While large companies struggle to produce new works that will be relevant to new audiences, Opera on the Avalon, founded only eight years ago in St John’s, Newfoundland, has presented the premiere of Ours, an opera about one of the most important events in local history—the annihilation of the Newfoundland Regiment in minutes during the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel, at the beginning of the Somme Offensive, on July 1, 1916.
Over two acts, composer John Estacio and playwright Robert Chafe proclaim the glory of this sacrifice.