Sixty years ago, the organization that was to become the Canadian Opera Company presented a handful of productions on a rented stage featuring student singers backed by a cobbled-together orchestra. Today the COC presents a full season of opera featuring a professional ensemble joined by singers of international renown backed by a first-rate orchestra in a state-of-the-art facility. It's been quite a ride. This fabulous, full-color tribute on the occasion of the COC's sixtieth anniversary makes the most of the company's rich archive of photographs to present a visually stunning record of its passage from ardent amateur to world-renowned professional status. Opera buffs will find vintage pictures of early productions featuring the likes of Maureen Forrester and Teresa Stratas and brilliant stills from the wildly successful Ring Cycle that marked the opening of the company's new home, the Four Seasons Centre, in 2006. The company's history is told in chapters corresponding to the tenure of each of its general directors. From its origins in the University of Toronto's music department, through its struggling years under the tutelage of the indefatigable Hermann Geiger Torel, its achievements under the direction of his successors, Lotfi Mansouri, Brian Dickie, and Richard Bradshaw, to its present eminence overseen by Alexander Neef, readers will share in the minor setbacks and major triumphs that have marked these magnificent six decades.

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