Faculty and Staff

Nina Scott-Stoddart

Nina Scott-Stoddart

Artistic Director

Nina Scott-Stoddart is an educator, performer, director, designer and producer of opera and musical theatre. A passionate advocate of demystifying “high” art and helping empower artists, she has spent 25 years teaching, mentoring and inspiring.

As a professional mezzo soprano, Nina has sung with many orchestras and opera companies across Canada and the United States and in New Zealand. She has been recorded as a soloist by NAXOS and broadcast coast to coast on the CBC.

Nina was the co-founder of Toronto’s Opera Anonymous, which produced over 20 well-reviewed works in its eight year history. Since relocating to Nova Scotia in 2002, Nina founded Maritime Concert Opera, which has just completed a very successful 16th season and the Halifax Summer Opera Festival, now planning its 18th season.

Nina lives in Lunenburg with her husband, David, and their three cats, Katie, Beaumont and Fletcher.

Andrew Pelrine

Andrew Pelrine

Stage Director

Andrew Pelrine was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia and graduated from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Arts in Combined Honours in Music and Theatre (2010). Andrew spent 10 years in Toronto and has performed across the Maritimes and Toronto in musical theatre and opera. Andrew currently sings with Polaris (Tenor Section Lead), and the Halifax Gay Men’s Chorus. Andrew is a board member, resident Director and Choreographer for the Halifax Summer Opera Festival. It ia his 12th season with the festival. Andrew is also known as drag artist Bunni Lapin with 15 years of drag excellence. 

Giancarlo Scalia

Giancarlo Scalia

Music Director

Born in Montreal, Giancarlo Scalia is very active as a pianist, vocal coach and composer. He has performed as a collaborative pianist throughout Canada, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, the United States and China and his compositions have been presented throughout North America and Europe.

Mr. Scalia has served as musical director or répétiteur for various companies such as Opéra immédiat (Chauve-Souris, Carmen, Aïda, Elisir d’amore, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Don Pasquale), l’Opéra bouffe du Québec (Les Brigands, Véronique, Le Baron Tzigane, Le Chanteur de Mexico, La fille du tambour-major) and the Halifax Summer Opera Festival (Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Les Contes d’Hoffmann) as well as for Lakeshore Light Opera (The Mikado, Thespis), Light Opera of Montreal (The Tender Land, Sweeney Todd), Snowglobe Theatre (The Medium, Riders to the Sea), Haskell Opera House (La Traviata) and Opéra Outside the Box (Le Téléphone). He has also collaborated with l’Opéra de Montréal and it’s Atelier lyrique, the Festival Classica, Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques, Opéra Plus, Opera Atelier in Toronto, Gesellschaft für Musiktheater in Vienna, l’Istituto Italiano di Cultura de Montreal and the Société d’art vocal de Montréal. As a coach, he has worked with numerous young singers at Concordia University, the Scuola internazionale di Teatro Italiano Giovanni Grasso and the École de musique Vincent d’Indy (voice department and operetta workshop).

As a performer, his large and diverse repertoire ranges from full operas to the major art song works of Schumann, Schubert, Vaughan-Williams, Debussy and Poulenc. In October 2017, he performed 8 concerts in China with baritone Hugo Laporte, mezzo soprano Marie-Andrée Mathieu and soprano Jessica Latouche. In 2016, he recorded and released the album Arie e canzoni with soprano Sophie De Cruz featuring arias by Puccini, Donizetti and Verdi; art songs by Donaudy, Gastaldon and Tosti as well as his composition Ideale.

Giancarlo Scalia is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and has composed for soloists and ensembles such as l’Orchestre de la Francophonie, l’Ensemble Paramirabo, l’Ensemble Saxologie, cellist Julie Hereish, mezzo soprano Rose Naggar-Tremblay, the West Island Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre d’Harmonie Leonardo da Vinci and the Grand Ensemble de Cuivres de l’Université de Montréal. His catalogue includes works for a variety of instrumentations (solo instruments, voice, chamber groups, ensembles, mixed music, film music) and his compositional style incorporates both traditional and contemporary elements; a combination of modal, tonal and atonal music.

He obtained a Bachelor’s degree and a DESS in piano performance under the direction of Jimmy Brière and Marc Durand and a Master’s in composition under the direction of Denis Gougeon from the Université de Montréal before continuing his studies privately with pianists Walter Moore and Norman Shetler in Vienna and Claude Webster in Montréal. He has also participated in vocal accompaniment programs at the Orford Arts Centre, the Académie Francis Poulenc (Tours, France) the Wiener Musikseminar (Vienna, Austria), Vox Musicae (Senigallia, Italy) and the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy (La bohème).