Recent 50th Anniversary production of louis Riel is a gift to Canadian opera. .
Louis Riel based on the work of composer of Harry Somers and the libretto by Mavor Moore, is directed by Peter Hinton, former head of theatre at the National Arts Centre. It opened at the NAC Thursday with the NAC Orchestra conducted by Alexander Shelley. The audience was treated to an exciting reworking of this “music drama”, as Somers called it when it was first created at the O’Keefe Centre in 1967. We now can witness a new 50th-anniversary production which brings Canada into the global realm of contemporary performance, revising 19th Century preconceived notions of Opera. …