With all the attention directed to the Ring cycle in Toronto at the outset of this season, it was easy to overlook Canada's own major operatic cycle, R. Murray Schafer's Patria. Part eight of this 12-part saga, The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix, was performed on a lake in Haliburton Forest. In this puppet opera, the mythical bird and its palace had vanished beneath a Lake of Dragons. Unfortunately, at ...