Inside Vancouver Opera

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Inside Vancouver Opera is a unique backstage glimpse into the world of Vancouver Opera. Join us as we chat with opera experts, artists, Vancouver Opera staff and others to explore the world of opera on and off the stage. This podcast offers an insider’s glimpse into the artistry, experiences, and perspectives of the talent involved in taking breathtaking opera productions from the page to the stage. Find out more at VancouverOpera.ca

  1. 4d ago

    “I Hope You Hate Me at the End”: Gregory Dahl Becomes Scarpia

    Gregory Dahl is back. Two years after telling us “air is everything,” one of Canada’s great baritones joins host Ashley Daniel Foot mid-run as Baron Scarpia, the devout, impeccably dressed and utterly terrifying police chief at the heart of Puccini’s Tosca. It’s a candid, funny and surprisingly tender conversation. Greg talks about growing up in a family woodwind quartet, getting laid off as a music teacher and making singing his plan B, and why playing a bully is so much fun when you hate bullies in real life. He breaks down the strange physics of operatic rage, demonstrates how he spins a smooth line through one of opera’s most brutal scenes, and explains why the scariest Scarpia is often the quietest one. He also opens up about being an “introverted extrovert,” the hours offstage that are harder than the hour on it, and the one thing a life in music has forced him to make peace with. New to opera? This one’s for you. No experience required. In this episode: 00:46 — Finding his baritone in a grade 10 choir01:30 — From laid-off music teacher to opera singer02:10 — Church choir, the Winnipeg Singers and a family woodwind quartet03:44 — Chakras, breath and the physics of singing04:00 — Why the angriest moments need the most relaxation05:45 — “You’re a messenger of a message”: his mother’s advice06:32 — “I hope you hate me at the end”07:17 — The Te Deum: faith, power and desire09:30 — The 85% rule and “less is more, Greg”10:17 — Greg sings, plus “air, vowel, line”11:19 — Singers as sensitive beasts and people pleasers13:24 — Teaching at U of T and learning to just be yourself15:00 — Why quiet is scarier than loud16:09 — The kitchen sink: how his voice has changed with age17:33 — The introverted extrovert19:03 — What a life in music asks of you21:00 — Family, the road and the 23 hours offstage22:14 — Keep your stick on the iceSee Tosca:Thursday, October 29 at 7:30 pm and Sunday, November 1 at 2 pm, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. It’s a new co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria, conducted by Jacques Lacombe and directed by Brenna Corner.🎟️ vancouveropera.ca/whats-on/tosca Read the full transcript, with listening guides and videos, on Substack:vancouveropera.substack.com Listen to our first conversation with Greg:“Air is Everything: Baritone Gregory Dahl on Lessons from Opera’s Biggest Roles”vancouveropera.substack.com/p/air-is-everything-baritone-gregory Inside Vancouver Opera is hosted by Ashley Daniel Foot

    “I Hope You Hate Me at the End”: Gregory Dahl Becomes Scarpia

  2. Oct 23

    How Puccini Invented the Thriller

    wenty-four hours. One escaped prisoner. A villain who controls the city. And a twist so cruel it still shocks audiences more than a century later. When Puccini’s Tosca premiered in 1900, critics called it lurid. Audiences couldn’t get enough. Now it looks like something else entirely: the blueprint for the modern thriller. In this episode, Jane Potter breaks down the tricks Puccini used to keep audiences on the edge of their seats: the fugitive, the incriminating object, the ticking clock and the gut-punch ending. Then she follows them forward through Hitchcock’s suspense machines, Agatha Christie’s opera-house murder, Stephen King’s The Shining and the two notes that made the world afraid of the ocean. If you’ve ever gripped an armrest during a movie, you’ve felt Puccini’s handiwork. 🎭 Tosca is on stage at Vancouver Opera [DATES]. Tickets: [LINK]📖 Read the full transcript with music clips on Substack: [LINK] Written and narrated by Jane Potter. Produced by Ashley Daniel Foot. Show notes (featured music and references) Puccini, Tosca, Act 1 Te DeumBernard Herrmann, Psycho (1960)Marius Constant, The Twilight Zone themeJohn Williams, Jaws (1975)Agatha Christie, “Swan Song” (from The Listerdale Mystery)Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell, The Shining (opera, 2016)

