This Saturday, on CBC Radio’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, I’ll be presenting a Canadian Opera Company production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, starring soprano Rinat Shaham. Carmen is an opera that’s impossible not to love. It’s not for nothing it’s one of the most popular operas of all time. And Carmen herself is a big…
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I always like it when something opens up my ears in ways I hadn’t considered. That’s exactly what happened this week when I listened to a new piece by Gordon Monahan called A Piano Listening to Itself. Monahan’s been creating compositions for years that force us to think about how we listen – he’s swung…
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When I was a kid, like many kids, the stories I loved best were the ones with talking animals, from Louis the swan in The Trumpet of the Swan, to the rabbits in Watership Down, to a certain frog named Kermit. There’s something undeniably magical about looking at the human world through the eyes of animals….
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Once in a while I’m lucky enough to get to keep Sheryl MacKay‘s chair warm while she’s off on holiday. This weekend on NXNW on CBC Radio 1 I’m thrilled to get the chance to listen to some of my favourite music and share it with folks listening across BC. On July 24th I’m revisiting…
Read MorePaolo Pietropaolo is a journalist, broadcaster, composer and writer based in Vancouver, Canada.