Almost exactly four years after Kye Marshall and Amanda Hale’s Pomegranate played at Buddies in Bad Times in a production by Michael Mori it reappeared at the COC in expanded form in a production by Jennifer Tarver.  The basic plot hasn’t changed much so I’m not going to repeat what I wrote about that in 2019.  The other changes are, though, quite extensive and I’m not convinced they are improvements.

It’s quite a bit longer, there’s now a six person female chorus and the instrumental ensemble is much bigger.  The projections that added so much to the earlier version have disappeared.  It’s also playing in the much bigger and acoustically challenging Canadian Opera Company Theatre.  I arrived early because it was “general seating” and I know just how awful sitting up the back is in this space but even with a third row seat most of the sung text was unintelligible.  It just disappears into the cavernous roof space.  The absence of surtitles was surely a mistake.

The production, strictly confined to the stage, was less inventive and daring than earlier and rather static, especially in the first act.  Having a chorus allowed for more bodies in scenes that needed them but didn’t add a whole lot dramatically.  I don’t think the music was helped by the expanded ensemble.  Marshall’s forte, based on what little I’ve heard, is small ensemble jazz.  The extra instruments rather dampened the occasional move away from strict tonality and diluted the modal element in the first act and the second act, instead of sounding a bit edgy  now sounded more like a Gershwin pastiche.

The performances though were pretty good.  Teiya Kasahara was, again, the priestess and the bar owner and was the clear vocal standout; singing powerfully in both classical and jazz idiom.  The young lovers this time were Danielle Buonaiuto as Cassia/Cass and Adanya Dunn as Suli/Suzie.  Both sang and acted well with the latter injecting some much needed energy into the rather static first act.  Catherine Daniel was touching as the runaway slave and sang resonantly in her less attractive second act persona.  Peter Barrett plays the patriarchy archetype in both acts.  It’s not a sympathetic role but he handled it well.  The chorus and the band. split either side of the stage, were fine and Rosemary Thompson conducted efficiently in less than ideal circumstances.

Overall, it felt like someone at the COC had asked for a fairly tight, compact show to be turned into “grand opera” which was a big ask for a creative team with limited opera experience.  The experience certainly wasn’t enhanced by the decision to forego surtitles in a problematic acoustic.  The result was patchy and, for me, not as satisfying as the earlier version.

There are two more performances tonight and Sunday.

Photo credits: Michael Cooper