Biography
Soprano Rachel Krehm is not only a versatile artist, but also an adept producer and champion of Canadian creations. In 2012, Rachel co-founded Opera 5 and has been its General Director ever since. Since 2020, she has taken up writing. She co-created, co-wrote, produced and performed in Opera 5’s web-series Threepenny Submarine - winner of Opera America’s 2024 Digital Excellence Award in Opera – Noteworthy Project. Her first libretto for the opera Come Closer was premiered in June 2025 by Opera 5 and is based on her experience losing her sister to heroin addiction. Her libretto for Come Closer has been hailed as “a remarkably brave and vulnerable piece of theatre, able to move beyond autobiography to convey a narrative that is at once deeply personal and – sadly – widely relatable” (Opera Canada – Jane Forner).
As a soprano, Rachel is a fierce performer and loves her work in Opera and as a soloist. In the 2024- 2025 season, she was seen as the Soprano soloist for Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with Cathedral Bluffs Orchestra, she sang Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with The Thunder Bay Symphony and she created the role of Big Sister in Opera 5’s world premiere of Come Closer. Her voice is praised for its “powerful high notes” (Leslie Barcza) and her interpretations as being “soulful” (Dawn Martens – Opera Canada). She is a fierce actress whose performances “will rattle your bones” (The Visitor – Kevin Reid). In 2013, her interpretation of La voix humaine won the Critics’ Choice Award. She reprised the role in 2021 with City Opera Toronto where her performance was described as “a breathtaking virtuoso performance of boundless passion and seemingly limitless musicality” (Opera Going Toronto – Ian Richie.)
Since 2012, Rachel has led Opera 5 from a small opera collective to a major player in the independent opera scene in Canada. In 2024, Opera 5 triumphantly returned to the stage with a lauded production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and the first year of Opera 5’s Portfolio Artist Internship – a collaboration with Opera McGill where Interns were selected to cover and perform roles in The Turn of the Screw and also perform secondary assignments in administration, production, design, and even music staff. The program is designed to help build necessary skills to ensure a stable and vibrant artistic career beyond training. Rachel won the McGill Alumni Association Student Engagement Award in 2025 for her efforts in creating and running the internship. In 2025, Opera 5 launched the Toronto Opera Festival, Toronto’s only professional opera festival, where the company produced the world premiere of Come Closer, a production or William Finn’s Elegies and a Gala performance of Opera and Musical Theatre. Opera 5 begins a two year residency with the Canadian Opera Company in September 2025.
Rachel co-created, co-wrote, produced, and performed in the award-winning Threepenny Submarine, Opera 5’s web series combining opera and puppetry in collaboration with Gazelle Automations. It is designed to be an engaging series for children and their families where the music plays a central part of the storytelling. Rachel noticed that in North America, generations of children used to be exposed to Classical Music through series like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. Today, few children’s series make classical music or opera a central focus and the vision of Threepenny Submarine was to provide this entry point to the stupendous sound world of classical music and opera. The series made its international debut in May 2024 when it was screened at the O. Festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
An avid believer in new creations, Rachel works in commissioning, workshopping, and creating Canadian art song and opera. In 2018, she premiered an orchestral song cycle by Vancouver based composer Ryan Trew on texts by her late sister Elizabeth Krehm called Come Closer. With the stunning song cycle complete, Rachel felt a need to expand the story to explore her relationship with her sister and her grief. She created a libretto and Ryan Trew set to expanding the piece, while reducing the ensemble to piano, violin, and cello. The opera explores processing grief through memories and dreams and the relationship between a Big Sister and her departed Little Sister. Come Closer saw development workshops with Pacific Opera Victoria’ Artist Residency program in June 2022 and Opera McGill’s Beta Lab in the spring of 2022 and fall of 2023. Come Closer is receiving further workshopping through 2024 and 2025 with Opera 5 and Opera McGill’s Beta Lab and will be premiered by Opera 5 in 2025.
After her sister Elizabeth’s death in 2012, Rachel and her family produced an annual memorial orchestral concert in memory of Elizabeth for a decade, which served as a fundraiser for St Michael’s Hospital, which raised over $240,000 for the hospital.
Recently, Rachel sang Miss Jessel in Opera 5’s The Turn of the Screw (2024). Rachel created the role of Parrot in Anna Pidgorna/Maria Reva’s opera Plaything with the premiere of completed work in Berlin at ufaFabrik/Musique 3 Femmes in 2022 and selections performed at Salle Bourgie in Montreal in 2021. She stepped in last minute to premiere Cecilia Livingston’s orchestral song cycle Breath Alone with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra in February 2024. She has sung Ryan Trew’s song cycle Come Closer with the Thunder Bay Symphony (2023), The North York Concert Orchestra (2023) Canzona Chamber Players (2022 and 2018) and The Kingston Symphony Orchestra (2021). In 2019, Rachel sang the title role from Ariadne auf Naxos with Highlands Opera Studio.
Season 2024-2025 will see Rachel as the soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra and Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, as well as creating the role of Big Sister in Come Closer.
