Careers & Auditions

The Opera Sprouts Initiative is a pilot project exploring the world of creating new opera for youth in BC schools. In partnership with Vancouver Opera, this initiative is focused on working with composer/librettist teams interested in mentorship, process and building collaborative relationships as the core of developing new work for schools, within the setting of a professional opera company.

Pacific Opera supports early career practitioners to develop their opera practice through extended residencies of up to one year with the organization. We offer residencies and internships tailored to the artist’s interests and expertise, and opportunities to work alongside some of Canada’s most accomplished opera artists. Residencies will provide immersive opportunities for skills development, mentorship, and the advancement of professional networks.

Pacific Opera will provide successful applicants with work space for the duration of the residency, provide return transportation, and assistance in securing accommodation. Pacific Opera will collaborate with successful applicants to plan the residency, timelines, establishing mentor relationships, and guidance on career planning.

Financial Support

Financial support is contingent upon grants successfully awarded by third party funding programs. A minimum of eight months lead time is required to make applications for financial support from programs including, but not limited to the following:

• British Columbia Arts Council – Early Career Development Program
• Canada Council for the Arts – Supporting Artistic Practice
• Employment and Social Development Canada – Canada Summer Jobs Program

For All to Hear offers IBPoC artists an opportunity – a platform – to share their experiences as opera artists and to speak to the systemic inequities that perpetuate racism in our art form and our communities. Communication of truths is what art and artists can do with unequaled directness.

The Civic Engagement Artist Residency includes both a virtual residency focused on the invention, development and execution of a digital work, and an in person residency, where artists will be creating site-specific work for Voices in Nature, preparing and performing in a concert at the Baumann, and be engaged with various community partners.

In the 2018 / 2019 season only 6.2% of conductors in the largest six Canadian opera companies were women. There are no female Music Directors currently in the top 10 Canadian opera companies, and the number of female-identifying music directors or assistant conductors in the top 12 Canadian Symphony orchestras who were born and trained in Canada is only 1. We want this to change.

Women in Musical Leadership is a program designed to offer opportunities to top Canadian talent and address the longstanding gender imbalance in music direction and conducting in opera and classical music. It’s an advanced three-year fellowship program for 6 music directors/conductors in cohorts of 2, beginning a year apart. With the support of like-minded organizations across Canada, the goal of Women in Musical Leadership is to provide multi-faceted practical conducting training, mentorship, and professional opportunities to promising conducting talent, allowing them to focus solely on conducting for three years.

In its inaugural year, The Arts Leadership Training Program hopes to help move the future of the arts in a positive direction for all, and to give BIPoC creatives a seat at a table they historically have been excluded from: arts leadership. Designed with a dual system of seminars and internships, mentorship is a key element of this program, allowing the participants to create strong relationships with the professionals that they are involved with throughout the year. With arts and educational institutions across the country taking part, this program fosters career growth and real-life experience for upcoming arts leaders.

Pacific Opera Victoria is looking for submissions of musical works exploring the voice, drama, and the stage to be part of a workshop and concert in April 2023. We want to support new compositional works and explorations that embrace the unique tools of the operatic art form, and the artists that create them. Participants will have an opportunity to establish professional connections and gain insight into composing as a career path through this workshop and performance opportunity.

Pacific Opera Victoria is pleased to be offering “Earn and Learn Placements” through the Association for Opera in Canada (AOC) Opera Artist Resilience Program, funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage. These placements allow artists to be embedded within an organization to help them improve or develop employable skills by providing learning and professional development opportunities of up to 80 hours for $2500.