party down the block

love the radio version of this song but the acoustic version is not too shabby.

the first time i heard this modern love was at diner 24 in the chelsea district of new york. my dj friend was playing this over the house speakers and we were rocking out to this, franz ferdinand's the dark of the matinee, shakira's estoy aqui and others at the bar.

it was "be a dj" night where you can plug in your ipod into the house sound system and play a song or two off your playlist, in between my friend's set. i thought it was the coolest idea for a late night eatery, catering to the after club crowds.

i was introduced to so much eclectic music in one night whilst noshing on creamy mashed potatoes, crisp beans and caesar salad and chair dancing with the 4 people that i had just befriended beside me at the bar. and by chair dancing, i mean grooving seated and spinning round on our bar stool seats. not girls gone wild chair dancing.

and i knew on that night, that new york and i were gonna get along just fine.

nixon in china: the manga

to whet your appetite for the upcoming nixon in china, feast your peepers on the nixon in china manga, illustrated by gerry cai and edited by roy husada.

to see this supersized, click here.

someone to watch over me

before the curtain even goes up on nixon in china, audience members will get an eyeful. on the scrim at the front of the house will be hundreds and hundreds of red army faces staring right back at them.



this past weekend, a photoshoot took place at our wardrobe department. nixon in china's projection designer sean nieuwenhuis snapped headshots of 14 of our costumed supernumeraries, who will become the faces on our custom scrim.

their faces will then be multiplied electronically so that they cover the entire width and breadth of the scrim.


projection designer sean nieuwenhuis shooting super brett macdonald. photo courtesy of terry harper

the effect is sure to have people talking!

does it come in a wallpaper too?

le tigre

it's the year of the tiger.

and according to a couple of chinese feng shui sources, being born in the year that i was, i should wear a tiger pendant or have a picture of a tiger near my front door to attract good luck and ward off bad luck.

i wonder if the tiger from my hello kitty chinese zodiac figurines count?





but if it's GOT to be a picture, perhaps this one then?



calvin & hobbes - my favourite comic strip.

here comes the sun

sun-filled sundays where i wake up leisurely, putter around in the kitchen, sit at my table eating breakfast, while looking out my 3rd story window - what's not to love?

this past few days has been like spring in vancouver. it's sunny, bright and 10C. we've hardly had a winter.

i have to curl up and turn away from my bedside window, it's so bright. i kick off the duvet mid-morning, it's so warm. and the past couple of days, i've had to put the fan on.

and on sunny sundays, i live to listen to the classics. and who better than black & white, bubble-gum pop beatles, the music love of my childhood?

follow the arrow

with all the olympic hoo-ha going on downtown, i was happy to head out to the quasi-sticks and spend the night shooting arrows. just 7 of us tonight. no sharing of targets and no waiting for another line of archers to shoot. an ideal shooting night.


i get so excited when i see untouched targets


see that empty spot between #7 and #9? that's where my favourite victory #8 lives.


at the 18m line


my tightest grouping of the night


3rd bullseye of the night

let's add a shooting range, along with a swimming pool, to my dream home.

mangaka meng

check out this radness!

unstage is a daily blog dedicated to showing off the talents of artists, graphic designers, illustrators, film-makers, photographers, interior designers, architects and web designers.

and who has been featured today but none other than artist fiona meng, who has been illustrating our VO manga for the past few seasons!

here's what upstage writes:

fiona meng is a chinese canadian manga artist/illustrator. she is currently studying in academy of art university graduate illustration program in san francisco. she became heavily influenced by japanese manga since her childhood.

in 2004, she immigrated to canada and attended emily carr university, majoring in animation. for her senior project, she created a 2D animated film based on an old chinese story. while studying in emily carr, fiona worked on a weekly project for vancouver opera, which is creating three seasons of 6-page mangas to promote their upcoming shows.

congrats to Fiona for being profiled with the best of the best!

an apple for teacher

if you're a PC user and you live for video editing, either for work or hobby, you need edius pro 5.

what does edius pro 5 do?



*handles HD as well as SD video
*it's designed for broadcast and post-production
*offers real time, multi-track, mixed format editing
*offers compositing and titling
*supports a whole whack of cameras and decks

and what's better than plowing through hundreds and hundreds of pages of an instruction book with hard to absorb material?

an online and comprehensive tutorial, that's what!

edius pro 5 101 is an online tutorial and shot 100% on and for PC. it can be found at the macprovideo website. here, the instructor draws on his extensive production background in order to apply it to the teaching of this video editing software; making the lessons easy to understand and with examples that are very relatable to the user.

oh did i mention that sean is the instructor?

check it out. download it. recommend it. thx!

olympic ground zero

i was on my way home monday after work but seems i couldn't resist the allure of the bright lights on such a clear night. walked around downtown to capture what vancouver looks like during the olympics. prettier than usual.

click here or press play for slideshow.



twinkle lights always gets me.

a keener sense of hearing

now that is some supersonic hearing!

