How many singers can you fit in a clown car one hour lunchtime recital in the RBA? Opera 5 managed eighteen ranging from Krisztina Szabó and Greg Dahl to a whole posse of interns plus Trevor Chartrand at the piano. Besides material obviously related to the upcoming (June 3rd to 14th) festival at Theatre Passe Muraille there was Mozart, Strauss (R), musical theatre and Die Fledermaus. It was all really well done but I’m just going to talk about the material that’s most relevant to the festival.

Rachel Krehm started us off with Cecilia Livingstone’s luna premit. It’s not from the new opera Parélios, which will premiere in the festival’s second week, but it’s the same composer and librettist and a pretty good intro to the kind of luminous sound world Cecilia creates. It has a rather beautiful vocal line with quite sparse accompaniment at just the right places. Rachel sang beautifully and her Latin diction is pretty good too.

The first week of the festival features a double bill of Puccini; Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. One starts with a death and ends with damnation, the other ends with a death and, apparently, salvation, so an obvious pairing. We got excerpts from both. Michal Aloni sang the thre rather grim “Nel silenzio” from Suor Angelica dramatically and with some really interesting dark colours. Kate Fogg and Jeremy Scinocca produced a very pleasing “Lauretta mia” with plenty of power and some style before the other Lauretta, Paige Robinson, sang a very smooth and well controlled (and inevitable) “O mio babbino caro”. Both arias from Gianni Schicchi of course.

But the festival is not all about student interns, good as they are. There are some heavy hitters. Rachel will sing the title role in Suor Angelica with Kristina Szabó as La Zia Principessa as well as Zita in Gianni Schicchi with Greg Dahl in the title role in that one. They both made significant contributions to Wednesday’s concert with a powerful version of Strauss’ “Zueignung” from Krisztina and a very smooth “I’ll Walk Beside You” from Greg before joining forces for a very funny account of “Wunderbar” from Kiss Me Kate.

Both Puccini operas will be fully staged in productions by Jessica derventzis and a chamber ensemble directed by Evan Mitchell. Parélios features four singers, three dancers, the Tor Q percussion quartet and quite possibly the end of the world all directed and choreographed by Jenn Nicholls.

Tickets for both shows are available from the TPM box office.

Photo credit: Dan Truong