Curriculum

A resident, nationally recognized faculty conducts intensive training in acting, speech, text analysis, stage movement, body/voice integration, and combat, in addition to on-going vocal coaching, languages, diction, and repertoire. Special classes focus on topics such as audition techniques, career promotion, performer’s stress management, public relations and marketing, and agent representation are conducted by experts in their field.

Based upon one’s level of ability, Emerging Artists are assigned supporting roles in Calgary Opera mainstage productions. Additional performances involve school tours, study/cover assignments of principal roles in mainstage productions, recitals, concert tours, and community outreach engagements.

All Emerging Artist participants become members of, and receive remuneration as contracted members of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

The Emerging Artist Development Program is structured in three Sessions consisting of 24 weeks and is coordinated with the three productions during the Calgary Opera season – this year Rigoletto, The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Tosca.

Session One

The first eight-week long session (October-December) trains the Emerging Artists in movement, flexibility, period dance and movement, stage fighting, speech, and acting. The first session concludes with a public presentation of scenes and one-act operas by Britten, Barber, and Holst.

Instructors this year during the first Session include Anita Miotti who will teach dance, body awareness, acting movement, flexibility, and body/voice integration; Grant Reddick, who will teach acting, text analysis, and speech centered around Shakespeare; and J.P. Fournier, who will teach six weeks of stage fighting, tussle, and fencing.  

Session Two

The focus of the second five-week long session (January-February) is on the practical realization of vocal and stage skills as the Emerging Artists are cast in a main stage production – this year the Canadian premiere of Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe.  They will also receive career counseling in marketing, publicity presentation, effective audition practices, and exposure to prospective agents. The Emerging Artists will also prepare an audition CD and marketing package.

Session Three

The third Session (March-May), lasts eleven weeks and will concentrate on an Opera in Schools Tour of Calgary and southern Alberta in which they will present the world premiere of Hannaraptor, a one-act opera for young audiences by Alan Gilliland and Val Brandt. 

Further training sessions are planned with director Rob Herriot, who will deliver a two-week long acting intensive on scenes from contemporary operas including Mark Adamo’s Little Women and Thomas Ades’s Powder Her Face.  Other week-long curriculum modules will concentrate on Art Song, Lieder, and Oratorio.

Throughout the season opportunities for individual instruction and master class contacts are planned with visiting directors Glynis Leyshon, Kelly Robinson, and Michael Cavanaugh, conductors Timothy Vernon, Hal France, and Robert Dean, and performing soloists/teachers Tracy Dahl, David Pomeroy, Richard Paul Fink, Valdine Anderson, John Fanning, Elizabeth Turnbull, John Avey, Marc Hervieux, Michele Capalbo, Gaetan Laperriere, Frances Ginzer, and Alan Monk.