    How Puccini Invented the Thriller

  3. Oct 20

    Joyce El-Khoury Becomes Tosca

    There are few characters in opera quite like Floria Tosca: a celebrated singer, a passionate lover, a woman of faith, and someone whose world collapses in under a day. Host Ashley Daniel Foot sits down with internationally acclaimed Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury, who sings the title role in Vancouver Opera’s new co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria. They talk about her grandfather, a village church singer known as Kyrie Eleison, and the career in nursing she almost had. She remembers the train ride that led her to Lorin Maazel and explains why “what is yours doesn’t escape you.” She also takes us inside the score: Tosca’s faith, the jealousy that turns out to be instinct, Vissi d’arte, and the moment her voice becomes “a little bit like a blade.” Tosca plays the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on October 24, 29 and November 1, 2026, conducted by Jacques Lacombe and directed by Brenna Corner. Tickets: vancouveropera.ca Chapters 00:00 Introduction: the most dangerous 24 hours in opera00:48 Does the voice still surprise her?02:10 Instinct and the grandfather called Kyrie Eleison04:29 From a children’s hospital to music school05:45 A train ride, Lorin Maazel and Il trittico07:58 “What is yours doesn’t escape you”09:00 Who is Tosca? Mario, her voice and God10:56 What Tosca doesn’t know about herself12:18 An opera singer playing an opera singer13:50 The dagger scene: a voice like a blade15:11 Vissi d’arte: who is she speaking to?16:05 Singing the aria for the first time17:10 Sixty Traviatas and the work that’s never done20:24 Why every night is a different performance20:43 Advice for first-time operagoers21:18 Closing

    Joyce El-Khoury Becomes Tosca

  4. Oct 16

    Jacques Lacombe on Tosca, Puccini & the Art of Conducting

    Maestro Jacques Lacombe has extended his tenure as Vancouver Opera’s Music Director for three more seasons. Ahead of Puccini’s Tosca, host Ashley Daniel Foot sits down with him to talk about power, listening and the music between the notes. Jacques remembers assisting Leonard Bernstein in Vienna in his final year. He recalls watching Carlos Kleiber conduct Der Rosenkavalier and seeing Herbert von Karajan live. He explains why Karajan compared conducting to riding a horse over a fence, and why the perfect orchestra is one that can sing. We also get into the tritone hidden in Scarpia’s three chords and why the “easiest” Puccini is the hardest to conduct. There’s an unexpected lesson in silence from The Manhattan Transfer, and Jacques’s theory of the “talented audience.” In this episode:– Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, and the conductor as a figure of authority– Karajan, Kleiber and Bernstein: three kinds of genius– Tosca, Joseph Kerman’s “shabby little shocker,” and Jacques’s first opera LP– The devil in music: Scarpia’s chords and Puccini’s leitmotifs– Wagner’s On Conducting and finding the singing line– How to conduct silence– What age gives a conductor– Building sound from the bottom up: the organist’s ear See it live:Tosca, October 24 – November 1, 2026, Queen Elizabeth TheatreLa Traviata, April 24 – May 2, 2027Tickets: vancouveropera.ca 00:00 — The conductor is not a king 02:06 — Three more seasons & an orchestra that can sing 04:39 — Karajan, Kleiber and Bernstein 07:37 — What Jacques learned from Lenny 09:25 — Tosca and the "shabby little shocker" 13:05 — Three chords and the devil 15:03 — Wagner and the art of listening 16:53 — How do you conduct silence? 20:01 — What age gives a conductor 21:54 — From the bottom up: the Lacombe sound 23:14 — Looking ahead: Tosca and La Traviata

    Jacques Lacombe on Tosca, Puccini & the Art of Conducting

  5. Sep 29

    Marion Newman on The Work of Being a Good Person

    Marion Newman is a mezzo-soprano, a teacher, and the voice you hear on CBC's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. Kwagiulth and Stó:lō, born in Bella Coola and raised in Sooke, she spent more than twenty years in Toronto before coming home to teach voice at the University of Victoria, where she once studied piano. Recorded in her office at UVic, this conversation moves from a piano lesson in a castle tower to a rehearsal at the Orpheum, where the late Bramwell Tovey stopped to ask her how she wanted to sing his music. Marion talks about the "quiet choir" of family who made her a musician, a childhood homeschooled on Vancouver Island, why leaders need to learn how to apologize and mean it, why she no longer capitalizes the word reconciliation, and the name she carries: Nege'ga, she who is like a mountain. Marion served as a senior advisor on Vancouver Opera's report on Indigenous mentorship in opera, co-authored by Ashley Daniel Foot and Asitha Tennekoon, out later this fall. Midway through, host Ashley Daniel Foot asks her what an institution owes people after it asks them to talk. Chapter markers (from the recording) 00:00 — "Stop talking. Just pay us."02:50 — Ancestors, and where the fight comes from04:18 — Welcome05:57 — The first music: potlatch, the kitchen radio, and a grandparents' piano10:11 — Mary Jackson and the tower room at Craigdarroch12:17 — From pianist to singer14:06 — The quiet choir, and being homeschooled17:56 — Teaching where she once studied20:28 — Bramwell Tovey: "How would you like to do this?"23:17 — What an institution owes the people it asks to talk27:48 — The problem with the repertoire29:31 — On the word "reconciliation"32:02 — Ancestors, Nulis, and the big house38:28 — Nege'ga: she who is like a mountain

