Winnipeg director went on to lead Royal Swedish Opera

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This article was published 13/03/2024 (916 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Michael Cavanagh, who rose from Manitoba Opera’s children’s chorus to artistic director of one of Europe’s grandest opera companies, died Wednesday morning in London, Ont.

Cavanagh, 62, had leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a complication from bladder cancer, according to an obituary posted on Facebook by his wife, soprano Jackie Short.

He was born in Winnipeg and had a long association with Manitoba Opera, most notably as director of 12 productions, with Falstaff in 2016, The Magic Flute in 2011 and Il Trovatore in 2008 being the most recent.

“It’s really, really sad news,” said Larry Desrochers, Manitoba Opera’s general director and chief executive officer, whose friendship with Cavanagh goes back to the 1980s, when Desrochers was head of the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival and Cavanagh headed an a cappella fringe show.

“When Mike walked into the room he was everybody’s friend right away. Really great qualities as a director in that regard.”

In an interview with the Free Press prior to Manitoba Opera’s 50th anniversary concert in 2023, Cavanagh said he owed much of his opera career to his time with the company, which began as a 12-year-old during the 1974 production of Tosca.

He would perform in eight Manitoba Opera productions as an adult chorister, but found out in his 20s while studying singing in Hamburg, Germany, that he didn’t have the drive to be among the best.

“I realized I was in the wrong end of the right business,” he said.

His operatic pivot took place in Winnipeg thanks to Irving Guttman, the impresario and Manitoba Opera co-founder, who put him to work in almost every job in the company.

“I was a stagehand, I was a stage manager, I built props, I drove the truck on the school tour,” he said.

“I was lucky enough to be in a city with a company like Manitoba Opera that not only did great shows at a really high level, but they gave people like me opportunities to learn. I am forever grateful.”

Cavanagh would move on in the 1990s to the Vancouver Opera and the Edmonton Opera; he was artistic director of the latter. He also joined the faculty at the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western University in London, Ont., where he lived with his family.

Cavanagh directed more than 150 operas in North America and Europe during his career, including a Vancouver Opera production of Nixon in China in 2010 that coincided with the Winter Olympics and was revived in San Francisco, Dublin and at the Royal Swedish Opera.

It would be the beginning of his relationship with the Stockholm-based company, which in 2021 hired Cavanagh as its artistic director and opera chef — “I’m the Swedish opera chef,” he joked. He helped guide the 600-employee company, which presents 200 shows a year, through its 250th anniversary in 2023.

“We have our 250th anniversary the same year as Manitoba Opera has its 50th,” Cavanagh said last year. “I love that symmetry.”

Tributes to Cavanagh have poured in across the opera world, most notably from the Royal Swedish Opera.

“Michael had this fantastic ability to see and know everyone around him and to spread joy and positive energy,” Fredrik Lindgren, chief executive officer of the RSO, says in a release. “The Royal Swedish Opera and the whole opera world have lost a unique creative force and a beloved friend.

Cavanagh’s legacy will live on at the San Francisco Opera, where he was the mastermind behind three new productions of Mozart works: The Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, which Matthew Shilvock, the company’s general director, says will continue to be a part of the company’s schedule.

“Seeing his Mozart trilogy come to fruition will always be one of the proudest moments of my life, knowing it will define our stage for generations to come,” Shilvock says in a release. “He has shown all of us how to lead with integrity, collaborate with kindness and to never lose sight that this is an art form of people, to be nurtured, cared for and respected.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall