ROMEO ET JULIETTE Comes to The Canadian Opera Company

The Canadian Opera Company’s 2025/2026 season will kick off with an operatic take on literature’s greatest romance: Roméo et Juliette. Fate and timing are tragically misaligned when lovers from feuding families risk it all to be together in the masterpiece opera from French composer Charles Gounod. This fall marks the opera’s first appearance in over 30 years at the COC and, with a stellar cast supporting a fantastical new production, it’s one that audiences won’t want to miss! Roméo et Juliette runs for seven performances at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on September 27, October 5, 8, 10, 14, 16 and 18, 2025.

Roméo et Juliette beautifully combines the epic enormity of French grand opera with the soft intimacy of the opera’s central romance. Gounod’s work is famous for its unusual number of love duets – which also later inspired Massenet’s Werther – giving the acclaimed COC Orchestra plenty to navigate under the expert baton of returning Canadian conductor Yves Abel alongside Price Family Chorus Master Sandra Horst leading the COC Chorus.

Stephen Costello and Kseniia Proshina star as the classically star-crossed lovers; this will be a COC debut for the “sweet, emotive” (OperaWire) soprano who is reprising her turn as Juliette after performing the iconic role in the production’s premiere in Malmö, Sweden. Costello’s performance as lovestruck Roméo is a return to the COC for the Richard Tucker Award-winning tenor stepping in for Bekhzod Davronov who has unfortunately withdrawn from the production.

The opera also features a number of alumni from the COC’s prestigious Ensemble Studio program: bass-baritone Gordon Bintner and baritone Korin-Thomas Smith share the role of Mercutio, tenor Owen McCausland is hot-tempered Tybalt, bass-baritone Alex Halliday is the Duke of Verona, mezzo-soprano Alex Hetherington is Roméo’s page, Stéphano, and baritone Justin Welsh is Grégorio, a member of the Capulet household. Among other cast making COC debuts is baritone Mark Stone taking on the role of Count Capulet and first-year Ensemble Studio artists Angelo Moretti and Ben Wallace performing as Roméo’s cousin Benvolio and Juliette’s suitor Pâris, respectively. Bass Robert Pomakov and mezzo-soprano Meghan Latham complete the cast, returning to the COC in the roles of the well-intentioned Frère Laurent and Juliette’s nurse, Gertrude.

For this production, director Amy Lane, whose cabaret-infused production of Faust at the COC delightfully “blurr[ed] the lines between fantasy and reality” (Broadway World), has set the action in Gilded Age New York where a simmering, long-standing rivalry is about to ignite at a lavish costume party. Under Lane’s creative vision, the story unfolds against a bustling urban centre where recently established immigrants are clashing for power against the city’s old money dynasties.

Set & Costume Designer Emma Ryott, alongside lighting designer Charlie Morgan Jones, sets a raucous tone off the top with a circus-themed ball complete with lush velvet drapes, oversized tarot cards, and colourful lighting; over the course of the opera, however, both scale and colour are reined in as the title lovers’ world contracts until they are the only two who remain in a heartbreaking final moment.

Roméo et Juliette is sung in French and presented by the COC with English and French SURTITLES™.