Janet Stubbs

Stubbs, Janet

Janet (Helena) Stubbs. Mezzo soprano, administrator, b Toronto 21 Apr 1945; LLB (Toronto) 1969, Artist Diploma opera (Toronto) 1975. She was called to the Ontario bar in 1971. She studied with Helen Simmie at the RCMT and with Bernard Diamant at the University of Toronto. She sang as a chorus member with the COC 1972-4, then as a member of the company 1974-88. Her performances included the title roles of Cinderella (1979), Carmen (1979, 1984), Rosina in The Barber of Seville (1978, 1985), Maddalena in Rigoletto (1978, 1987), Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro (1978), Emilia in Otello (1980), Niklausse/Muse in The Tales of Hoffmann (1981, 1988), Meg in Falstaff (1982), and Mère Marie in Les Dialogues de Carmélites (1986). She has sung with opera companies across Canada including the Edmonton Opera Association, Calgary Opera, Opera Hamilton,Vancouver Opera, and Pacific Opera Victoria, and also in the USA with the Portland and Dallas operas. She also has performed in concert and oratorio with the major Canadian orchestras; she performed in Bach's Christmas Oratorio with Bernardi and the NACO in 1975 and made her TS debut in Stravinsky's Pulcinella in 1976. In 1977 she was a soloist with Sir Peter Pears in a performance of the Bach Magnificat by the Ottawa Choral Society; Pears subsequently selected her for his 1978 master class at Aldeburgh. She has performed often for CBC radio and TV. In January 1979, with the CJRT Orchestra she gave the Toronto premiere of Britten's Phaedra. Her many festival appearances have included Festival Canada (Festival Ottawa) productions of La Traviata (1975), The Magic Flute (1975, 1977), and Ariadne auf Naxos (1977); the Festival of the Sound; Music at Sharon; Ravinia; and the Guelph Spring Festival in its 1981 Canadian premiere of Argento's Postcard from Morocco, in Orpheus and Euridice (1984), and with Jon Vickers in Janáček's song cycle The Diary of One Who Vanished She is one of three Canadian sopranos on the Telarc recording, made in 1987 with Eric Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra of The Sound of Music (CD-80162). In the late 1970s she recorded two movements from Haydn's Stabat Mater with Melville Cook and the Metropolitan Festival Choir and Orchestra (Audio Ideas-unnumbered cassette). Stubbs' presence on the COC planning committee in 1988 for the proposed Toronto Ballet Opera House led to a position as director of music administration for the company 1989-91.