The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is partnering with Against the Grain Theatre, a Toronto-based experimental opera company, for a streaming version of Handel’s Messiah entitled Messiah/Complex. The production, which will premiere with a live watch party at the theater’s website and on AtG TV on December 13, is co-directed by Joel Ivany, Against the Grain Theatre’s founding artistic director, and Reneltta Arluk, director of Indigenous arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The seventy-minute virtual presentation, filmed at locations across Canada, will be performed and sung in Dene, Inuktitut, Southern Tutchone, Arabic, and French, and include multilingual translations. Soloists and choirs representing every Canadian province and territory will perform remotely with musicians of the TSO conducted by Johannes Debus. In addition to vocal soloists, choirs featured in the film will include Le Choeur Louisbourg (New Brunswick), the Halifax Camerata Singers (Nova Scotia), the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (Ontario), and the University of Prince Edward Island Chamber Chorus (Prince Edward Island).
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