Lately, a nagging question has been keeping me up nights: why do so few operas feature dinosaurs? (Real dinosaurs, I mean, not skeletal-looking divas and plump Neapolitans who should've taken their last curtain calls 20 years ago.) Well, according to the Calgary Herald, I can now sleep in peace: librettist Val Brandt and composer Allan Gilliland recently collaborated on an opera called Hannaraptor, about a young girl who works through her family issues whilst digging up the bones of a mysterious dinosaur on her family's farm.

As an opera buff myself, I can only applaud this trend. If there are any aspiring Puccinis out there who'd like to make their mark, I suggest a one-act opera based on the epic battle of Protoceratops and Velociraptor (needless to say, both dinosaurs die at the end, so the operatic treatment would work quite nicely).