VO's ticket centre manager, tracey flattes, was able to spot john adams' the people are the heroes from nixon in china in, of all places, the civilization IV computer game.

the 2005 strategy computer game begins in 4000 BC and has its players build empires, conquer other civilizations, forward their society through scientific and cultural progress, to finally landing a ship in a future star system in the year 2050 AD. sounds exciting, doesn't it?

as the game takes place over 6000 years, music included in the soundtrack include medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, minimalist, world and folk music. some of the game's music are original scores, while others are variants of famous pieces. featured composers include bach, beethoven, brahms, dvořák, mozart and american minimalist composer john adams!

not only can you hear the people are the heroes now as the background music in the modern age part of the game, you can also hear john adams' harmonielehre, shaker loops, the chairman dances, two fanfares and violin concerto.

civilization 4 soundtrack - people are heroes.mp3

Found at: http://www.filestube.com

gamers and opera. who would've thought that this is yet another coupling that goes together well!

thanks tracey for the find!

taking it to the streets

when nikki yanofsky sang o canada at the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics, i thought my ears were going to bleed. why the 'eff was our anthem being butchered like that? it was drawn out in that whitney houston/celine dion kinda way. where it hovered and lingered on the scale for what seemed like forever. and nobody could sing along to that rendition.

that is NOT how we like to sing our national anthem, thank you very much.

thousands invaded the 4 corners of robson and thurlow streets downtown on saturday to show the world exactly how we like to sing o canada.

true patriot love from lululemon athletica on Vimeo.

and then the 2000+ people there performed an olympic sized flash mob dance to martha and the vandellas' dancing in the street. the flash mob was organized by imagine1day.



what a way to show the world our canadian spirit.

i've been struck by fever

i'm not really a sports watcher. and when i am, i'm more a summer olympic watching gal than a winter one. (summer olympics do have gymnastics, volleyball, fencing, archery and swimming/diving that i like to watch) but i do like to watch the olympics opening ceremonies for the production value of it. the show-off showiness that the host country comes up with.

i was beyond wowed by the beijing olympics and i think it's fair to say that vancouver had the misfortune to be the next country to host an olympics game. really, how does one promote and showcase themselves to the world, following the grandiose opening ceremonies of beijing?!

but, i don't think vancouver did that badly. approximately $30-40M was spend on the opening ceremonies production (about 1/10th what beijing had spent on theirs) there were also more than 100 projectors used to create the landscape of dreams theme. and i think that without the beijing olympics, we wouldn't have had half the projections that we did for opening ceremonies.

so here's my recap of the many moving moments with the minimal amount of requisite cheese:

the good:

60,000 people packed into bc stadium for the first indoor opening ceremonies of a winter olympics ever


photo credit: kevork djansezian / getty images
four tribes of the first nations welcoming the world


photo credit: kevork djansezian / getty images
snowboarder johnny lyall makes his entrance jumping through the olympic rings


photo credit: afp getty
black armbands georgian team wore to honor their fallen comrade during the parade of nations


photo credit: pool / getty images
aurora borealis / northern lights during the hymns of the north segment

orca whale projections on the floor during the spring section


photo credit: jasper juinen / getty images
projections of salmon which then rose up to become totem poles, which transformed into trees

tap dancing punk rock fiddlers in scottish kilts and tattoo sleeves and boots on fire dancing in the rhythms of the fall segment. and slam poetry. how's that for subversive?


photo credit: streeter lecka / getty images
joni mitchell's both sides now song played while aerialist thomas saulgrain, an ecole national de cirque student, ran, cartwheeled and soared through "fields of gold" projections in who has seen the winds




photo credit: streeter lecka / getty images
canada's tribute to tron during peaks of endeavor. inline skaters wearing LED lights raced around the mountain so fast, it was like watching streaks in time lapse photos. in a word, visually awesome.


photo credit: epa
honoring the memory of georgian luger, 21 year old nodar kumaritashvili, who was killed during a training run at whistler's track earlier that day, with a moment of silence


photo credit: getty images
k.d. lang delivering a skin shivering, breath-taking rendition of leonard cohen's hallelujah. now that's a freakin' comeback.


photo credit: cameron spencer / getty images
soprano measha brueggergosman kicking ass and taking names, belting out the olympic anthem. boy, was she fierce!