    Marion Newman on The Work of Being a Good Person

  6. Sep 6

    Jean Orr & Joshua Beamish: Canada's First Giselle

    In February 1948, an eighteen-year-old Jean Orr danced Giselle in Ottawa — the first full production this country had ever seen, with a full orchestra in the pit. She went on to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and decades later became a founder and the first president of Ballet BC. Ashley Daniel Foot sat down with her in her West Vancouver living room, alongside Joshua Beamish, who has just founded Ballet Vancouver and opens its first season this month. Jean describes choosing to die by the sword rather than of a heart attack, because at eighteen she wanted to die dramatically. She remembers touring Nova Scotia with no backdrop and running around the outside of the theatre mid-performance. And she explains, almost in passing, the night she put her mortgage-free house up as collateral so a choreographer would be paid and the show could go on. Josh had never heard any of it. You can hear him find out. Ballet Vancouver's Balanchine's Apollo & Other Works plays the Vancouver Playhouse September 11 and 12, with pre-show talks before all three performances. The season closes with @giselle, May 13–15, 2027. balletvancouver.com Chapters 00:00 — Two people, forty years apart01:04 — Highland dancing on the prairies01:34 — A land grant, a motorcycle, and the Qu'Appelle Valley02:04 — "My absolute lifesaver of life"03:00 — Josh starts tap dancing at two04:00 — Nesta Toumine and the Ballets Russes04:47 — Ottawa, February 194806:35 — Nobody called it the first — until Toronto did07:16 — "I wanted to die dramatically"08:49 — Josh hears the story for the first time10:33 — Winnipeg, no bus fare, and Pincher Creek12:54 — Building Ballet BC with David Y. H. Lui14:30 — The car raffle, and the house16:12 — The 2026 equivalent17:13 — Is dance the most fragile art?17:45 — Balanchine's Apollo, and Heather Ogden comes home19:08 — Seventy-eight years apartGuestsJean Orr — dancer; founder and first president of Ballet BCJoshua Beamish — choreographer; founder and Artistic Director, Ballet Vancouver

    Jean Orr & Joshua Beamish: Canada's First Giselle

  7. Aug 28

    The Hidden Art of Stage Management

    Stage Manager Theresa Tsang celebrates 30 seasons with Vancouver Opera. Every performance you have ever seen at Vancouver Opera, every blackout, every curtain, every entrance, every burst of light exactly on the downbeat happened because one voice on a headset in the dark said a single word, ‘go.’ She says it hundreds of times a night. She has said it for 30 seasons across almost 100 productions. The orchestra follows the conductor, everyone else in the building follows her. Today we are joined by Stage Manager, Theresa Tsang. Full Article Episode Credits: Theresa Sang - Stage Manager, Vancouver Opera Ashley Daniel Foot - Host & Creator, Inside Vancouver Opera Mack McGillivray - Producer, Inside Vancouver Opera

    The Hidden Art of Stage Management

  8. Aug 17

    Stanis Smith: The Mother Art

    Stanis Smith has spent his career designing the spaces people move through — airports, terminals, thresholds. This September, he becomes Board Chair of Vancouver Opera. He's also a clarinettist who self-produced a chamber music album of Brahms and Nino Rota. He's the person who will tell you, with complete conviction, that Frank Lloyd Wright was wrong: the mother art isn't architecture. It's opera. In this episode, Ash Foot sits down with Stanis to talk about standing-room tickets at Covent Garden, what it takes to convert a first-time opera-goer into a lifelong addict, and why he built a 50-piece art program into the bones of the new $4.2 billion Terminal 6 at JFK. They also discuss Vancouver Opera's upcoming season, the state of the art form in 2026, and the Vancouver Cultural Precinct — an initiative that could transform the city's performing arts landscape within a decade. A conversation about art, architecture, and what happens when someone walks into a room and feels something they weren't expecting.

    Stanis Smith: The Mother Art
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About

Inside Vancouver Opera is a unique backstage glimpse into the world of Vancouver Opera. Join us as we chat with opera experts, artists, Vancouver Opera staff and others to explore the world of opera on and off the stage. This podcast offers an insider’s glimpse into the artistry, experiences, and perspectives of the talent involved in taking breathtaking opera productions from the page to the stage. Find out more at VancouverOpera.ca

Information

  • Creator
    Vancouver Opera
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    119
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Vancouver Opera
  • Show Website
    Inside Vancouver Opera

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