Matthew Dalen and fellow cast members in NUOVA Vocal Arts’ Silence (2025). Photo: Nanc Price.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Greek proverb
I was five years old when singing transformed my life.
A tiny cohort of kindergartners softly shuffled through the library, trained to navigate that sacred space without making a peep. As an adult, the distance could be covered in seconds, but it felt like an absolute lifetime for us all to get into the gym and sit down for the performance. My sister had been talking about this for days, she was excited and I thought she was the coolest person alive, so I was excited too.
The choir of older kids grades four to six filed onto the stage, and Mrs. Julie Johnson, took her place in front of them. They all looked at her, took a breath together, and set off a nuclear bomb in my brain… in a good way.
When you are a kid, grown-ups sound sort of ridiculous. They have these deep booming voices that are all dark and muffled. Other kids sound like you do, so that is what sounds normal. That is what sounds good.
Hearing this choir’s sound did something in my guts. It tingled and glowed in ultraviolet, and a joy, excitement, and fascination lit up inside my chest. It was my first visceral response to music. Magic was and is, in fact, REAL. It is real in a way that you can’t explain to an adult in words, but I understood in that moment. It felt like the world had shifted on its axis and I was the only one who noticed. The others had missed it.
That was the moment I became obsessed with singing.
Every day after school, my sister and I would walk together to my Grandma’s house. Some days she would need to stay late for a choir rehearsal. I would need to wait. Outside of the music room I would sit cross-legged with my ear pressed against the door. I would try to catch every little moment of harmony that would dazzle my brain. I lamented that I would need to wait three whole years before I would sing in that choir.
I grew up on the family farm in Northwestern Alberta surrounded by family, music, cows, and more whimsy than any kid has a right to. Music was a family thing, so if there was an interest, it was encouraged.
When I finally got to join the choir I felt like I was on the all-star hockey team. Music class was a highlight of the day, and Mrs. Johnson was the most impressive person in my world. One day she pulled me aside, did a check if I could match pitch and repeat intervals, and told me I should join the Grande Prairie Boys’ Choir.
That suggestion changed my life, and took me a step closer to Nuova.
Through the Boys’ Choir I met two incredibly important people in my life: the conductor of the Boys’ Choir, Jeannie Vanwynsberghe Pernal and the founder and director of Nuova Vocal Arts, Kim Mattice Wanat.
Jeannie believed that boys needed to be encouraged to sing. Just because we were in a conservative oil town in northern Alberta didn’t mean we didn’t deserve access to the most extraordinary musical experiences. When Jeannie met Kim, she recognized someone who was extraordinary. Their partnership brought Opera Nuova five hours north to Grande Prairie again and again.
One year Kim brought Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. Opera Nuova supplied the principal artists and production, the Boys’ Choir supplied Amahl, a few dozen shepherds, and an audience.
I was one of the shepherds.
I spent most of the performance staring at the opera singers making sounds I didn’t understand. I had never heard voices with that quality before. The choir was intense compared to the school room, and Kim brought a whole new world of expectations, and a passion for this thing called opera.
Opera suddenly didn’t belong somewhere else.
It belonged in my world.
Nuova kept coming back with productions, workshops, and masterclasses. Kim and her colleagues worked with us on breathing, diction, acting, and stagecraft. Somewhere in those years I discovered that I loved acting every bit as much as singing.
Singing had become a big enough part of my life that I decided I wanted to pursue it professionally and luckily I found a teacher in Grande Prairie who was genuinely good for me. This worked because I needed to be at home to help on the farm for a few years before I went out in the world, and I worked there over the summers too, so I could never do the Nuova summer program.
I wasn’t able to audition for Nuova until I made it to Toronto. When I finally auditioned for Kim, it was in a rented space on the other side of the country, after I had made it into a master’s degree program at my dream school. Through an abundance of luck, the list got down to me and I was cast as Tebaldo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi by Bellini.
To me it felt like I had already been part of Nuova for years, so this would be a fun and easy summer.
I had no idea what I was in for.
Opera Nuova had a reputation for being an incredible experience, but a lot of hard work, and it earned that reputation. The days were full. You rehearsed, coached, listened, learned, and then got up the next morning and did it all again. It was demanding, it was rewarding, and it was always fair. I understood why people would reminisce about Nuova with an almost spiritual nostalgia.
Everyone was expected to work hard, but no student worked harder than the faculty, and no faculty worked harder than Kim.
She never asked anyone to do something she wasn’t prepared to do herself, and that leadership inspired extraordinary devotion from everyone around her.
