This is a link to a short video excerpt from Life Opera. This video requires a password to view. The password is grapefruit .

Life Opera is a new work for 12 singers combining live singing with video. 

12 people who form a kind of cross section of Canadian society were asked to talk about the emotional qualities of their everyday lives. 

The 12 subjects cover a wide spectrum of age , professions, and cultural background, with the youngest being in their twenties, and the oldest in her eighties. 

They are:

David Atkinson – Executive, software development

Caroline Brunt – street nurse

Tara Codrington – video editor

Anamaria Espinel – Spanish language instructor

Carolyn Hall – doctor

Clive Hu – banker

Joel Kroeker – music therapist

Ed Musto – butcher

Florence Nicholson – retired school teacher

Aaron Pettigrew – social worker

Kristi Sinclair – works in television- singer/songwriter

Iver Zhang – music producer

These interviews were recorded on video, which then formed the basis of texts to be sung by 12 singers.  Each of the 12 singers inhabit the character of one of the interview subjects. 

In its final form, Life Opera will be performed live by the 12 singers with the 12 subjects appearing on video.

Life Opera is about the poetry of everyday speech; how the normal content of people’s speech is turned into material to be sung. 

Each participant was asked to talk about the feelings that they’ve experienced surrounding emotional peaks in their lives. Something that made them very angry: very happy: very sad: or in some way stretched them emotionally. And if they’ve ever felt that they wanted to kill somebody. Then there are also dances, jokes, and physical actions that join people in their common humanity.

This is the territory in which opera has traditionally operated : the feelings surrounding an event, not necessarily the history of the event.

The music, text and concept are by Peter Hannan.