Soprano Reilly Nelson will be performing at the Zoomer Media Open House on May 23. The Toronto vocalist will be appearing with pianist Yolanda Tapia and guitarist Lenny Rannallo, and the eclectic program is a mirror of her varied career and musical interests.
Nelson’s recent credits include engagements with Pacific Opera Victoria, Cincinnati Opera, Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Tapestry Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival world premiere of Tenor Overboard.
In January 2026 she premiered Songs of Glass and Iron, a staged recital of the music of Kurt Weill that Nelson co-created with composer-pianist Friedrich Heinrich Kern. She recently debuted in a new work titled Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical at Toronto’s Villa Charities.
Reilly is a Weill/Brecht specialist, and her work in that genre was recognized with a second place award in the Lotte Lenya Competition. She is a two-time participant in Barbara Hannigan’s elite Equilibrium Young Artists program.
With a Scottish and Italian background, she has also become known for her work singing Canzone Napoletana as well as operatic and contemporary repertoire.
Nelson will be making her Ottawa Chamberfest debut in July 2026 with The Happenstancers, performing Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga and new arrangements by Thierry Tidrow of songs by Mary Dering.
Of Italian and Scottish heritage, Reilly is based in Toronto.
LV caught up with Reilly to talk about career and her upcoming shows.
Reilly Nelson at the 2016 Lotte Lenya Competition:
Reilly Nelson: The Interview
Did Reilly always know she wanted to be a singer?
“It was very early,” she says. “It comes in parts.”
As she explains, her mother was a singer, and studied music at school. It was a different era, however, and after moving to Sault St. Marie, and eventually starting her own family, music fell by the wayside.
“But, there was always music in the house,” Reilly recalls. From Cecilia Bartoli CDs to her father’s Credence Clearwater Revival, and Ella Fitzgerald, it was a good mix of influences to grow up with.
“There was always music. I started lessons really young, probably about nine. Maybe too young,” she laughs. Growing up in a smallish town, she quickly became known as “the singer”.
“At some point in college, I started wondering whether I was doing this because it was something I always did.” However, after experiencing collaborative performances at school, and touring with different theatrical companies, feeling the joys of making music together in an ensemble, she came to a realization. “I thought yes, this is what I want to do,”she says.
“Really really knowing that it was my choice was probably about ten years ago,” she says. She’s grateful to have started early in many ways, but at one point it did leave her wondering whether she should have explored other choices. “It becomes your identity before you know what your identity is.”
Luckily, she also had the chance to become sure of her goals.
“I would’t change that process. But I’m really glad to know this is what I want to do,” she says. “When you become an adult, you start to realize what is you, and what is not you. I’m glad they align,” she adds.
Open House
The program for the open house offers a mix of music — offered with Reilly’s thoughts.
Set 1: Canzone Napoletana
- O Mio Babbino Caro (Puccini). “A young woman in Florence is begging her father to let her marry the man she loves, and she’ll throw herself in the Arno if he says no. It’s the most famous ‘I’ll die without him’ aria ever written.”
- Torna a Surriento (1894, di Curtis brothers). “A plea to a lover to come back to Sorrento, where the sea and the orange blossoms mean nothing without them. Truly about everyone the village lost to emigration.”
- O Surdato Nnamurato (1915, Cannio/Califano). “This is about a soldier on the front lines of WWI who is writing home, terrified his beloved is forgetting him. The most famous Neapolitan song, followed by O Surdato and Funiculi funicula.”
- O Sole Mio (1898, di Capua). “My sun. This the most famous song of this set followed by O surdato. Written in Odessa during a thunderstorm by a homesick Neapolitan composer. The sun referenced at the end isn’t the sky’s sun, it’s the face of the beloved.”
Set 2: Kurt Weill
- Youkali (1934, Weill/Fernay). “This is Weill in exile in Paris in 1934, writing a tango about a paradise island that doesn’t exist. (Cough cough — capitalism…)”
- I’m a Stranger Here Myself (From One Touch of Venus) (1943, One Touch of Venus, Weill/Nash). “The goddess Venus has come down to earth in New York and fallen in love with a mortal. She doesn’t understand human love. Asks: what’s it like to be in love? I’m new here, I don’t know the rules. Wry, intelligent, a goddess shrugging.”
- Mack the Knife (Three Penny Opera). “A street singer introducing the audience to a charming murderer, and Brecht wanted us to clap along and then realize what we were clapping for.”
