We were thinking of Chekov’s principle of drama: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it," when Hotel Casablanca opened with a rack full of guns hanging on the wall. Was it to illustrate that Thomas Pasatieri, the composer/librettist of this new opera, had relocated the original French play in NRA-friendly Texas, or were the weapons instrumental to the plot?

Well, we won’t spoil the story, but thanks to the performance of the Merola program apprentices, the light comedy did fire, and on all cylinders. We found it gutsy for these aspiring opera singers to present the world premiere of a new opera, but it turns out that the work is not much of a challenge. It is an opera with training wheels, if we may say. Written to feature all its performers pretty much evenly, it goes down easily and painlessly, in a short two hours.

It is a streamlined version of La Puce à l’Oreille, a French turn-of-the-last-century comedy by Feydeau, with a few catchy tunes which would not be out of place on Broadway (“Everything is bigger in Texas” for one, which keeps going: “especially your aunt’s ass….ets”). The cheap bad jokes are actually faithful to the original, it’s French but sophisticated it ain’t. This version is definitely a notch up: the seedy love hotel which gives its name to the opera is actually called the Minet Galant in French, which has several meanings, one of them the Gallant Pussy…

Tenor Andrew Bidlack carrying Chekov's gun, photo by John Lee

Most of the music is current without being modernistic, and definitely not difficult to the listener’s ear. Pasatieri even inserts an opera-loving character, as a pretext to musically cite Carmen or Figaro or Butterfly. We found the meta-operatic propaganda within the opera and the musical cues rather cutesy and annoying. Also, by being equal-opportunity among its cast, the opera get lost in unrelated tangents, as each character, whether relevant to the plot or not, is featured in a significant showmanship aria. Every one is a winner is fine in little league, but we like our operas to be a bit more focused.

That being said, we enjoyed the evening, thanks to the fun and game attitude of the performers. Baritone Jason Plourde opens up the performance showing a genial disposition and a nice comic timing as Burton the butler, in an exchange with tenor Andrew Bidlack. Burton set us up for another Chekkov gun by introducing a former vaudeville trio in a perky aria, from which two members would re-unite in the first act, at the Double-T ranch. When the play moves to the Hotel Casablanca, we would have bet that the third dancer would be there, only to be played for fools. We almost left grumpy.

Tamara Wapinsky (Talullah) and Paula Murrihy (Lucy) are the two thirds of that group, no more dancing but now enjoying house wives duties (it’s 1948, after all). Wapinsky has a full round soprano voice, with a very agreeable tone, if a little stretched in the more intense aria of Act II, while Murrihy’s is more trenchant, more sharp. Opposite them, Tom Corbeil as Tallu’s husband Tom, impressed us by his ability to sing rather well without opening his mouth wide, a feet that we previously associated with ventrilocists and Dick Cheney. He seemed a bit uncomfortable on the stage at first, a bit stiff, but loosened up as things went along.

Nathaniel Hackmann was given the gift of an over-the-top character, and ran away with it. He was campy, he was too much, as Raul Perez, Lucy’s hot-tempered latino husband, but he went at it full throttle and the audience loved him.

Meredith Woodend and Jamie-Rose Guarrine as the Hotel Casanblanca crew got a few fine tunes to display their talent, as did Kenneth Kellogg as Tobias. Since Pasatieri kept making musical allusions to other opera composers, we convinced ourselves that Tobias was named after Tobias Picker, the composer of Emmeline or An American Tragedy, for the musical lines offered some similitudes.

Joseph Illick conducted crisply the small orchestra, and while this world premiere won’t leave the same mark as Dr Atomic or most likely the upcoming Appomatox in a month and a half, it was a pleasant, entertaining, the cast had fun with it, and so did we.