Mike joined CAEA (Canadian Actors’ Equity Association) as a Pacific Opera Victoria 2021-2022 Young Artist in their Civic Engagement Quartet, filming a gender-bending digital recital Tā (她 / 他) as well appearances and performances online and in the Victoria community. Mike’s versatile performances include opera, art song and concert, musical theatre, plays, and short film for organizations including Infusion Baroque, La Scena Musicale Magazine, Opéra McGill, Opera Laurier, YES Montréal, Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestras, Rainbow Reels Queer and Trans Film Festival, Guelph and tri-Pride, Concerti Fulmini, McGill’s Queer History Month, FUSE Art and Vera Causa Opera at Le Monument National, Tampere and Newcastle Conservatories, St. Mary’s Cathedral Sydney, Dalhousie Arts Centre, Winchester Street Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Trinity St. Paul’s, Hunter College, Centre St. Jax, and Kin Experience with. Mike’s training includes the Rossini Opera Festival’s Accademia Alberto Zedda, Canadian Opera Company Youth Opera Labs, Dr. Michael Warren’s Toronto and NYC Voice Intensives, Opera for All, Opera NUOVA, and Halifax Summer Opera.
Beginning as a baritone, Mike has performed the roles of Massenet’s Pandolfe (Cendrillon), Copland’s Top (The Tender Land), Rossini’s Don Alvaro (Il viaggio a Reims), Bizet’s Moralès (Carmen), Weill’s Henry Davis (Street Scene), Offenbach’s Schlémil (Les contes d’Hoffmann), and Heggie’s Fred (Again) as well as scenes as Rorem’s Mr. Webb (Our Town), Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Conte Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Gounod’s Valentin (Faust) and Mercutio (Roméo et Juliette), and Tchaikovsky’s Robert (Iolanta). As a tenor, Mike has performed the roles of Bizet’s Dancaïro and Don José (Carmen), Verdi’s Conte Ivrea (Il giorno di Regno), Britten’s Prologue (The Turn of the Screw), Rimsky’s Korsakov’s Indian Guest (Sadko), Livingston’s John (The Yellow Wallpaper), as well as scenes as Tchaikovsky’s Lensky (Eugene Onegin), Léhar’s Prince Sou-Chong (The Land of Smiles), Verdi’s Duca di Mantua (Rigoletto), Saint-Saën’s and Händel’s Samson (Samson and Delilah), and Mozart’s Tamino (The Magic Flute). Additionally, Mike created world premières of roles in operas by Miller, Hajdinjak, and Langan. Theatre and musical theatre roles include Shakespeare’s Malvolio (Twelfth Night), Theseus (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet); Wilde’s Merriman (The Importance of Being Earnest); Sheridan’s Snake, Careless, and William (The School of Scandal); Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Lord Pinkleton and Jean-Michel (Cinderella); Sondheim’s Fredrik (A Little Night Music) and Paul (Company); and Bernstein’s Riff (West Side Story). Fluent in seven languages, Mike crosses disciplines as an arts and community leader most recently as PGSS Equity & Diversity Commissioner and McGill’s Queer Alumni Association (MQAA) and BIPOC Graduate Network co-founder.
Mike also enjoys surprising audiences as drag persona Tanya Smania (she) whose repertoire includes the title roles of Cilèa’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Bizet’s Carmen, Händel’s Agrippina as well as Tchaikovsky’s Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Weill’s Rose (Street Scene), Puccini’s Mimì (La bohème), and Mozart’s Zerlina (Don Giovanni). Mike’s many concert and recital highlights include “Chez Pauline Viardot”, a SSHRC-funded recital in drag commemorating woman composer Pauline Viardot-García’s 2021 bicentennial; “Leaving Home”, showcasing immigrant composers and poets; and “Mom & Me”, a rare genderbent presentation of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -Leben alongside Poulenc and Rachmaninov.
As Artistic Director of the ground-breaking company Opéra Queens, Mike aims to present classical vocal music in drag, gender-bent, and queerified while spotlighting IBPOC voices and living composers. Opéra Queens recently received a $50,000 Canada Council for the Arts Digital Now grant and currently unites artists across Ontario, Québec, and the US. Opéra Queens productions include “Drama Queens” including a commission for Morgan-Paige Melbourne for an Overture to Adriana Lecouvreur alongside Saint-Saëns, Purcell, Cilèa, Viardot-García, and Händel as well as “Latin Night”, featuring the Canadian and live première of Steven Sérpa and Zac Kline’s “these wings are meant to fly” alongside Bizet and Spanish women composers Malibran-García, Viardot-García, and von Martinez.
Mike has been an invited panelist for Teesri Duniya Theatre’s “Artist United Against Racism: Everybody Can Fight Racism”. Mike opened the 2021 From the Voice Of “Community in Conversation” series and has appeared on radio with CKUT 90.3 FM Montréal and CKWR 98.5 FM Kitchener-Waterloo.
Mike holds a Masters (MMus) in Opera and Voice Performance from McGill’s Schulich School of Music on full fellowship, 3 ARCT diplomas in Voice, Piano, and Speech Arts and Drama Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music, and two Honours Bachelors from the University of Guelph in Biomedical Science (BScH, with Distinction) and from Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Voice Performance (HBMus, with High Distinction) with minors in German and Italian studies. Mike is currently based at vibrant Toronto’s Harbourfront where they continue to enjoy work on and beyond the opera and theatre stage as an educator, poet, host, and pianist, holding executive positions with both the NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) Chapters of Ontario Montréal.