About Krista
After obtaining a Bachelor of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary, Krista realized her true passion was singing. With a constant pursuit and focus on developing her operatic voice, she earned a Licentiate and Master’s degree in Music from the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, participated in the Calgary Opera Emerging Artists Program.
The past few years, she has found her way to the Soprano Repertoire and she is singing the music she has always desired. In May, she portrayed Leonora in Il Trovatore with the Macedonian National Opera and Ballet and then, in September, Abigaille in Nabucco.
Alberta audiences will recognize Krista from her “sultry” performance as Maddalena in Rigoletto. She starred in the title role of l’Opéra de Montréal’s Carmen directed by Charles Binamé. She has performed with Calgary Opera (Ballad of Baby Doe, What Brought Us Here), Edmonton Opera (La Traviata), Regina Symphony Orchestra (Candide). Québec audiences know her best as Sadia, in the opera version of Luc Plamondon’s beloved Starmania with l'Opéra de Québec and l’Opéra de Montréal. Other roles include Concepcion (l’Heure Espagnole), Idamante (Idomeneo), Carmen (La Tragédie de Carmen) and Mignon (Mignon). Internationally, she has appeared with Polifonia in Macedonia to portray the role of Dido (Dido and Aeneas).
Opera Canada | Artists on Stage | 2019 Spring
Krista de Silva had a great uncle with a beautiful baritone voice whose operatic career was cut short by imprisonment during WWII. Despite this genetic link to opera, she didn’t grow up listening to classical music. Her close-knit family in Fort McMurray, Alberta, listened to R&B, jazz, reggae, and popular music recordings at dinner every night. “My dad played the guitar,” recalls de Silva. “He and I sang mostly Beatles tunes. My mother’s brother was a huge part of my musical knowledge; he had a very large collection of recordings in every genre of music and educated my brother and me about musicals, gospel and jazz.” De Silva had the added bonus of cultural exposure through extensive travel with her family visiting relatives in Italy, the Seychelles, England, Australia, and Austria as well as taking in other locales like Hawaii, Mexico, and China along the way.
When de Silva was ten years old, she entered herself in a music festival in Fort McMurray, and then started singing lessons at 13. She took a break from music and pursued a degree in Kinesiology at the University of Calgary, and after a brief stint playing volleyball at a small college in the United States, returned to Calgary to finish her degree. While there, she studied voice independently with Winston Noren who assigned de Silva her first opera aria, Violetta’s “Addio del passato.” “After that taste of opera, I just kept adding more arias,’’ she laughs.