It’s been said the only thing more expensive than opera is war, which is why Whitehorse audiences will have the National Arts Centre (NAC) to thank this fall when the opera comes to town.
“The National Arts Centre is covering a nice chunk of what it’s going to cost us to put on Puccini’s Tosca,” says Casey Prescott, CEO of the Yukon Arts Centre.
The idea has long been a dream for Prescott. The last full-scale opera production in Whitehorse was in 1967, according to a Google search. In recent years, YAC has brought in voice teachers to work on opera with local performers. It’s also worked with the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture to build an understanding of pedagogy and performance. Still, staging an opera wasn’t on anyone’s radar until recently.
In 2019, Joel Ivany, now the artistic director for the Edmonton Opera, was part of a theatre group that brought a modernized version of the opera, La Boheme, to the Yukon. At the time, he and Prescott started talking about how to mount the real deal.
Fast forward to 2025 and NAC has Ivany directing Tosca at different venues across Canada. Prescott says it was continued conversation between himself and Ivany and divine planetary alignment that led to a multi-way partnership that will see the opera performed onstage at YAC on Sept. 20.
It’s being produced by the NAC, the Edmonton Opera and YAC, with the performers from Whitehorse’s Problematic Orchestra, Yukon Community Choirs and singers from the Edmonton Opera.
Tosca, first performed in 1900, still has resonance today. Set in the Napoleonic 1800s, it tells the story of a singer who tries to save her artist lover from a corrupt police chief against a background of political tension.
As Hannah Mazurek puts it, the show’s got it all—drama, murder and intrigue.
Mazurek is the artistic director for Problematic Orchestra, which is in rehearsals now, prepping for September when the 60+ musicians involved in the performance will finally be able to rehearse together in advance of the show.
At the heart of this opera is political turmoil, change of power and [the question of] what do mostly men do with that power and how do they abuse it? Turn on the TV for 30 seconds and you can see, ‘oh yeah, we just repeat history over and over again.’”
Mazurek says there’s a lot of stigma around opera being an inaccessible form, where you simply must put on your finest clothing, polish your opera glasses and drink fancy wine while swooning from a balcony box. Not so. Puccini was the pop star of his day, Mazurek says. If you want to dress up and bring gilded glasses, fill your boots, but you don’t have to.
“It’s just like watching any kind of play,” they say of the Italian opera, which will have surtitles. “You’re going to understand what’s going on and you’re going to be involved in the emotion of the performance.”
Ivany echoes that statement. He says that with arts funding becoming more and more precarious, it’s even more important to highlight universality and contemporary relevance of opera. Ivany has built a career out of bringing the art form to varied spaces in different ways, intentionally trying to build momentum around the idea of what opera can look like.
He points to the same underlying themes in Tosca that Mazurek does to support this.
“At the heart of this opera is political turmoil, change of power and [the question of] what do mostly men do with that power and how do they abuse it?” he says. “Turn on the TV for 30 seconds and you can see, ‘oh yeah, we just repeat history over and over again.’”
It seems Yukoners don’t have to be convinced. Prescott was mildly worried that people wouldn’t be interested in the event enough to buy tickets, but the show is already sold out. YAC is organizing a pay-what-you-can dress rehearsal seating, just because there’re so much enthusiasm for it. Yukoners are very curious, he says. The fact that many have no experience with opera is exactly why they want to see one.
The same was true for the Problematic Orchestra. Mazurek says some musicians who haven’t played with the group in a long time joined up again because they were so excited by the chance to be part of an opera.
It’s just such a classic, well-orchestrated piece, and one where a lot of the lines are doubled so you never feel alone or exposed as a musician, they say—you always feel supported by the rest of the orchestra.
That shared experience is another part of why Prescott thinks people are so keen to come out this fall. Sure, you can watch opera online, but it’s not the same, he says. Part of really understanding it is seeing it live, in a venue with other people.
“That’s what it was designed for,” Prescott says. “To be in the space and hear a real opera singer practice their craft? There’s no substitute for that.”
