Edmonton Opera (EO), like countless other arts organizations, feared irrelevancy as Covid emaciated its public profle. The company had offered some opera-in-a-parking lot virtual programs over the pandemic year 2020, but when local utility provider Epcor unveiled a new fund with a mandate to support arts projects in the city, then-EO general director Tim Yakimec began brainstorming ways the company could utilize this funding to develop new projects to share with its audience and nurture artistic talent in such hard times.
The company had never been a commissioner of new work, but Yakimec saw an opportunity to venture in that direction in a fruitful, if modest, way with the help of the fund. The result was The Wild Rose Opera Project, a series of four new, short operas composed by four composers with connections to Alberta. They assigned current go-to librettist, internationally-renowned Grand Prairie native, Royce Vavrek, to write all the texts. He has been commissioned by companies in America and Europe, large and small, to write libretti for numerous composers, including an adaptation of George Saunders’ innovative novel for the 2025 Metropolitan Opera season. The budget for the Edmonton project was
