For several years I blogged about, inter alia, opera using the Live Journal platform. Then I decided to consolidate my opera related blog posts on WordPress so that they might be more easily accessible to people who didn’t use Live Journal and/or weren’t interested in my thoughts on other issues nor my quotidian trivia. Things grew from there much to my surprise. Now I’m getting around 6000 hits/month and a certain amount of recognition. Besides this blog, I’ve appeared in several COC podcasts and written a couple of reviews for Opera Canada magazine.
As for me, I’m a 50 something Toronto resident and strictly an amateur when it comes to opera. By virtue of location, most of the opera performances I write about are either from the Canadian Opera Company (where I am a subscriber) or from the many, smaller, often very innovative, opera companies that are such an important, if not well known, part of the Toronto opera scene. I also cover recitals and review video-recordings. There are over 200 DVD and Blu-ray reviews on this site.
I am on Twitter as @johngilks and should you feel moved to contact me by email, I’m jgilks AT rogers DOT com.
The title banner image shows Lawrence Zazzo and Isabel Bayrakdarian in Robert Carsen’s 2011 production for the COC of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The original photograph is by Michael Cooper with a wee bit of Photoshopping by me to ‘stretch’ it to fit.
