Chain divas

In a transitional moment of Bicycle Opera Project’s performance, soprano Larissa Koniuk hands a keepsake to tenor Christopher Enns, who plays an auctioneer.

An evening of opera… and bicycles

Bicycles and operas are an unlikely match. Which is just as well, since everything about the Bicycle Opera Project seems unlikely.

The company of musicians, opera singers and a stage designer filled the Baxter Centre with beautiful operatic music on Sunday evening, along with a cacophony of bicycle bells.

This year’s theme was darker than usual. With the addition of designer and projectionist Sonja Rainey, the company was able to expand with sets and props. They used screens and shadow box images to give an extra level to the performances.

The one-day-only performance was called Shadow Box. The show featured six operatic vignettes about memory, each with its own story. In between, each scene was set by an operatic auctioneer, presenting souvenirs from each tale.

Before the show began, the audience was treated to Ride of the Bicycle Bells, the first piece to be commissioned by the company. It was an instrumental piece, performed entirely with bicycle bells. And for a finale, the company presented Bianchi: A Five-Minute Bicycle Opera, a pun-filled caper written and composed by a fan.

Although the performance drew opera fans, the company’s goal is to make the format accessible. All the pieces were in English, and composed and written in the past 10 years.

This is the opera troupe’s fourth year touring across Canada, powered completely by bike. Their sets and instruments travel behind them in trailers.

Initially, it was a fun way for a few artists to do some ecologically responsible touring, but the community took notice, and it didn’t take long for the project to become something more.

“We started this as just a grand adventure, we didn’t mean to start a company. But then when we came back to Toronto, we got a lot of feedback from senior level composers who thought we could get grant funding for this,” says Larissa Koniuk, the company’s artistic director.

The project got grant funding in its first year, and has been growing ever since, attracting more established talents and expanding its run every year. They have been visiting the County for three years.

“There’s a lot of artists here. And you can tell because they are a little bit faster to laugh, and they see the jokes a little bit quicker, and they’re more comfy, I think, sitting back and enjoying the show.”

Yesterday, the Bicycle Opera Project performed in Kingston, their last stop on the tour. They return to their home base in Toronto, where they will have four more performances before they begin to prepare next year’s tour.