a modern approach, as all productions were 20th Century Opera – The Rake’s Progress, Kafka’s Chimp, Jackie O, and the Canadian premiere of Zurich.
In 2001 the Opera Program went on hiatus, and came back as Opera as Theatre, as envisioned by Theatre Arts artistic director John Murrell and under the artistic leadership of Gylnis Leyshon. In 2005 Kelly Robinson became the program director and has been with the program ever since. Robinson began his connection with The Banff Centre as a participant in the dance program, and as his career in theatre grew, his work became integral to the Centre’s performing arts programs, particularly in music theatre and opera. Robinson has directed most of the recent Banff Summer Arts Festival opera productions, including premieres of two original Canadian operas, Filumena and Frobisher. In 2008 Robinson was appointed Director of Theatre Arts, but he continues his role as program director of Opera as Theatre. As part of The Banff Centre’s 75th Anniversary celebrations, Robinson directed Dido and Aeneas in summer 2008, paying tribute to Vinci, Cameron and the pioneers of opera in Banff.
(With files from: Artists, Builders and Dreamers by David and Peggy Leighton (pg. 74-74) and The Banff Centre - Mountain Campus, by Mary Jane Thompson.)