Vocal talent makes pizza sound good > Maine Opera gives tasty rendition of Barab work

Here’s a tip if you’ve been married six weeks, have grown tired of your elderly husband, are enamored with a bright-eyed suitor, and are way ready for a big change: Go into the woods, collect some poisonous mushrooms, cook them on a pizza, feed them to your husband, kill him, and get on with the new guy.

Easy enough. But wait. What if the maid, who has sworn loyalty to you but is secretly in love with the old man, snitches, and your husband gets his hunting rifle out?

Oh dear. Then you do have a cheesy mess. But leave it to Opera Maine, a summer company of expert singers performing throughout August, to finish the bel canto opera “La Pizza con Funghi” by Seymour Barab with pizazz, hilarity and a set of exquisitely rich voices. Few singers could uphold that standard as well as Cynthia Douglas, Kathryn Hartgrove, George Wolff and Ross Darlington, the ensemble members of the Barab piece.

But here’s what’s more: Opera Maine not only has fun presenting comic operas written in English, but they do it in a way that (and here we extend our deepest apologies to hard-core opera scholars) you aren’t even aware you’re listening to opera.

Conducted by David Katz, a co-founder of the company, and directed by opera singer Lorna Haywood, this risible troupe performed Saturday in Minsky Hall at the University of Maine and proved once more it has that reassuring combination of vocal talent and theatrical pithiness. These folks sing with captivating clarity, precise diction and expressive charm. They know when to stop and when to pull the rubber chicken out of the bag. Plus they are just plain friendly, and that counts for a lot in a field that can sing itself right out of the range of popular audiences.

The current program, which takes place again tonight at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth, includes the Barab piece, but it also offers a tasty selection of gourmet operatic delicacies. The opening “musical monologue” is “Bon Appetit!”, a mock version of Julia Child’s famed TV cooking show, and involves the actual cooking of a chocolate cake onstage. (At intermission, if you’re lucky, the number on your ticket will win you a slice of the heavenly dessert.)

Starring local mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Erskine Patches as the loopy guide to the “wonderfully, chocolately, amazing night,” this half-hour segment is a both a kitchen cartoon and a vocal romp. Patches easily takes on the role with buttery skill and plucky grace. Her assistants, George Wolff and Andrew Foster, cook up their own amusing shtick, which stops just short of an international food fight.

Incidental pieces in the program include “La Bonne Cuisine,” by Leonard Bernstein, performed blissfully by Foster, Darlington, Wolff and Terry Morris; “Carmello’s Song,” by Johann Strauss, which Wolff, clearly the darling of the troupe, serves up wryly and deliciously; and “Ice Cream Sextet,” by Kurt Weill, whose tricky harmonies are handled without inhibition by the entire company.

After four years of watching performances of Opera Maine, anyone could rightly argue that the group is one of the best summer performing arts companies in central Maine. In other words, you won’t have to worry if the show is going to be good — it will be. And tasty, too.

Opera Maine will present “Mushroom Pizza” in a young people’s performance at 11 a.m. Aug. 10 at The Grand in Ellsworth. The same night, the entire program reviewed above will be performed at 8 p.m. at The Grand. For tickets or information about August performances, call 546-4495.