the meh:

nikki yanfosky butchering the canadian anthem a la mariah//whitney style/celine dion style

sarah mclachlan performing ordinary miracle with her piano

bryan adams and nelly furtado lip-synching the uber cheesy bang the drum

and the what the heck:


photo credit: cameron spencer / getty images
the cute but ginormous sparkly constellation bear. i half expected someone to hand it a bottle of coke


photo credit: kevork djansezian / getty images
due to hydraulic problem, only 3 out of 4 pillars became erect for the lighting of the cauldron. FAIL.

oh, we were so close!

overall a day of emotional highs and lows. when i first heard on twitter of the death of nodar kumaritashvili, my heart just sunk and became heavy all afternoon. especially compounded with pictures and videos of the accident on the net, which the IOC pulled and later the video was played continuously and morbidly on CTV. by 5pm, i was outraged like so many people of the disgusting way in which his death was being exploited.

i didn't think i would enjoy the opening ceremonies with the twisted knot in my stomach, but slowly as the ceremonies began, i started tweeting and sharing live commentary with my fellow twitterers who were also watching at home. the sense of community online made my spirit felt lighter; the laughs we shared over our comedy gold tweets, the props and virtual high fives going around and the epic fails we all agreed on made me feel like even though we may have been watching separately, it was like we were kicking back in the same room, scarfing down drinks and junk food.

maybe next olympic games, we will.

up on the auction block

vancouver opera's online auction of custom prior snowboards, featuring award-winning illustrations by world-renowned artist edel rodriguez begins today! each one of a kind autographed snowboard is listed individually. bid on one or bid on all!



you can find our snowboard auctions on ebay for charity here:

norma

nixon in china

the marriage of figaro

madama butterfly

proceeds will benefit the young artist coaching intensive program (YACIN) at vancouver opera, a program designed to bring the hottest young opera singers together for a week of intense vocal coaching.

about the artist:

edel rodriguez was born in havana, cuba in 1971. he majored in painting at pratt institute (BFA) and hunter college (MFA). his work has appeared in five picture books, on stamps for the US postal service and on posters for films and broadway shows. he is a regular contributor to new yorker magazine and was an art director at TIME magazine for over a decade. he has won numerous awards for his illustrations.

with only four in the world, these snowboards will certainly appeal to both the snowboarder set and the art collectors. so ride the boards or hang 'em up; that, we'll leave up to you!

bringing home the magic part II

our director of production, terry harper, is back from his travels! ever the trooper, terry endured winter snowstorms, flight delays and rescheduling to bring us back more snapshots of our nixon in china set.


aerial shot of a hanging backdrop and trim for legs


rolling tower in front of a backdrop


forbidden city & white house backdrop


forbidden city & white house backdrop


set designer erhard rohm talking to richard blankenship


aerial view of tower, backdrop and red steps used in the ballet scene


airplane front wheels


backdrop of the american and china flags

this is better than getting souvenir t-shirts!

olympic fever: opera style

did you catch soprano measha brueggergosman singing the olympic hymn during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 winter games this past friday? can we say FIERCE?!

the new brunswick native sang the choral cantata by greek composer spyridon samaras and poet kostis palamas (no lip synching y'all) and the world watched. even better, brueggergosman sang the anthem in english and french to reflect our country's bilingualism.

this is certainly not the first time opera has made such an impression on the Olympics games.

during the closing ceremonies of the 1992 olympic games in barcelona, spain, soprano sarah brightman and tenor jose carreras sang amigos para siempre (friends for life), composed by andrew lloyd webber.



the 1998 winter games in nagano, japan saw conductor seiji ozawa conduct beethoven's symphony no. 9, ode to joy with choruses from five different continents and a japanese chorus of 2000. okay, technically it's not opera, but c'mon it's the classical classic, ode to joy.





in 2004 at the olympic games in athens, greece, russian tenor michael kleitman made his live-stage world premiere.



at the 2006 winter olympics in turino, italy, luciano pavarotti took the stage for the last time, singing nessun dorma to thundering applause and a standing ovation.



at the end of closing ceremonies of the turino games, BC born and internationally renowned tenor ben heppner sang the canadian national anthem, a cappella style, to herald the start of the countdown to the vancouver olympic games.



at the beijing olympics in 2008, cross-over superstar soprano sarah brightman shared the stage with chinese singer liu huan to sing you and me in mandarin and english.



looks like the olympics and opera go hand in hand; both capturing people's attention worldwide.

happy anti-valentine's day

showing love only one day a year? bollocks.

everyday should be i heart you day.

a hunting we will go

vancouver is positively crackling right now! a little something called the olympics and chinese new year will take place this weekend. so to help accommodate all our hunters during this crazy time, the chinatown history hunt contest will be extended until noon monday, february 15.

also, we have decided to bend the rules a little for those camera-shy hunters. you can participate in the contest and instead of taking a picture of yourself in front of the landmark as stated in the previous rules, come up with a creative way to show us that you were actually there.

wear a mask, put your back to the camera, bring along a garden gnome and put it in every shot - it's up to you. just show us that you went to each location and aren't just submitting googled images of the historic sites.

so now you can enjoy the olympic festivities, chinese new year celebrations in chinatown AND try for our super-fabulous nixon in china prize package!

