Constance Fisher

Fisher, Constance

Constance Fisher. Stage director, soprano, b Hamilton, Ont, 3 Oct 1928; ARCT piano 1950, ARCT voice 1951. After studies with Alberto Guerrero (piano), and Weldon Kilburn and Irene Jessner (voice) at the RCMT and with Herman Geiger-Torel at the Royal Cons Opera School, she made her debut in 1957 with the Opera Festival of Toronto (later COC) as the Mother in Hansel and Gretel. A member of the COC until 1966, she sang Musetta in La Bohème (1963) and, in touring productions, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (1963) and Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus (1964, 1965), among other roles. She also sang Hebe in Orpheus in the Underworld at the 1959 Stratford Festival, and both Donna Anna and Donna Elvira in the New England Opera Theatre's Don Giovanni on its 1960 US tour. After making her professional debut as a stage director (1968) with a production of La Bohème for the COC, she worked 1968-70 as a staff producer at Sadler's Wells. She directed productions of Madama Butterfly, Così fan tutte, Orpheus in the Underworld and Hansel and Gretel at the Banff SFA and, later, The Barber of Seville (1973), L'Heure espagnole (1974), Il Tabarro (1975) and Tosca (1976) for the COC. In 1972 she became stage director and instructor and in 1978 divisional co-ordinator and resident stage director at the University of Toronto Opera Division, for which she has directed several productions, including the Canadian premieres of Robert Ward's The Crucible (1976), Janáček's Katya Kabanová (1977), Vaughan Williams' Sir John in Love (1984), and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta (1989). She also has directed for the Edmonton, Southern Alberta, and Manitoba opera associations, for the Cincinnati Summer Opera - Don Giovanni, her US debut, 1977 - and for the Tulsa Opera (Don Giovanni, 1979). She is married to the conductor James Craig.