Set 3: Hope and the 20th Century
- The White Cliffs of Dover (1941, Burton/Kent) World War II. “Recorded by Vera Lynn during the Blitz. A promise that one day the bombs will stop, the birds will sing again, and Britain will look out at the cliffs and know it’s over. The song every British soldier carried in their head. Hope as a survival tactic.”
- I Could Have Danced All Night (1956, My Fair Lady, Lerner/Loewe). “Eliza Doolittle has just had her first dance with Henry Higgins. She can’t sleep. She can’t sit down. The first time anyone has treated her like a person worth dancing with. Pure joy. One of the first musicals I experienced apart from The Sound of Music.”
- Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen, 1984). “Cohen spent five years writing this. Over eighty verses, never finalized. Each verse has a different mood: Biblical, romantic, sexual, cynical, surrendered. The song is about everything: love, loss, faith, doubt, the holiness inside the broken. Cohen called it ‘a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way, but with enthusiasm, with emotion.’ In short.. this song is popular for a reason and it doesn’t hurt that it is Canadian.”
- La Vie en Rose (1945, Piaf/Louiguy). “This song was written in Paris just after the war. Edith Piaf, who lost everyone she loved, who came up singing on the streets of Pigalle, writes a song about meeting a man whose voice makes the whole world go pink. ‘La vie en rose’, life in rose. The most famous love song in French. The hope after the war.”
Reilly Nelson sings The White Cliffs of Dover with pianist Kevin Ahfat on December 14, 2023:
Reilly summarizes, “It’s mostly songs people know and love. On a deeper level, it’s the music that made me who I am. I feel like it does the same things for audiences.”
It’s a melange of songs that audiences can relate to.
“A lot of these are war-time era songs,” she says. “I find that programming them this way connects people across generations. We’re living in a moment where […] people are starving for hope and connection and something authentic. For me, that’s not really a marketing line, it’s what I see on stage,” she adds.
“There are moments in time when artists reject music of their time. They reject the pretty music for something more relevant,” Nelson says. “Weill is obviously one of those artists.” As a result, he created work that has enduring appeal.
“I want to connect these people over generations, and time. The response is always incredibly moving.”
Each song tells a story, and often, after a performance, people approach her with their stories that connect with the music. “They’re family stories,” she says.
“I love performing in theatrical settings, operas, but I do love theatre. I adore theatre. There’s so much proximity to the audience with this kind of work.”
Vera Lynn’s The White Cliffs of Dover strikes a special chord. “I was in Europe, and traveled to Dover, and the cliffs. These songs, they survive centuries of displacement and exile. It’s not a naive hope, it’s earned,” she says. “They’ve earned this place in our ears and in our hearts.”
Reilly Nelson sings Wolfgang Rihm’s Ophelia Sings iii with Danika Lorèn, recitation, and Joonghun Cho, piano at The Happenstancers’ concert The Two Deaths of Ophelia, June 19, 2025:
Coming Up
Nelson recently performed a concert version of a new work by Loredana Cunti and revolving around immigration stories, and Neapolitan ice cream.
“It’s really darling,” Nelson says. “The response was just wonderful.”
There will be more performances in June for Italian Heritage Month.
At the end of July, she’s off to Ottawa.
“I’m performing at the Ottawa Chamberfest,” she says. It will be her debut at the festival and she’ll be in a program with Toronto’s The Happenstancers.
“I work with the Happenstancers quite a bit,” she says.
Reilly will be singing Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga, a ten-minute solo opera for unaccompanied soprano — and she’ll be playing eight different characters.
“It’s a very dramatic piece. It’s crazy complicated. I told Brad, I’ll do my best,” she laughs. Brad Cherwin is the ensemble’s Artistic Director.
Composer Thierry Tidrow’s work is also on the program. “He’s doing arrangements for songs by Mary Dering.” Lady Mary Dering (1629-1704) was an English composer of the Baroque period.
There’s a range of music on her horizon — just the way she likes it.
Nelson loves Toronto’s music scene and all the opportunities it offers.
“There’s such a vibrant scene here. It’s like a giant music cooperative. It’s just flooring what you can experience in this city if you look.”
Concert Details
- The MZTV Museum of Television and ZoomerMedia Open House takes place May 23 and 24 at the Zoomerplex in Liberty Village. Reilly’s concert takes place at 1 p.m. on May 23. Details and reserve your free ticket here.
- Reilly plays Caterina in Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical at the Vaughan Italian Fest, June 6 and 7. Details and tickets here.
- Reilly performs with The Happenstancers on July 26 as part of Ottawa Chamberfest; details and tickets here.
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