Where Are All The Canadian Composers?

The Canadian Opera Company has unveiled its 2007-08 season, and Robert Everett-Green can’t help but notice that, for the second year in a row, not a single Canadian composer is in the lineup. One Canadian work had been scheduled, but was postponed due to the composer’s health problems. Meanwhile, the COC’s British-born general director says that he won’t pander by programming just any Canadian opera: “I have to do something first-rate. It has to convince our audience that contemporary opera matters.”