Encore is a magic word in the performing arts. Every performer aspires to hear the demand “encore! encore!” Composers and librettists yearn for second and subsequent productions of their operas. Opera companies envision their commissions entering the opera canon. This past summer during the Banff Opera Colloquium, opera companies pondered how to make new operas live beyond their premieres.

The week prior to the Colloquium, the atmosphere at the Centre vibrated with energy and intensity as the creative teams for six opera projects explored their works face-to-face with their collaborators. Many of the collaborators had been creating separately, often thousands of miles apart.

Among the essential resources at their disposal were four respected opera mentors: John Murrell, the Centre’s artist emeritus, who is Canada’s most produced playwright and who in the past decade has written four opera librettos; John Estacio, who has composed two produced operas with Murrell and is finalizing their third together; Kelly Robinson, acclaimed theatre/opera director, and head of Theatre Arts at the Centre; and Jonathan Dove, in his Jarislowsky Master Artist residency, one of Britain’s most produced contemporary opera composers.

Four Canadian opera companies were in residence for Creative Connections, a new initiative by opera.ca, funded by the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation, with support from the Centre. Also with access to the same resources were two other projects — Vancouver Opera’s Lillian Alling, the third Estacio/Murrell collaboration, which premieres in October 2010, and a chamber opera based on the Air India crash, to be presented at a future Cork Midsummer Festival in Ireland and at the PuSh Festival in Vancouver.

To a company unfamiliar with the unique process of developing a new opera, the expertise the Centre can offer is invaluable. Speaking of the Centre’s support for the Air India opera, Robinson noted, “We are providing a pivotal point in the process wherein we will build the sets and the costumes, and have a first production here in which the richness of our resources can be put towards the things that become very expensive. That is theatre time, building, production time, lighting — all those things can be worked out here before moving on to the theatres where those sort of costs can be prohibitive.”

As a featured speaker at the third biennial Opera Colloquium, Dove outlined the conditions and relationships that allowed multiple productions of his mainstage operas in seven countries on stage, television, and DVD. Robinson challenged the opera companies present to consider “What manifesto can we create and agree to as our commitment to new works and getting them beyond the first production?”

“One of the big challenges is cost and risk,” Robinson pointed out, “and the more it costs the less risk you can afford. If organizations like the Centre can provide opportunities for workshops outside the funding of the commissioning company, we reduce the risk by increasing the quality.”

Filumena, Transit of Venus, Frobisher, and The Handmaid’s Tale were cited as Canadian success stories, however it was noted that only 22 of the 46 Canadian opera projects developed in the past eight years have actually been produced, and few received second productions. Participants discussed the cachet that comes with a premiere but is missing in subsequent mountings. Filumena, co-commissioned by Calgary Opera and The Centre, was produced four times — an outstanding success for new works in Canada.

Producers agreed that collaboration among the entire creative team is a skill that must be further developed in order to support new work, and that was evident in the workshops preceding the Colloquium. While the Calgary actors revelled in the cold readings, as they embrace new works more frequently, the singers — participants in the Centre’s Opera as Theatre program — were less comfortable because their process is to enter rehearsals with the music and words already memorized.

The colloquium participants noted that new work demands that opera practitioners be multi-talented, and that training as actor-singers is essential, as is access to specialists in dramaturgy for opera. All agreed that artists must be confident that producers believe in the works, and that new works must create a world that reflects singers’ (and audiences’) values and cultures, rather than ancient history.

Companies also need to understand how other opera companies operate, since they are potential partners in both the development and remounting of new works.

Calgary Opera’s Bob McPhee, whose experience with new works includes Filumena and Frobisher, both co-commissioned with the Centre, said that a continued commitment to new work is key. “Our company has been doing a new work or a Canadian premiere every January for 10 years. We had to build through the whole organization the belief that new work is required. It’s up to leadership to promote the value of new works and encourage buy-in by everyone.”

Robinson says The Banff Centre has a vital role to play in supporting new opera. “We want to be a catalyst to the companies’ ambitions, desires, and ability to do new work. So our interest now is both in the composer and librettist and also in the company in trying to make either that first or second project the most successful that it can be by offering partnerships around writing, work shopping, and production of new works.”

One serendipitous outcome of the Opera Colloquium was that singers enrolled in the Centre’s Opera as Theatre program were auditioned by the directors of every major Canadian opera company, a rare opportunity for emerging opera artists.