For Kate Applin, a love of opera came early in life. She became enamoured with the art form while performing with the Canadian Children’s Opera Company in Toronto, and further honed her skills while studying music at Wilfred Laurier University.
“It seems funny, because it can seem antiquated to sing your feelings in this really story-ish way and sing the talking in between the story, but … it is actually really great,” Applin says of performing opera. “I find the stories are really universal…This person was living 300 years ago, but I kind of get what they’re thinking.”
Yet life can be very difficult for young opera singers, no matter how passionate they are. “As a singer, you are constantly training,” says Applin, “so you pay out for school, voice lessons, coaching, your music … to go to these seminar programs and train for two months at a time and it’s thousands of dollars. It’s a great experience, but it is a lot of money out the door and it’s hard to get that money in.”
According to Applin, the jump from a school environment into the professional world is particularly difficult, with graduates vying for a handful of spots in young-artist programs, such as the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio in Toronto. “You lose a lot of singers in those intervening years because they audition over and over again for the same programs and a lot of them kind of lose heart,”
Applin founded the Metro Youth Opera (myopera) in 2010 to address some of these challenges. The company presents a show each spring, and its mandate is to provide professional experience to young talents, along with all-important monetary compensation. As Applin explains, “I don’t hire singers that have a lot of professional experience singing opera, but who have very high levels of training and have been performing in other ways: in schools, in programs, and have been hired to do smaller gigs, but not to do a lead role in a show.”
Participants in myopera are thrown into the real-world situation of being signed on to rehearse and perform a show in a tight time-frame, an experience that serves as a huge stepping stone towards kick-starting a career in opera performance. The program does not include any coaching or lessons, only the expectation that singers will come prepared and ready to throw themselves into the process of preparing a show from start to finish, culminating in a performance in a large 350-seat theatre.
“I think for me the most rewarding part is that I know that my singers are grateful for the experience, and have actually learned something from it,” Applin says. “I’ve had singers every year say, ‘I’m really proud of what you’re doing; I’m proud to be a part of it. It’s not easy to get these experiences, so thank you for that.’”
Applin hopes that myopera can be a learning experience for audiences as well as performers. For their third season, they are presenting a triple-bill of short comedies, including Stravinsky’s Mavra, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, and Le Magicien, a classical contemporary piece by Canadian composer Jean Vallerand. “It’s a chance for those who don’t know opera to get introduced to it, and you’re not committed to like, four hours of Wagner … which is nice for somebody who doesn’t know if they like it,” she explains. “Here you can see that the music and the stories of opera actually do make sense, and … hopefully the audiences … that don’t know opera can apply that later when they go see another show.”
This season’s extension past a traditional opera repertoire should be a treat for opera lovers as well, giving them the opportunity to see shows that they are not familiar with, and that are potentially being performed by future stars of the opera world.
While Applin is enthusiastic about myopera, she admits that running a small opera company comes with its own set of challenges. “The work can be challenging,” she says. “Organizing, and trying to learn how to be a producer, and a fundraiser, and a marketer, and all of those things. But the biggest challenge is the stress that [goes] into hoping there are enough people there to see the product that you care so much about.”
With future plans to put on two shows per year — one in the fall and one in the spring — and to incorporate string quartets or small orchestras into the performance, the only thing holding myopera back from rapid expansion is Applin’s dedication to offering fair payment to all of her artists. This vision, along with her clear passion and devotion to providing a memorable experience for performers and audience alike, makes the Metro Youth Opera an important contribution to Toronto’s arts scene.
The Metro Youth Opera is presenting a triple-bill of comedies on April 5 and 7 at the Centre for Creative Learning (2365 Bayview Ave.). Students can purchase tickets for a special price of $20.
