Opera 5: Suor Angelica by Giacomo Puccini w/libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. Jessica Derventzis, director; Evan Mitchell, music director. Starring: Rachel Krehm (Suor Angelica), Krisztina Szabo (La Zia Principessa), Patricia Wrigglesworth (Suor Genovieffa), Angelique Brown (La Zelatrice), Paige Robinson (Suor Osmina/Prima Cercatrice), Elizabeth Fast (Una Novizia), Hannah Mikita (Suor Dolcina)
Opera 5: Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini w/libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. Jessica Derventzis, director; Evan Mitchell, music director. Starring: Gregory Dahl (Gianni Schicchi), Krisztina Szabo (Zita), Jeremy Scinocca (Rinuccio), Kate Fogg (Lauretta), Ryan Nauta (Gherardo), Daniela Agostino (Nella), Tristan Pritham (Betto di Signa), Aaron Dimoff (Simone), Christopher Pitre-McBride (Marco), MacKenzie Sechi (La Ciesca)
Part of Opera 5’s 2026 Toronto Opera Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille, June 3-7, 2026. Festival continues withParḗlios, a groundbreaking new Canadian opera by Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane, June 12 to 14. Tickets here.
Powerful Puccini
The exciting independent company Opera 5, led by its co-founder, singer Rachel Krehm, has started its festive season brilliantly with accomplished renderings of two classic Puccini one-act operas, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schichhi.
Intended by the great composer as part of an evening of three short operas entitled Il tritticio (The Triptych), Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi couldn’t be more different in tone. The first is intensely tragic and the other is subversively hilarious, offering hefty samplings of Puccini’s haunting melodies.
Il maestro’s direct approach to narrative embellishes Giovacchino Forzano’s librettos. The two hour-length works inspired Opera 5’s artistic team to create productions that presented Puccini’s pieces in the best possible light, moving apparently effortlessly from the high drama of Suor Angelica to the wicked fun of Gianni Schicchi over the course of the evening.
A Moving Suor Angelica
The only major ensemble opera featuring only women — there aren’t even “pants” roles — Suor Angelica is an overwhelmingly emotional piece that continues to resonate with audiences.
Set in a convent, it is presented in three set pieces: one, truly “verismo” in the style that Puccini adored, shows the nuns working naturally while sparring with each other; the second presents an anguished scene in which the mysterious Suor Angelica is treated with contempt by her aunt, La Zia Principessa, who needs her signature on an agreement that will give away her aristocratic title and funds; and the third is a melodramatic highlight, in which Angelica deals with her fraught life — having a baby out of wedlock and the terrifying consequences, the most awful being her child’s death without being able to comfort him.
Of all of Puccini’s works, Suor Angelica may be the most difficult for general classical music lovers to enjoy.
It absolutely demands an emotional surrender from its audience. For Opera 5’s general director and lead soprano Rachel Krehm, taking on the part of Suor Angelica was a perilous choice. It’s a pleasure to have seen and heard her response to the challenge — a powerful performance, which featured a heartfelt rendering of the magnificent aria that is an accounting of Angelica’s life and child’s death, “Senza Mama.”
Suor Angelica’s direction by Jessica Derventzis and musically, in a reduced form, by Evan Mitchell was impeccable.
The cast of nuns, led by Patricia Wigglesworth and Angelique Brown, were persuasive in their scenes; had there been more time and money, those opening scenes could have been even more effective with additional period details.
Playing off Krehm in the key scene as the unrelenting aunt, Krisztina Szabo was brilliant. Her mixture of contempt and anger towards Krehm’s Angelica thrusts the narrative forward and turns what would always be sad into a tragedy.
Suor Angelica is a tour-de-force by Rachel Krehm. She makes you care about a problematic character that Puccini evidently loved. And so, clearly, does Krehm.
It’s about the singing, inevitably, and Krehm does what opera and Puccini demands — make you love and care about Angelica and her child, note by note.
A Wonderfully Comic Gianni Schicchi
Based on a canto in Dante’s Inferno, Puccini and Forzano boldly transformed a tale condemning the scoundrel Gianni Schicchi for impersonating the recently dead — and extremely wealthy — Buoso Donati in order to leave a fortune for himself, into a comic masterpiece.
Composed during the First World War, the modernist notion of greed being a relatively harmless and all too human emotion is played out in an absolutely hilarious way throughout the opera. Like Suor Angelica, whose tragic life justified her suicide, Gianni Schicchi is such a lovable rogue that you can’t help but root for him to escape the fires of hell, even if he did commit several mortal sins along the way.
It’s refreshing to consider that Puccini rose to great heights in Catholic Italy while harbouring skeptical thoughts about some of the major tenets of the institution.
Kudos must go to Opera 5’s director Jessica Derventzis for her handling of the comedy in Gianni Schicchi.
It’s never easy to make humour work; too often directors overplay great material, robbing it of the human touches that make audiences laugh. The trick is to emphasize foibles enough for them to be recognizable to a discerning spectator without exaggerating them beyond the point of genuine amusement.
Derventzis and her team, including production designer Carlyn Rahusaar Routledge and lighting designer Siobhan Sleath, have done a terrific job in setting the scene for Donati’s greedy relatives to call on the scoundrel Schicchi to save their day.
Comedy doesn’t work without a fine cast and Opera 5 has provided a superb one. Gregory Dahl is an exuberant Gianni Schicchi, dominating nearly every scene. He’s accompanied by an extraordinary cast: Krisztina Szabo (Zita), Jeremy Scinocca (Rinuccio), Kate Fogg (Lauretta), Ryan Nauta (Gherardo), Daniela Agostino (Nella), Tristan Pritham (Betto di Signa), Aaron Dimoff (Simone), Christopher Pitre-McBride (Marco), MacKenzie Sechi (La Ciesca) and the others are wonderful in their own ways. You laugh at the human comedy that emerges as the lust for land and money overpowers filial affection time after time. The Donati family end up deserving their reduced circumstances by dint of their overpowering desire to achieve their nefarious results.
The most extraordinary element of Gianni Schicchi is the appearance of one of the most glorious arias in the history of opera during all of the frivolity.
“O mio babbino caro” is sung by Lauretta, Schicchi’s daughter, to win him over to rewrite the will, which will give her the dowry needed to marry Rinuccio, one of the Donati family.
Kate Fogg, a comparative newcomer to Toronto’s opera scene, does a lovely version of it in this production. Though the song’s motivation is hardly extraordinary, the melody Puccini created was absolutely breathtaking. It’s both a delight to hear the aria and slightly upsetting to realize that it must have been intended to be a charming, low key, piece.
Still, it’s a wonderful aria and surely the highlight of this delightful opera.
By Marc Glassman for Ludwig-Van.
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