Soprano Jonelle Sills came into the world already steeped in music — her mother Desiree sang through her entire pregnancy.

In this Mother's Day conversation, the two of them sit down together for the first time to talk about gospel choirs and opera stages, about coming to Canada with nothing, about the voice Jonelle wanted to keep only for herself, and about what it means to watch someone you love become who they were always going to be.

Bring a tissue.

Today we're joined by a legendary member of the Vancouver Opera Chorus, Don Wright. We discuss his family's legacy, the life of a chorus singer, the importance of opera in education, and memorable moments from a lifetime in the art form.

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Episode Credits:

Don Wright - Chorister, Vancouver Opera Chorus

Ashley Daniel Foot - Host & Creator, Inside Vancouver Opera

Mack McGillivray - Producer, Inside Vancouver Opera

Mimì is one of opera's most beloved heroines. Gentle. Luminous. Dying beautifully in a Parisian garret while the orchestra swells around her.

She was also, in Henri Murger's source novel, a fickle, materialistic flirt her lover described as being "wedded to a thunderstorm." A gadabout. Complicated. Inconvenient. Not particularly easy to mourn.

Puccini made a decision. You've been feeling the consequences ever since.

In this episode, host Ashley Daniel Foot sits down with Vancouver Opera's researcher and editor Jane Potter — the creative force behind our composer series for the past three years — to pull apart the opera everyone thinks they know. They cover the missing act that explains Rodolfo's jealous rage. The real woman Puccini erased to create his heroine. The two source characters — Francine and Mademoiselle Mimì — whose DNA got merged into the figure we recognize. The Viscount nobody talks about.

They also go deep on Kevin Ng's essay Beautiful Deaths: How La Bohème Transformed Tuberculosis into Art — tracking how consumption went from epidemic catastrophe to aristocratic beauty standard, from Lord Byron to Rent to Moulin Rouge!, and how Puccini wrote the disease's physical reality directly into the music itself.

Plus: the 1896 premiere critics who called it "a momentary error" and suggested Puccini return to the straight road before further damage was done. The audience that sold out 24 performances that same month. And Benjamin Britten, who in 1951 delivered the greatest backhanded opera critique of the 20th century.

La Bohème runs April 25 through May 3 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets at vancouveropera.ca. Kevin Ng's essay Beautiful Deaths is available now on the Inside Vancouver Opera Substack.

Maestro Jonathan Darlington on Puccini, broken batons, being mistaken for Richard Gere in Italian lifts, and why La Bohème will undo you — every time.

Jonathan Darlington led Vancouver Opera for nearly twenty years. He's since conducted at the Vienna State Opera, the Semperoper Dresden, the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Swedish Opera, and the Nürnberger Symphoniker, where he's now Chief Conductor. He lives in Paris — ten minutes from the neighbourhood where La Bohème is actually set. And he keeps coming back to Vancouver.

This week he's back in the pit at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for La Bohème — Puccini's love story about young artists in Paris trying to stay warm, fall in love, and stay alive. It's the fastest-selling production in Vancouver Opera's sixty-six year history.

In this conversation, Ashley Daniel Foot asks Darlington what's actually going through his mind in the sixteen bars before the curtain rises, how the streets of Vancouver have changed the way he hears Puccini, why he still wants to conduct one specific opera just to erase a humiliation from thirty years ago, and what it felt like to open Sweeney Todd surrounded by a large metal contraption on stage while trying to frighten the audience — a task made easier, he admits, by the fact that he was already terrified himself.

Plus: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carlos Kleiber, Mirella Freni, four piccolos playing fortissimo, a Vancouver harpsichord builder who makes his batons by hand, and the pre-show meal of champions.

La Bohème runs April 25 to May 3 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets at vancouveropera.ca.

Today we are joined by the Vancouver Opera Orchestra's Principal Harpist, Janelle Nadeau. In this episode we explore the versatile and ancient art of the harp, Janelle's journey with the instrument, and the unique beauty of live performance.

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Episode Credits:

Janelle Nadeau - Principal Harpist, Vancouver Opera Orchestra

Ashley Daniel Foot - Host & Creator, Inside Vancouver Opera

Mack McGillivray - Producer, Inside Vancouver Opera

She walks onto the stage, acknowledges the audience, and gestures toward the piano. There is no one there.

Soprano and pianist Rachel Fenlon has spent the last several years doing something almost unthinkable in classical music — accompanying herself. Singing and playing at once. Not as a gimmick, but as a complete artistic philosophy that has taken her from Vancouver to Berlin to the stages of Europe, and to a debut album — Winterreise — that became the first self-accompanied recording of Schubert's cycle.

It was named Album of the Week by both CBC Canada and BBC Radio 3. Critics called it extraordinary. And it started with grief, isolation, and a very quiet voice she decided to follow.

Now she's coming home — to the Kay Meek Arts Centre in West Vancouver on April 12 — and we sat down with her to talk about solitude, risk, what it costs to hold everything yourself, and what it feels like when it finally disappears.

Rachel Fenlon performs at the Kay Meek Arts Centre, April 12. Tickets here

Nicole Lamb is Vancouver Opera’s Director of Artistic and Production. For the last few seasons, she’s been one of the key people deciding what you see on stage and how it all comes together, from season planning and artistic teams to the thousand invisible choices about budget, time, and people that make an opera actually happen.

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Episode Credits:

Nicole Lamb - Guest, Director of Artistic and Production at Vancouver Opera

Ashley Daniel Foot - Host, Inside Vancouver Opera

Mack McGillivray - Producer, Inside Vancouver Opera

Veteran Canadian journalist Paul Wells joins Inside Vancouver Opera for a wide-ranging conversation about journalism, politics, and the role the arts play in shaping public life.

For decades, Wells has been one of the country’s most thoughtful political writers, known for his long-form analysis and deep historical perspective on Canadian politics. In this conversation, he reflects on his early days writing about jazz, his years covering Parliament Hill, and his move to independent journalism on Substack.

Wells also discusses the origins of The Paul Wells Road Show, a live event that brings together politics, culture, and conversation. On March 20, the Road Show arrives in Vancouver in partnership with Vancouver Opera, featuring BC Premier David Eby, journalist Richard Zussman, former federal minister James Moore, CBC political podcaster Rachel Siegel, and renowned forest ecologist Suzanne Simard.

Along the way, Wells shares why he believes the arts are essential to civic life and why culture often reveals more about society than politics alone.

🎙 Hosted by Ashley Daniel Foot, Director of Engagement and Civic Practice at Vancouver Opera.