Opening Day Recordings

"Mary Lou Fallis is utterly unique. She has kept our musical past alive - and delivers it to us with panache and style and tongue in cheek. Also, with heart. I can hardly bear to hear her sing 'THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE' because my heart always breaks -but I couldn't live without it. Here is a great artist, period!" -Timothy Findley, author of Not Wanted on the Voyage and Headhunter

Toronto-born Mary Lou Fallis is one of Canada's national treasures, a woman truly born for the stage! Best known as thecreator of five unforgettable one-woman shows, Mary Lou enjoys a parallel career as an opera and oratorio performer of impeccable credentials.

A CBC Television production of Mozart's The Magic Flute gave Canada its first exposure to the artistry of Mary Lou Fallis, then only fifteen years of age. Her subsequent international career furnished sufficient material for the creation of her hilarious ACTRA Award-winning show Primadonna, based on her own life as a singer. Following the success of Primadonna, other shows arrived in dazzling succession, including: Emma, Queen of Song, about the real-life Canadian diva Emma Albani; The Mrs. Bach Show, hosted by Anna Magdalen, the wife of J. S. Bach, and Ms. Mozart, the story of Nannerl (sister of the more famous Wolfgang!).

In 1996, Mary Lou took her Mrs. Bach Show to New York City's Radio City Music Hall. In the same year she enjoyed a sold-outrun of Primadonna's First Farewell Tour at Canada's prestigious National Arts Centre (broadcast live to air for CBC's 60th anniversary celebrations). Her extended-run engagements at venues ranging from Edmonton's Citadel Theatre to the Edinburgh International Festival have lifted the spirits of thousands upon thousands of theatre and concert goers.

Mary Lou Fallis's long-standing interest in early Canadian popular song has resulted in her latest show, Primadonna on a Moose. MaryLou lives in Toronto with her husband Peter, their two teen-aged children and a very woolly dog named Guinness.