Opera 5/Toronto Opera Festival, Gala: A Night of Opera & Musical Theatre (music director/collab pianist Nate Ben-Horin, Len Crino & Maddalena Ohrbach, co-directors), Elegies (music and lyrics by William Finn, director Jessica Derventzis, music director/pianist Nate Ben-Horin), Come Closer (composed by Ryan Trew, libretto by Rachel Krehm, stage director Amanda Smith, music director/conductor Evan Mitchell), Factory Theatre, Jun.12 to 21.
Opera 5 is the little company that could.
Since 2013, this Toronto-based chamber opera group has been producing one production a season, usually on the unusual side, and usually to great acclaim.
Take for example programs that included a double bill of operas by Jacques Offenbach and Reynaldo Hayn, vocal chamber music by Hindemith and Shostakovich, and two one-acters by long-forgotten British female composer Dame Ethyl Smythe (a Canadian premiere, no less).
For 2025, the company went for broke, mounting three productions under the umbrella Toronto Opera Festival.
Toronto Opera Festival Overview
To say that the ten-day Toronto Opera Festival was an ambitious undertaking is an understatement.
The bill of fare included three different programs.
The kick-off was a single performance gala featuring selections from opera and musical theatre. The other two offerings, which had multiple showings, were both major works grouped around the theme of grief.
Elegies (2003) by William Finn is an acclaimed song cycle about the memories of friends, family, and even pets who have died. Come Closer (2025) is an impressive new opera composed by Ryan Trew with a libretto by Opera 5’s general director Rachel Krehm. The wellspring was the death of Krehm’s younger sister Elizabeth, who died from a heroin overdose in 2012.
All three productions cleverly used the same basic set by Shannon Lea Doyle, a curved grey wall, with doors at either end, although each transformed the space to suit their needs. Another Toronto stalwart, Noah Feaver, was on hand to provide the atmospheric lighting.
The cast for both the gala and Elegies came from Opera 5’s intern program.
Portfolio Artist Internship Program
This is the second year that Opera 5 has mentored interns in partnership with Opera McGill for this paid professional program supported by the Azrieli Foundation, which offers performance opportunities, professional development, and secondary skills training.
In terms of professional stage experience, as stated above, the interns were featured in the gala program and Elegies, while two sopranos covered the cast of Come Closer.
Secondary skills training included trying their hand at production. Two interns co-directed the gala, while their colleagues were either assistant directors or assistant stage managers.
This year’s interns were tenor Kyle Briscoe, baritone Jaden Burrows, soprano Brenna McFarland, mezzo-soprano Maddalena Orbach, mezzo-soprano MacKenzie Sechi, soprano, Len Crino, soprano Kate Fogg, and mezzo-soprano Emma Yee.
Gala: A Night of Opera & Musical Theatre
Veteran baritone Gregory Dahl was the amiable host, who began the proceedings with “Si pùo, si pùo” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci — and what could be a more perfect beginning. Dahl’s voice may be a little strained at the top, but he sang with his heart.
And so began an evening of bonbons, with, surprisingly, an emphasis on musical theatre, which allowed the interns to show off their chest voices — although we did get a rich coloratura outpouring from Fogg’s “Glitter and Be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, along with ensembles from Mozart’s Die Zauberflote and Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus.
Burrows got a bit breathy towards the end of “Toreador” from Bizet’s Carmen, but then he’s a baby baritone. Yet, he clearly has the potential to develop into a fulsome meat and potatoes singer a.k.a. Verdi and Puccini.
The Pearl Fishers duet was performed by transgender soprano Crino and Burrows. The combination of the soprano and baritone voices in this famous warhorse was absolutely beautiful, even magical. Maybe the future of opera is casting transgender singers.
The most impressive all-around artist was mezzo-soprano Sechi who has a lush voice and wonderful stage presence.
A very moving section featured two original songs by Briscoe about abuse he had suffered as a child. The first, “Home”, was dedicated to little Kyle, and the second, “Hold On”, was a duet with Sechi, presumably a mother figure. Both showed a skilful songwriter in the making.
Soprano Fogg and Sechi did a lovely job with the duet “For Good” from Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked, while soprano McFarland struck just the right ironic tone for Jason Robert Brown’s “Stars and the Moon”.
The musical theatre selections were mostly from contemporary-ish Broadway composers, so just before the finale, when Dahl sang “Some Enchanted Evening” from Rogers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, it reminded some of us of a certain age just how satisfying a good old fashioned Broadway melody could be.
Kudos to co-director interns Crino and Ohrbach, who avoided a stand and deliver recital. Each number was acted, out and that made the gala particularly entertaining.