恭喜發財 or gung hay fat choy!

der maestro goes vroom vroom

when our illustrious music director is not standing on vancouver opera's podium, keeping our audience enraptured, he can be found in germany making magic with the duisburg philharmonic.

an added perk of being "der maestro" when he is in residence in germany is that jonathan gets to kick it in a porsche 911 coupé. the use of the luxury sportscar was generously sponsored by sports car centre Moers.

goes to show that the unmistakable sounds of a porsche engine goes well with classical and operatic music. (even though i always hear the theme song to magnum PI whenever i see a fast car drive away)

another candle on the cake

my birthday fell on a monday this year, so the only logical thing for me to do was to take my production day and give myself a 3 day weekend.

as i'm already in my 30s and have my 40s (!) to look forward to, i've been having some anxiety about turning another year older. i know that it's just the dread of staring down at the barrel of 40. i also know that when i hit my 40s, if i'm still fit and unbelievably young looking, (like by 10+ years or more?) i'll once again look forward to having birthdays.

i guess i'm enjoying being in my 30s and am sad at the thought of leaving a decade that has been pretty darn good to me.

so as i'm a bit subdued about my birthday but trying to handle it with grace, i wanted a mellow weekend.

lots of wonderful things that happened to make my weekend pretty effin' awesome.

1. massage to kick start the weekend


2. a yearly birthday tradition of eating sushi and japanese food at the eatery with peggy


3. dc shoes & underworld party at fortune sound lounge. so basically, a huge skater boys and their wannabe betties party. the guys looked like they just came from a skate park and the girls looked like they were extras from a pat benatar 80s music video. and we, all ex-ravers in our heydays, were feeling rather old at this party. although the music was rad, there was no escaping the obvious: we all had about 10-15 years on these kids!

4. getting my first dvd from rogers direct video in the mail (canada's equivalent to netflix, one of the most awesome things about the states)


5. cherry blossoms blooming in january instead of march/april, due to vancouver hardly having a winter. we are hosting the winter olympics this weekend, are we not?

6. birthday wishes, prezzies, a wonderfully handmade birday card from sean (love it, love the prezzie!) and a youtube birthday shout out from peggy.



peggy (monchichi216) left in the comments box, immortalized for all to see:

Happy Bday to my fav ling ling. lucky to have a great friend like you cuz i know youll always have my back as i do with u! may this year be full of all the good stuff!
luv ya! <3 Peg

i never had a youtube birthday serenade before. that was so full of neat. thanks peggy! luv ya back!

7. more bathtime shenanigans with jonesy. she had me in giggles with her newest skill: pulling the bath plug out.









8. holing up with sean and watching a triple pack of horror/sci-fi/thriller movies. yup, that did the trick to helping me forget about my impending birthday. girly rom-com for my birthday kinda gal, i'm not.





zombieland. omg, i've been wanting to watch this movie since it first came out in theatres. this movie is hilarious. especially columbus' zombie survival rules.



for a sick and twisted movie that will bring the tension, surveillance is pretty hard to top. it's stomach knotting in its unrepentant evilness. i thought jennifer lynch's first movie, boxing helena, was disturbing to watch, this one got it beat hands down. watch it at your peril. chip off the old block, jennifer lynch is way creepier than her dad, director david lynch.

after surveillance, anything we'd watch would be a walk in the park. and that was the 'meh' movie of pandorum.

sean was such a sport. i don't think he's ever seen or heard me scream, jump, yelp or cover my eyes as much as i did this weekend. for valentines day, we're going to have to lighten it up.

9. i took yesterday off from work to not only enjoy a 3 day weekend, but also in hopes of avoiding the birthday embarrassment all the staff goes through at the office. or as i like to call it, "excuse to have cake" day. but no dice. i got card, cake and sung to from my co-workers that turned me into a nice shade of rosé to go with 2 birthday cakes: mocha cheescake and pecan pie. luckily, the embarrassment level was kept to a minimum.

and that's a wrap for this year's birthday. and boy, did i instantly feel more carefree and chipper as i headed home. i always feel good the day after, once my birthday has passed. now i can go back to enjoying my everydays.

until next year, birthday anxiety be gone.