This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School was a double bill of short chamber operas.  It played at Mazzoleni Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings with Liza Balkan directing and Jennifer Tung conducting.

The opening piece was Menotti’s The Telephone.  This is a very short opera about a guy trying to propose to his girlfriend but being repeatedly stymied by her taking pointless gossipy phone calls.  It’s very much a collection of 1940s American stereotypes and usually I find it beyond irritating.  However, this version was actually very enjoyable.  Some of it is small directorial touches e.g. the “gift” that the boy has brought for the girl is a cordless drill; which is probably not what she was expecting.  He later uses this to try and destroy her cell phone.  It’s updated to the extent that mobiles are used but the dialogue is so rooted in it’s time period that it doesn’t really help.  But what really makes it work is impeccable comic timing from both Matthew Black as Matt and, especially, Alyssa Bartholomew as Lyssa..  They are also quite charming in a naive American 1940s sort of way and are more than up to the task vocally.  Accompaniment was two pianos; Ivan Jovanovic and Karmen Gruišić.  I wasn’t looking forward to this part of the show but I ended up really enjoying it.

After the interval came the rather more substantial Baby Kintyre by Dean Burry.  The TL:DR version is that it’s a mystery about a mummified baby found in a Toronto house in 2007 and subsequently turned into a radio serial chamber opera by Dean.  The much longer and more informative version can be found in my review of the 2007 CBC CD recording.  (Yes folks, back in the day the CBC commissioned opera.  Imagine that!).

So there’s a real challenge here.  The opera was written for radio not the stage, it was broadcast in eight minute segments with cliff hanger endings and it used the full panoply of effects open to a CBC radio producer. Liza Balkan’s very effective solution was basically to stick as close to a radio broadcast as possible though the cliff hanger ending schtick was inevitably lost.  So the stage setting is a recording studio with radio microphones, a special effects table, a gesticulating producer and so on.  The clips of interviews and so on are used just as in the radio version.  There are a few basic props to support the visuals but no real attempt at a “normal” operatic staging.  I thought it worked rather well.

There were some really excellent performances.  Jeffrey Liu as Bob the builder, had plenty to get his teeth into and he conveyed a wide range of emotions effectively.  He was well supported by Charlotte Anderson as his wife Jill whose only involvement is by telephone.  The inhabitants of 29 Kintyre are sung by Matthew Black as the easy going Wesley and Alannah Beauparlant as his prim and suspicious wife Della.  Leandra Dahm is charming as their ten (or so) year old niece Rita who is the key link from past to present.  Gabriel Klassen is quite funny as their boarder George; especially when he’s being seduced by Alla Mae; Della’s slutty sister and presumed mother of Baby Kintyre, sung and acted flamboyantly by Jada Alexiou.  These last two also double up as CBC reporters backed up by Alyssa Bartholomew as the studio tech.  David Goldbloom was quietly effective in the speaking part of the Narrator.

It’s a colourful and atmospheric score with some period parodies but the constraints of the format don’t leave much room for vocal pyrotechnics.  It’s more about integrating the voices, the ensemble; string quartet, double bass, clarinet/saxophone and piano, and the various recorded elements and live SFX.  Between them, conductor Jennifer Tung and sound designer Edgardo Moreno do a very effective job.

All in all, Baby Kintyre translated well to the stage and was thoroughly enjoyable in a macabre sort of way.

Photo Credit: Gaetz Photography