Opera 5 has brought back the Toronto Opera Festival for a second year, featuring two productions that take the stage from June 3 to 14. The productions include double bill of Giacomo Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, and the world premiere of Parḗlios by Canadian composer Cecilia Livingston and librettist Duncan McFarlane.
The Puccini double bill includes two short operas, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, juxtaposing a heartbreaking tale with a laugh-out-loud dysfunctional family comedy.
Canadian baritone Gregory Dahl will be performing the role of Gianni Schicchi, with mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó taking on dual roles as the Zia Principessa and Zita. General Director of Opera 5 and soprano Rachel Krehm will sing the role of Suor Angelica.
“Suor Angelica is a heartbreakingly beautiful work, where Puccini’s luminous orchestration illuminates themes of sacrifice, grief, and spiritual transcendence. Gianni Schicchi, by contrast, dazzles with razor-sharp wit and brilliant comic timing, its lively score propelling the zany antics of a greedy, deceitful family — and one cunning outsider determined to outsmart them. Together, these operas have taken my emotional range (and my Kleenex budget) to new heights,” says Jessica Derventzis, Artistic Director of Opera 5, in a statementt.
The world premiere of Parḗlios is the centrepiece of the Festival. The production will be directed and choreographed by Jennifer Nichols, and music directed by Evan Mitchell. Parḗlios is a multidisciplinary work that brings together opera, installation, and oratorio to delve into themes of climate change, migration, and humanity’s connection to the planet. Three contemporary dancers will also be integrated into the staging.
Parḗlios will feature the acclaimed TorQ Percussion Quartet, a choir, and a diverse, gender-expansive cast of Canadian soloists.
“Inspired by Olafur Eliasson‘s installation The Weather Project, Parḗlios is the latest in a series of works we’ve created that respond to visual art as a starting point for explorations of voice, movement, and staging — blurring the boundaries of genre. We’re so excited to collaborate with the incredible musicians of TorQ Percussion Quartet to bring a startling sound palette to this new work and we look forward to sharing it with Opera 5’s audiences!” comment Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane.
The Toronto Opera Festival incorporates Opera 5’s Portfolio Artist Internship program in partnership with Opera McGill at the Schulich School of Music. The program supports 13 early-career opera artists who will perform across the season, and cover roles in the Puccini double bill. The interns will also take part in professional development workshops to build new skills beyond performance, including design, production, and administration.
LV caught up with Opera 5’s team and cast to ask a few questions about the upcoming Festival.
Toronto Opera Festival Q&A
The Portfolio Artist Internship Program: Jessica Derventzis
LV: What can you tell me about the Portfolio Artist Internship talent this year, and what role they’ll
play in the festival productions?
Jessica Derventzis: This year we are beyond excited to feature 13 Portfolio Artist Interns, all
current students or recent graduates of McGill University:
Michal Aloni, Angelique Brown, Len Crino, Liam Dooley, Elizabeth Fast, AJ Gauger, Marissa Lake, Brenden Lengsfeld, Hannah Mikita, Christopher Pitre-McBride, Tristan Pritham, Paige Robinson, and Patricia Wrigglesworth. Paige Robinson and Len Crino are two returning interns and we are thrilled to welcome them back.
Each year, the internship has looked a little different and we have curated it to the season we are performing and how to best highlight the interns. This season, we are producing two shows that luckily have large casts, and a new Canadian premiere with juicy roles for the singers. Most of the interns have featured roles in the Puccini double bill and are covering the principal roles.
Two of our interns, Len Crino and Brenden Lengsfield will also be featured as soloists in Parḗlios. What an amazing opportunity for them to workshop and premiere this piece with the composer and librettist in the room! All of our interns also have the opportunity to perform in the free concert series at the COC, and showcase their amazing talents.
In addition, as has been tradition, each intern will also perform secondary assignments. These vary depending on skill and interest. Our audition process involves an interview portion so we can get to know each applicant on a personal level and know what avenues within the theatre world they are interested in exploring. We have interns as assistant stage managers, assistant directors, marketing and social media collaborators, aspiring designers, and administrators.
They can really get a full picture of how a production runs from beginning to end. All doors are open to them — so if they want to pop into other rehearsals or meetings, they are welcome to. We encourage each intern to really take the reins and make it their own.
On a personal note, I will mention how valuable experiences such as these were in my beginnings that I really hope our group finds this beneficial. This year, we have hired two previous interns as professional artists (Kate Fogg and MacKenzie Sechi) and we know that from their time with us a number of other professional gigs have popped up for them in the future. That is the goal! We are delighted that these two are back with us in a new way, showcasing their having successfully crossed the bridge from intern to professional.
The Interns Who Came Back: Kate Fogg and MacKenzie Sechi
LV: How has your experience with Opera 5, first as an intern, and now coming back to perform, helped in furthering your career goals?
Kate Fogg and MacKenzie Sechi answered together on a FaceTime call:
Working with Opera 5 has been the most influential experience of our young careers. Our years with the Opera5 Opera McGill internship exposed us to working opera artists, and we got learn from them and their journeys.
