Susanna's Secret / The Telephone at the Opera Factory

By WILLIAM DART

Opera Factory's latest production set its audiences something of a riddle: how can a menage-a-trois also be a double-hander?

Answer: when the object and unwitting instigator of marital and pre-marital jealousy is an inanimate object - a cigarette in the case of Wolf-Ferrari's Susanna's Secret and a telephone for Menotti's short opera The Telephone.

Theatrically the pairing was an unmitigated delight.

Susanna's secret passion (which turns out to be a partiality for cigarettes) seems more provocative in our smokefree days than it was a few decades ago when one could have imagined far more risque secrets in one's closet.

Emma Sloman and Edward Scorgie played the sparring couple with a nice sense of comic timing, although vocally they were often too full-on for the intimate venue.

Sloman's big moment came when, herbal cigarette in hand, she finally burst into glorious song; Scorgie's when he seemed intent on trashing the apartment to weed out an imagined lover.

Also contributing much to the general jolliness was Arjan Abeynaike, who made much of the non-speaking, non-singing role of the servant.

The Telephone, written almost 40 years later in 1947, is based on the politically shaky premise that a woman could be so busy chattering on the phone, her lover has to resort to a callbox to propose.

While the setting for Susanna's Secret had been decorously plush, The Telephone took place in a riot of lime green.

Few directors can concoct stage business with the ingenuity of Sally Sloman, from having the heroine idly snip her way through OK magazines or asking the hero to toy deviously with a Tanqueray bottle. And, once again, the indefatigable Rosemary Barnes was a one-woman orchestra on her piano for both operas.

Harriet Moir gave a frisky, campy performance as Menotti's Lucy and a few unsettled moments in the upper register did not dampen the comedic impact at all.

Andrew Conley's Ben was a suave and sonorous customer, especially in his short vengeance aria, where he came across as Figaro's New York cousin.

This evening of opera with a difference is playing tonight and tomorrow and is well worth catching.