Dominick Argento's Postcard from Morocco is about seven people waiting for a train that never arrives. However, the opera is far from being a comment on the state of the railways. First performed in Minneapolis in 1971, it is an absurdist comedy about the routines we invent to give sense to meaningless lives.
The train could be called the Godot Express. The travellers, all but one unnamed, are identified by their luggage, which, unsubtly, symbolises their psychological baggage: a Lady with a Hand Mirror views in its reflection a world in which she cannot participate; a Man with a Cornet Case lugs around his crippling father-fixation in the form of the brass instrument his musician papa left him, and which he cannot play.
But a painter called Owen mesmerises the others with visions of the ship that one day might carry them away. When his paintbox proves empty, he is initially rejected by his companions as a fraud, though the ambivalent ending hints they might return to him, since his artistic imagination is the only thing that can give them hope.
The work should perhaps have been called Seven Characters in Search of an Opera, for what it lacks is a score of any merit. Argento's aim is to mingle opera with cabaret, but, in the absence of genuine inspiration, he relies heavily on pastiche. The action is advanced in long-winded recitative interspersed with jazzed-up Wagner, spoof Tchaikovsky and deeply unmemorable Viennese waltzes. Like its characters, it goes nowhere, and one can only assume that the Guildhall opted to revive it as a plausible showcase for seven young singers, all of whom are allowed to shine, without any of them ultimately being allotted a starry central role.
The performances are excellent, though pride of place goes to Joao Fernandes, touching yet funny with his cornet case, and Claire Platt, letting fly spiky coloratura while gazing fussily at the world in her mirror. The staging, by Martin Lloyd-Evans, has half the audience seated at cafe tables round a vast chunk of rail track, over which the characters scramble as glaring lights and whistles suggest that trains elsewhere carry other people on journeys that elude them. Its surreal ingenuity far transcends the paucity of Argento's imagination.
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