15 Jul Madame Caeneus’s Canteen
SYNOPSIS
In the polarized context of 1940s America, six characters come together to tell a story of transformation, staking everything on the possibility that it will transform their world/s, in turn.
The setting is Madame Caeneus’s Canteen, a ‘locker club’ where service personnel can ditch their uniforms for the night and revel incognito. It is a queer space — a haven for gender rebels and sexual nonconformists, both inside and outside the services.
Lucy, the venue’s host/ess, is a scholar of the arts of metamorphosis. They propose a soldiers’ drag revue based on the ancient story of the warrior Caeneus. The story will be the crucible for an identity-swap: ‘Bird’, a genderqueer soldier who wants out of the Army, will trade places with Remi, an ardent anti-fascist who wants in.
As the revue unfolds, however, it is Lucy who steps into the role of the hero/heroine, taking back their power and flipping the script on an old lover who betrayed them.
Meanwhile, in the wings, a show-mance blooms; born in the friendly precincts of Madame Caeneus’s, can it survive in the world beyond?
A layered story of queer solidarity, love, and chosen family, this is an opera that resonates in and for our own time.
QUOTES
‘Opera is a wonderful way to play with stories of gender identity and fluidity, stories which are written into our very voices. Though each character risks life and limb in a violently homophobic military milieu, they embrace and celebrate their queerness with song, dance, tenderness, playfulness, and fabulousness. The best revenge is having fun.’ — composer James Rolfe
‘Locker clubs immediately struck me as sites of transy possibility: places where the borders of policed identities were already being challenged and transgressed. I imagined a locker-club proprieteur/se who is themself alive to these possibilities — and an array of humans, in and out of uniform, who might be drawn to and drawn into the space they have created.’ — librettist Luke Hathaway
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
Madame Caeneus’s Canteen was begun by composer James Rolfe in collaboration with librettist Luke Hathaway, under the auspices of a Canada-Council music-creation grant in 2022; the show has been in development with ANIMA since 2023.
ANIMA received a further grant from The Canada Council to produce the world premiere, which was co-presented by the Open Ears Festival of Music & Sound, to a full house at the Registry Theatre, Kitchener, ON, on 5 June 2026.
ANIMA is currently seeking collaborators and co-presenters to bring this work to other audiences.
ABOUT THE OPERA
The music, by award-winning composer James Rolfe, reflects the 1940s setting, with echoes of vaudeville, Brecht and Weill, and the blues, all interwoven with glimpses of formal, ritualized music — echoes of a mythical Greek world from which the story springs.
Drawing on the idioms of vaudeville, political theatre, and liturgy, Luke Hathaway’s words are by turns comical and piercing. They delight in rhyme and in rhythmic effects, are exuberantly queer — and are also shot through with a disillusioned realism, which refuses to look away from difficult things, even as it celebrates.
In a stunning production-design conceived and realized by vintage clothier Rachel Kaufman Behling, the costumes are an integral part of the storytelling: each piece has a story of its own, which whispers just behind its (re)deployment in this new creation.
CAST (6 singers)
Remi (soprano); Bird (countertenor); Patrick (countertenor); Eugene (tenor); Ben (baritone); Lucy (bass-baritone)
BAND (5 instruments)
Violin, clarinet, accordion, electric bass, drum kit
