Courtesy of Canadian Opera Company

Conductor Richard Bradshaw is the General Director of the Canadian Opera Company. Bradshaw first came to the Canadian Opera Company as guest conductor in 1988. In the following year, he became Chief Conductor and Head of Music, a position he held from 1989 to 1994, when he was appointed Artistic Director. In January 1998, he was named General Director, the first musician to lead the COC since Ettore Mazzoleni in the late 1950s. 

Born in England in 1944, Richard Bradshaw received an honours degree in English at London University in 1965. He studied conducting privately with Sir Adrian Boult, subsequently receiving a Gulbenkian Conducting Fellowship to work with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the supervision of Sir Charles Groves. He also worked as assistant to Sir John Pritchard.

In a career taking him throughout the world, Richard Bradshaw has conducted a wide-ranging repertoire of both operatic and orchestral music. He was Chorus Director at the Glyndebourne Festival from 1975 – 1977 and Resident Conductor at San Francisco Opera from 1977 – 1989. He has frequently conducted for most of the major international opera companies, symphony orchestras and music festivals.

In his 18 years with the COC, he has conducted more than 60 operas. Alongside traditional operatic fare, he has introduced cutting edge COC productions such as Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung, Salome, Mario and the Magician, Jenůfa and Oedipus Rex with Symphony of Psalms, forging a strong artistic identity for the company.

Bradshaw places major emphasis on the theatrical as well as musical values of opera. He has enticed from the world of film and theatre such innovative directors as Robert Lepage, Atom Egoyan and François Girard. The double bill of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, directed by Lepage, set the standard for this type of collaboration and brought the COC enormous international acclaim and its first invitation to the Edinburgh Festival where the production received two prestigious awards. Atom Egoyan’s 1996 production of Salome and François Girard’s 1997 production of Oedipus Rex with Symphony of Psalms drew large audiences of younger people attracted to opera for the first time. Girard’s production received eight Dora Mavor Moore Awards confirming Bradshaw’s ambitious goal of making the COC “the best theatre in town.” In August 2002, the COC was invited back to the Edinburgh Festival and triumphed with its production of Oedipus Rex with Symphony of Psalms. The company’s international critical success has been confirmed with near capacity audiences at home.

Bradshaw has strengthened the musical side of the COC. The COC Orchestra and Chorus have both grown in reputation and are acknowledged as the artistic backbone of the company. Under his leadership, the COC has taken on an impressive schedule of concerts and recordings, in collaboration with the CBC, Harbourfront Centre and the Toronto Centre for the Arts. These opportunities allow the company to explore and present a wide variety of repertoire. Popular favourites have been performed in the annual free Altamira Summer Opera Concerts at Harbourfront Centre. At the Toronto Centre for the Arts, Bradshaw has had the opportunity to program unusual operas in concert (Iolanta, Giovanna D’Arco), music theatre pieces (The Soldier’s Tale), or concert pieces by opera composers (Verdi’s Requiem, Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ). Concerts at the CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio have formed the basis for the COC’s recordings with CBC Records.

Bradshaw has established an ongoing recording partnership with CBC Records, the first in the COC’s history. Since 1995, a series of CDs has been released and more are planned. Featuring major Canadian singers such as Russell Braun, Benjamin Butterfield, Richard Margison, Wendy Nielsen, Brett Polegato, Gary Relyea and Michael Schade, the CDs have been best-sellers in Canada. Soirée Française, featuring Schade and Braun, won a 1998 Juno Award as well as the Gabriel Fauré Award from France’s Académie du Disque Lyrique. Bradshaw can also be heard with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on the CBC recording of the Millennium Opera Gala at Roy Thomson Hall and with Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and members of the COC Ensemble in the soundtrack to the Rhombus Inc. film Don Giovanni: Leporello’s Revenge.

Also vital to the COC’s development is Bradshaw’s unswerving commitment to the creation and performance of new Canadian opera. Continuing the Composer-in-Residence program established by Lotfi Mansouri, three full-length chamber operas (Guacamayo’s Old Song and Dance, Nosferatu and Red Emma) have been produced under Bradshaw’s stewardship. In 1999 he conducted the world premiere of The Golden Ass, a collaboration of Robertson Davies with composer Randolph Peters. Alexina Louie was commissioned by Bradshaw to write a full-length opera, The Scarlet Princess, with libretto by David Henry Hwang, which premiered in April 2002. Randolph Peters has been commissioned to write his third opera for the COC, this time with Margaret Atwood as librettist. The opera is based on the myth of Inanna, younger sister of the goddess of Death, after a Mesopotamian legend.

Bradshaw has introduced an impressive number of extraordinary new singers to the public and mounted productions specifically chosen to feature the talents of major Canadian artists who return to the COC on a regular basis. Marina Mescheriakova (Luisa Miller, Madama Butterfly, Norma), Clifton Forbis (Eugene Onegin, Fidelio, Die Walküre), Ljuba Kazarnovskaya (Salome), to name just three, have been propelled from their COC engagements to starring roles around the world. Canadian stars such as Ben Heppner (Pagliacci), Richard Margison (Il Trovatore, Turandot), Michael Schade (Oedipus Rex with Symphony of Psalms) and Russell Braun (The Barber of Seville, Billy Budd) return to the COC stage as often as their busy international schedules permit and perform with Bradshaw in concert on other occasions. 

The greatest challenge of Bradshaw’s tenure at the COC has been the building of a new opera house for the company. Under the Canadian Opera House Corporation, the distinguished architectural firm A. J. Diamond, Donald Schmitt and Company was selected to design the new house at the corner of Queen Street West and University Avenue in downtown Toronto. The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts opened its doors in June 2006 to critical acclaim and, in September, Bradshaw conducted the first complete cycle in Canada of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the new opera house.

Richard Bradshaw is a Senior Fellow of Massey College, was named 2006/2007 Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Massey College, Distinguished Visitor in Music and recipient of the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, University of Toronto; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music; Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters of the Republic of France and Member of the Order of Ontario.