I attended the Canadian Opera Company’s presentation of La Reine-Garçon, their co-production of a new opera with a libretto by Michel Marc Bouchard and music composed by Julien Bilodeau.

Today, February 2nd, is Bouchard’s birthday. In addition to this libretto for an opera co-commissioned and co-produced with Opéra de Montréal, Bouchard wrote the screenplay for The Girl King, a 2015 film that tells a similar story to the opera.

Instead of Girl King we get Queen Boy (Reine-Garçon).

Opera is a very different medium, especially once composer Julien Bilodeau has his turn, a piece that I think is much much better than the film. Speaking as someone who tries to go to every new opera I can attend, I’m very glad to hear what Bilodeau has created, adding something wonderful to the story. I will go see another performance later in the run. My priority is to talk about the composition, although I shall also write about the production and its cast.

There are several things I could talk about but I want to call attention to something rare in this opera. Bilodeau’s setting displays a sense of humour. Sometimes he’s ironic, sometimes he’s blatantly funny. But I can’t recall the last time I heard that in an opera although it would be from the 20th century in something like Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky) or L’Heure espagnole (Ravel). Opera seems to have lost its sense of humour when we look at the operas of Philip Glass or John Adams or Thomas Adès.

Not so with Bilodeau! There were three different scenes displaying irony and humour, so much so that I heard big laughs from the audience.

In the scene where we meet Christine’s mother, a soprano who might remind you of the excessive outbursts of the Queen of the Night, especially as we saw her in the film Amadeus (where Milos Forman shows her coloratura as if the composer is sending up his nagging mother-in-law), there are more notes sung as laughter than words, laughter picked up by the audience. The role is memorable, full of startling sounds from soprano Aline Kutan who was once the Queen of the Night in a COC production of Magic Flute awhile back.

In the scene where Johan attempts seduction in the attire of a stag, prancing about the stage before being rejected by Christine, the music is very playful. We heard something similar in the piano paraphrase played at the RBA concert a couple of weeks ago, suggestions of dance rhythms. It’s absurdly excessive. Isaiah Bell played this part opening night but because he was indisposed today, we heard Wesley Harrison, currently a member of the Ensemble Studio, earning some of the biggest applause of the day.

And the scene where Rene Descartes probes human anatomy seeking to understand how the brain works is bizarre in the best way, his ambitions clearly shown. As in the piano paraphrase, we heard music that’s as complex as a brain that’s overthinking. It was great to hear Owen McCausland again for the first time in a few years.

Bilodeau used a recurring sound from the first scene until the last regularly throughout the opera, identified as kulning, a strident animal call sung without vibrato by soprano Anne-Marie Beaudette. Sometimes we would be looking at a landscape, snow falling or northern lights, achieved via wonderful projections by Alexandre Desjardins, the sound like an atmospheric effect, jarring even as the opera went on.

I am looking forward to hearing the opera again, hesitant about trying to characterize Bilodeau’s compositional voice when I’ve just discovered him first at the piano concert last month and now at the opera. But there’s a dramatic logic to Bilodeau’s choices, sometimes encouraging quick exchanges between singers, sometimes letting them sing something more like an aria with more lyricism.

That’s especially true of the Christine and Count Karl Gustav. Each of them expresses romantic wishes. Bilodeau is tonal, melodic, but sometimes full of surprises as far as the harmonies he employs. Philippe Sly’s presence is subtle at first, emerging gradually in the second act as he has greater moments of passion. Kirsten MacKinnon as Christine is at the centre of the opera but often softly observing, not always given the opportunity to comment on the drama her life has inspired: which ends up being a good choice by Bilodeau and Bouchard, a story swirling around her until finally she begins to emerge in response to the pressures placed on her. Countess Ebba Sparre (sung by Queen Hezumuryango) also is given her clearest opportunities to show us who she is towards the end.

The co-pro with Opéra de Montréal looks and sounds magnificent. Johannes Debus gets a stunning sound from the COC Orchestra and chorus, who are for the second show this season often singing sweetly in support as a wordless chorus (recalling their lovely sound in the humming chorus in Butterfly).

New opera doesn’t have to be atonal or dissonant. Bilodeau’s lovely sound world captures the passions and depths of Bouchard’s clever writing for La Reine-Garçon, more performances upcoming February 5, 7, 9, 13 and 15. I’m seeing it again, and recommend you do so too.