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After a five-week tour of eastern Canada, the Bicycle Opera Project calls it curtains in Toronto this Sunday

The last five weeks have brought a different kind of musical performance to cities in eastern Canada.

Members of the Bicycle Opera Project wave to the camera during day two of their ride in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. (Image credit: The Bicycle Opera Project/Facebook)
Members of the Bicycle Opera Project wave to the camera during day two of their ride in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. (Image credit: The Bicycle Opera Project/Facebook)

The last five weeks have brought a different kind of musical performance to cities in eastern Canada. Imagine the scene: a pack of riders, just in from the next town over, lined up in a row. A conductor raises the baton. Then, right on cue, each rider starts ringing his or her bike bell, the twinkling tones melting into a harmony, the tone of the scene itself infectious from the beginning.

That performance is the work of the Bicycle Opera Project, and this Sunday, the innovative, tongue-in-cheek, and environmentally conscious initiative wraps up at Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto.

That bell-composed song, the Toronto Star reported, actually has a name, and it’s played to open each of their performances: “Ride of the Bells.” Of course, instruments of the more traditional variety are also part of the billing. But despite the tour’s appellation, this isn’t what you might think of when you imagine opera, organizers and members of the Bicycle Opera Project say. “[Audiences] think opera is supposed to be formal,” explained Chris Enns, a tenor. Playing to those expectations, he told Star reporters, is a big part of what makes the show — a “funny,” “quirky” performance, describes artistic director Larissa Koniuk — so memorable.

For the most part, performances by the Bicycle Opera Project have coincided with festivals happening in the towns they visit, all of which they travel to by bike. The velo-caravan rolls out with three trailers, each stuffed with props, instruments, and costumes. Along with the chorus of bells, a pianist, cellist and violinist join a four-person choir in the bike-mounted production, which has been on the road since early August. Along the way, the Project visited locations in the Maritimes and Ontario’s cottage country, before eventually rolling into Toronto.

The experience of visiting so much of Canada’s incomparable beauty by bike that can otherwise flash past unseen, members say, is a huge part of what’s made the tour such an unforgettable ride.

“I loved it so much,” said violinist Ilana Waniuk, who the Star described as joining the ride equipped only with her ‘cheaper “camper” violin’. “We were in places in Ontario and Nova Scotia that you never get to see from a car. You see the countryside and play great music.”

Before the Bicycle Opera Project’s final performance begins at Evergreen Brickworks this Sunday, the group has invited Toronto cyclists on a group ride, starting at the Toronto Reference Library. Details of the ride are available on their Facebook page.