By Daniel Buckwalter

These are the fun concerts, the concerts where performers and audience members alike enjoy the company of the other, each side soaking up the mutual relaxed adoration on a Sunday afternoon.

In this case, it was the Eugene Opera Chorus preaching, if you will, to the throng on March 22 at First United Methodist Church in Eugene, and to a good-size audience that nearly filled the sanctuary for the one-hour — and free — concert. The performance was in collaboration with Concerts at First, a nonprofit organzation that brings in local talent as well as musicians from around the state for free or low-cost concerts.

And if you’ve never been to a Concerts at First production, I would urge you to attend. There are plenty of opportunities this spring, including The Northwest Trombone Collective of Portland in April. Additionally, there are three concerts in May (including organist Lindsey Hendriksen Rodgers with the Oregon Brass Society), and in June, mezzo-soprano Ágnes Vojtkó will sing to close out the season.

It was the 33 members of the Eugene Opera Chorus (“The backbone of who we are,” Kari Welch, Eugene Opera’s executive director, declared before the performance) who had the sanctuary to themselves on March 22, and they were splendid.

Under the direction of Naomi Castro and the piano accompaniment of Connie Mak, the chorus serenaded the audience with plenty of familiar fare — or, as one chorus member put it beforehand, “It’s opera’s greatest hits.”

There was the “Anvil Chorus” of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, the “With Cat-Like Thread” from William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (Dylan Bunten baritone), and Verdi’s “Brindisi” piece from the opera La Traviata (Anne Ferguson soprano, Luke Barnard tenor), among others.

There was the melodic “Cigarette Girls’ Chorus” from Verdi’s Carmen, the more sinister “Chorus of the Witches” from Verdi’s Macbeth, all balanced by the tranquil beauty of the “Humming Chorus” from Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and the “Chorus of the Priests” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

The afternoon’s finale was the elegant “Make Our Garden Grow” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, made all the more lovely by the work of soprano Taylor Hulett and baritone Daniel Au.

Sunday’s concert was a splendid way for Eugene Opera to do community outreach. I hope to see Eugene Opera Chorus do this again in the near future.

(More information about the Concerts at First series at First United Methodist Church is available online at ConcertsAtFirstEugene.com)