Special kudos to the always excellent music director/pianist Nate Ben-Horin for his sympathetic, rigorous, even passionate accompaniment.
Was the dearth of opera on the program a disappointment? Yes, because these interns are from Opera McGill. Nonetheless, the choice of musical theatre songs were from the brightest and the best.
Elegies
William Finn wrote Elegies in response to the 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, and while the earlier part of the quasi-musical is a collection of deeply personal songs loosely connected by the themes of memory, love and loss, the ending clearly evoked the planes crashing into the buildings.
It’s interesting that director Jessica Derventzis elected to leave out the song “Boom Boom”, which graphically depicted the terror attack. Thus, this Elegies ended with a simple and eloquent “Goodbye” without the trauma of history.
The original Elegies featured five singers, three men and two women, but this production fielded a cast of six, four women and two men, yet the songs were so acutely divided into solos and ensembles, that this Opera 5 production looked like Finn wrote it that way.
Elegies is usually presented as monologues in song on a bare stage, but in a bold move, Derventzis decided to fully stage the cycle as a full-blown musical, with sets, props, costumes, the lot.
One has to give a shout out to Carlyn Rahusaar Routledge and her props team and Chris Faris and Seline Jia for the many costume changes, but the biggest cheer must go to Derventzis for her sheer chutzpah, not to mention her immensely fertile imagination.
Each song told its own story within its own well-defined scene. For example, “Mark’s All-Male Thanksgiving” featured a whole turkey dinner.
And what’s more, these young singers did a superb job conveying the sensibility of each song, be it happy or sad, irreverent or pointed. Their sense of ensemble was pure chemistry.
Derventzis did an absolutely terrific job in staging the show. Everything flowed seamlessly together, and the cast seemed to move the props and set pieces on and off the stage as if by magic, even cleverly transforming one thing into something else.
Needless to say, Nate Ben-Horin was brilliant in his piano accompaniment.
This production of Elegies was the kind of show where everything worked — the staging, the singing, the acting, the music. It was also ultimately optimistic.
“Life has infinite, infinite joys.”
Come Closer
The major event of the festival was the new two-act opera Come Closer, and I am delighted to declare from the start that it absolutely deserves a shelf life.
In this two-hander, Big Sister (soprano Rachel Krehm) tries to come to grips with the death of Little Sister (soprano Jaqueline Woodley).
As Big Sister begins to read her sister’s journals, Little Sister appears, and the jumble of memories take root in Big Sister’s mind.
The movement of the libretto is one of an abstract, symbolic, non-linear journey.
In the first act, the memories are mostly joyous, a snowball fight, watching Charlie Brown on television, playing in a dollhouse.
In the darker second act, Big Sister comes face to face with the trauma that led to Little Sister’s heroin addiction and ultimate death.
Finally, Big Sister realizes that she must let Little Sister go, but she is paralyzed with grief. She then finds the last poem that Little Sister wrote, which gives her hope. She hears the voice of Little Sister offstage, and they are connected forever.
What makes this opera particularly moving is that it is inspired by a true story. Big Sister is Rachel Krehm, who wrote the libretto, and Little Sister is her sister Elizabeth, who died from an overdose in 2012.
Initially, Vancouver-based composer Ryan Trew was commissioned by the Krehm family to set seven of Elizabeth’s poems into a song cycle, and three have been incorporated into the opera. Krehm crafted her libretto around them.
As touching as the libretto is, the music is extraordinarily beautiful. Trew is a modernist, but he is also a melodist. There was not one ounce of dissonance in the score, which was cleverly written for a piano trio. It somehow rendered the music more melancholy, particularly given the ethereal quality of the vocal lines.
While Trew did capture the playfulness of the young girls, the more tragic elements of the libretto were always there in the inherent sadness of the music.
Conductor Evan Mitchell did a masterful job conducting the trio in bringing out the richness and depth of Trew’s evocative score.
Woodley had the bright sound to capture the spirit of Little Sister, but Krehm’s voice seemed woolly and strained. Nonetheless, their performances blended well together. While director Amanda Smith placed the singers logically about the stage, the energy from both singers seemed sluggish. Even symbolic memory operas need heightened drama.
Come Closer is heartfelt music theatre given its very poignant backstory and Krehm’s remarkably intuitive libretto, but above all, it was Trew’s glorious music that captured my being.
End Notes
Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival was a smashing success on all front and festival producer Krehm, the company’s general director, must be a happy camper.
Let’s hope Opera 5 repeats the festival on an annual basis. The enthusiastic audiences seemed to be hungry for it.
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