That made an impression on me.
At the time I don’t think I realized how incredible the staff really was. World class directors, singing teachers, repetiteurs, and up and coming musicians, all decided to spend their summer in Edmonton with us.
Carol Castel directed our production. Through her I came to know the remarkable legacy of her husband, Nico Castel. Every young singer knows the “Nicos.” If one exists for a role you’re learning, the first step is to copy every syllable of the translation and IPA pronunciation guide into your score. That’s just what you do if you didn’t grow up speaking French, German, or Italian.
One evening Carol told us a story I’ve never forgotten.
Nico was preparing books on the operas of Verdi. Carol walked into Nico’s study late one night and found him sitting alone in the dark with tears running down his face. He was slowly pecking away at the keyboard with one finger, humming the Rigoletto quartet while he worked through the text by memory. She said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
A few years later, while singing Borsa with Edmonton Opera, I found the best place backstage to listen to that quartet. I imagined Nico sitting there in the dark, living every character, understanding every line, letting Verdi’s masterpiece just happen to him.
After the orchestra rehearsal I turned to my colleagues and said, “We have the best job in the world, don’t you think?”
Carol didn’t have to share that story.
She shared it because, at Nuova, teaching wasn’t limited to music.
By the end of that summer I had certainly become a better singer.
But that wasn’t the biggest lesson I took home.
After Opera Nuova I continued to perform. I finished my master’s degree, spent time with wonderful companies and young artist programs across Canada, Europe, and the United States, and built the career I had dreamed about.
People were excited for me.
I was excited too.
But there was a truth in my body that became harder and harder to ignore.
The life of a singer asks a lot of you. You devote yourself to the work, pour everything into a performance, the curtain comes down, the audience goes home, and more often than not you return to a tiny hotel room by yourself.
I imagined living that life for twenty years.
It meant a great deal to me.
It just didn’t mean everything.
I didn’t want to stop performing.
I wanted my life in music to mean something beyond the performances themselves.
Looking back, I think what I really wanted was the kind of life I had watched Jeannie and Kim build.
A life where the performance was never the finish line.
It was the beginning of something else.
After a difficult but necessary divorce, I came back to Grande Prairie intending to stay for a couple of weeks.
Instead, I started saying yes to things.
Yes to helping with the Boys’ Choir.
Yes to taking over a concert series.
Yes to teaching.
Yes to advising.
Yes to building partnerships.
Yes to creating opportunities for other artists.
Almost without realizing it, I found myself living the values I had first encountered through Nuova.
At first those things felt like separate parts of my life.
Now I don’t think they are separate at all.
Conducting.
Producing.
Mentoring.
Consulting.
Performing.
They’re exactly the same work.
Last summer I returned to Opera Nuova to create the role of Roger in Silence. It reminded me why I love this profession. The music was exciting, the creative team was exceptional, and I was surrounded by people who cared deeply about one another and about creating something meaningful together.
Returning after so many years also clarified something for me.
The lessons that stayed with me had very little to do with career strategy or technique, though those lessons are still imprinted in my brain.
They had everything to do with people.
My fiancée is both a remarkable artist and a farmer. She has introduced me to the ideas behind regenerative agriculture. The goal isn’t simply to grow the biggest crop this season. The goal is to leave the soil healthier than you found it so that whatever comes next has an even better chance to flourish.
The strongest arts organizations don’t simply produce performances.
They leave the environment better than they found it.
Looking back, that’s what Opera Nuova did for me.
It certainly helped me become a better singer.
But the deeper lesson was that music is never just about the people on stage.
It’s about the people they inspire, the communities they strengthen, and the opportunities they create for the next person.
Today I have the privilege of working regularly with both Jeannie and Kim. The partnership that shaped my own life is still creating opportunities for young people, and next year we’ll collaborate once again in Grande Prairie on Oliver!.
I think every “Nuova-ite” could write a different version of this blog.
Some would write about the roles they sang.
Some about lifelong friendships.
Some about careers that took them around the world.
Mine is about stewardship.
When I was five years old, I thought the magic was in the sound coming from that elementary school choir.
Now I think the real magic was the people who made that moment possible.
A music teacher who noticed a little boy could match pitch.
A conductor who believed northern Alberta deserved excellence.
An artistic director who kept coming north because she believed young people mattered.
Teachers who shared more than technique.
Artists who gave more than performances.
Looking back, they weren’t simply making music.
They were leaving the soil richer than they found it.
If I can leave behind a musical community that is richer than the one they invited me into, then I think I’ll have done something worthwhile.