It showed us a path to making our own projects, and how to open our own doors. Opera5 has hired us both to sing various roles that have challenged us and helped us grow in different ways, and our work with them has led to connections with industry professionals in Toronto and beyond. We feel supported by them in all facets of our lives and careers. We are grateful for the community that they have welcomed us into.
Puccini’s Suor Angelica: Krisztina Szabo
LV: Is it challenging or gratifying — or perhaps both — as an artist to swing from tragedy to comedy in
one evening’s production?
Krisztina Szabo: I have never done a double-bill of tragedy and comedy in one evening’s production, but I have been a part of shows that were scenes that had a similar kind of contrast (for example, Tapestry Opera’s Opera Briefs). I think it is both challenging and gratifying. Being able to embody the full scope of emotions is both cathartic and exhilarating, and the opportunity to play on stage is always deeply gratifying.
LV: What do you look to bring to each of your characters in the two operas — what essential qualities
do you want to convey?
Krisztina Szabo: My role, La Zia Principessa, in Suor Angelica is deeply angry, unforgiving and scathing, while Zita is grumpy, greedy and gossipy. Both are older women who have lived a lot of life, and I hope to convey that depth of experience in both roles.
A World Premiere: Rachel Krehm
LV: How did Parḗlios come to be part of the festival? Was it a commission — given that an operatic
production takes some time to come together?
Rachel Krehm: Opera 5 produced Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane’s first opera The Masque of the Red Death in 2013. It was the first time that each Duncan and Cecilia created an opera and it was so incredible working with them and we wanted to work together on another project.
TorQ percussion quartet has also been a group that we have wanted to collaborate with operatically. Evan Mitchell, Opera 5’s music director and Richard Burrows did their undergrads together at Laurier, and they were in the same percussion studio. Cecilia writes so well for percussion and so it just felt like a match made in heaven to all come together.
As it was developing, the choir and the dance felt like natural progressions and so Jennifer Nichols was pulled into direct and choreograph movement, and we called Robert Busiakiewicz to help us put together an amazing choir. We are really proud of Parélios and can’t wait to share it with you.
Parḗlios: Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane
LV: What can you tell me about Parḗlios and how it came together? Did you have a multi-disciplinary production, including dance and installation, in mind at the outset?
Cecilia and Duncan: Parélios had two starting points: TorQ Percussion Quartet, and Olafur Eliasson’s installation The Weather Project. That huge artificial sun got us thinking about human life at the end of the sun, as the world cools. That installation’s monumental physical presence — and its paradoxes, because it’s an illusion that reveals itself as an illusion, and is enormous while being so simple, just fog, light, mirror–seemed to align with the way TorQ Percussion Quartet revels in the drama and physicality of percussion performance.
As we thought about how voice, movement, percussion, and theatre could intersect in a work about
such huge themes, we quickly realized that even as this new work stretches opera’s conventions of plot and characters, some of the oldest elements of opera, like dance, could have a really powerful place in Parélios.
LV: Migration, climate change, and connection to planet are big issues to highlight — how does the
music reflect those themes?
Cecilia: I’m fascinated by voices in ensemble — such a powerful expression of human connection,
rich in sonic possibilities and the dramatic tensions of one-and-many, individual-and-collective. The themes in Parélios turn on that tension of one-and-many, of the despair and hope in one heart, and how — as humans in groups — our choices and actions shape all our lives.
Similarly, TorQ has been playing together for 20 years, and these four very individual musicians can move as one, while each offering a truly individual voice. As a composer, I love that TorQ offers an enormous palette of percussion sounds within the intimacy of a quartet: from the softest hiss of snow to the extreme intensity of tam-tams and low drums, to the shimmering harmonies and melodies of vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, crotales which can meld so lyrically with solo and ensemble voices. Percussion writing can be incredibly lush and incredibly sparse, full of comfort and very lonely: those extremes colour Parélios.
Choreographer & Director Jennifer Nichols
LV: What would you like audiences to take away from this opera — reflection, awareness, call to
action — perhaps a combination of all of those?
Jennifer: In a CBC radio interview about his book ‘On Time and Water’, I heard the Icelandic
writer and documentarian Andri Snær Magnason argue that “paradigm shifts happen when new
science is filtered through art”. I agree that massive, abstract crises like climate change need to
be filtered through storytelling, art, and emotion to provoke an effectual societal response. Art
has the power to translate abstract concepts into intimate human experiences that connect past,
present, and future generations.
My hope is that a work like Parélios sounds an alarm more profound than any data or statistics. Maybe audiences will feel this on a visceral level and walk away with an empowered sense of urgency.
Festival Details
The creative team for the Puccini double bill includes Opera 5’s Jessica Derventzis and Evan Mitchell, with set and costumes by Carlyn Rahusaar Routledge, and lighting design by Siobhan Sleath.
The design team for Parélios will include Siobhan Sleath (lighting), Chris Faris (costumes), and Nathan Bruce (projections).
- Suor Angelica & Gianni Schicchi June 3 – 7, 2026 at Theatre Passe Muraille
- Parḗlios June 11 – 14, 2026 at Theatre Passe Muraille
Find tickets and show detaisl [HERE].
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