This year’s fall opera offering from the Glenn Gould School is a double bill; Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Both of these were written in the 1950s and satirise bourgeois marriage of the time. Opera goers are absolutely used to seeing the marriage customs of, say, the 1850s or 1790s sent up in opera but some how the 1950s seem weirdly exotic. Director Mario Pacheco seems to have thought so too and sets both works in Dr. Pritchett’s Clinic for Matrimonial Memory Erasure. So the quartet in the Barber are nurses in scrubs; three of whom also form the trio for the Bernstein where Dinah and Sam are played as patients. It actually works pretty well.

The Barber is a short, rather slight, piece in which two couples are playing a social bridge game (do people do that anymore?) but everyone is distracted by their own preoccupations; a love affair, a dying mother, a peacock feather hat and so on. They are terrible bridge players but that’s hardly the point. It’s a kind of spiky, typical Barber score and it’s well handled by baritone Matthew Black, tenor Gabriel Klassen, soprano Ana Sofia Castro Barrios (these three also feature in the Bernstein) and Soprano Emma Cloutier with Marina Iguavita in the more or less walk on role of Dr. Pritchett. Ivan Jovanovic accompanied on piano. It makes sense as a lead in to the Bernstein but it’s not very exciting.

The Bernstein is much more substantial and complex. It’s set in upper middle class suburbia (not Tahiti! The title refers to a really bad movie that features in the plot). In fact the trio, who function as a kind of chorus, keep repeating a litany of middle America’s more salubrious suburbs; familiar to me as the habitats of my senior colleagues at AT Kearney! The principal characters are a husband and wife; Sam and Dinah, who have an apparently enviable lifestyle but have come to pretty much hate each other’s company and do whatever they can to find reasons to be apart. Sam expresses his world view (uncompromisingly elitist and masculine) through sport and business. Dinah shows her ennui through a very long and very funny description of the terrible movie that gives the opera its title which she has watched to get away from Sam. There’s no meeting of minds but the ending suggests they will continue to muddle through.

It’s a much more interesting score than the Barber. Basically it’s Bernstein at his jazziest with a definite musical theatre quality though with genuine operatic writing for Sam and Dinah. Both roles are really well done. Owen Phillipson has an imposing stage presence and a baritone voice that’s plenty large enough to fill Mazzoleni Hall. He also gets the self righteous, unreflective 1950s alpha male attitude spot on. Jada Alexiou takes on the low mezzo role of Dinah. She has a really interesting voice. It’s very strong in the lower register and has some attractive colours. She’s a good actor and mover too and her comic turn describing the movie is extremely funny in a somewhat excruciating way. I think we are going to see a lot more of this pair. The writing for the trio is much more musical theatre like and the three of them are excellent. The vocal style is spot on and they move collectively with lots of energy and physical humour. They are really rather cute and it’s fun to watch them.

Accompaniment here is by an eight member band (in an arrangement by Bernard Yannotta). There’s enough woodwind and brass in the mix to emphasise the jazzy qualities of the music and it’s played with great élan. It’s always nice to have more than just piano for these Mazzoleni shows. Musical direction for both pieces is by Jennifer Tung who produced a fast paced but well coordinated performance.

So, an interesting choice of works this year given a lively and imaginative production. Singing and playing is first rate across the board. There’s one more performance tonight (Saturday) in which Ana Sofia and Marina will trade roles.