The Opera Festival of Chicago has announced two pre-show talks featuring WFMT Music Director and host of “Listening to Singers” Oliver Camacho.

The two special events will be held on June 27 at 6:30 p.m. and June 29 at 1 p.m., at the George Van Dusen Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, immediately before that day’s “Pagliacci” performance.

Camacho will discuss the evolution of Italian opera from a showcase of technical feats of the human voice to a provocative spectacle that turned a mirror on the audience; and how Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” put a shocking story ripped from the headlines on the stage.

Camacho is a tenor and orator who graduated from Northwestern University and studied historically informed performance practice at Amherst Early Music Festival and Early Music Vancouver. He has been a soloist with the Newberry Consort, Bella Voce, Chicago Choral Artists, Bach Cantata Vespers, the Chicago Bach Ensemble, Vox 3 Collective, and Distant Worlds Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Opera Festival of Chicago will present “Pagliacci” in a production by Sasha Gerritson. Uff. Emanuele Andrizzi will conduct a cast that includes Michelle Allie Drever as Nedda, Jonathan Burton as Canio, Franco Pomponi as Tonio, Jerek Fernández as Peppe, and Jonathan Wilson as Silvio.

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