During an early 2000s visit to the ruins of Pompeii, I was inspired by the frescoes in the Villa of Mysteries. The images seemed to tell a story – a progression of rituals perhaps passed through by the young women housed in this Villa – like a Roman girls’ boarding school – where they slept behind the wine press and passed through daily rituals as they were educated for initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries, becoming Maenads in the Bacchanalian revelries. A couple of years later I began to write the story of Suli and Cassia in poetic form. I published the Pomegranate poems in 2007. Kye Marshall asked if she could set some of them to music, so five poems became a song cycle, capturing the arc of Suli and Cassia’s ritualized love affair.

On March 8th, 2014 we presented the songs at Toronto’s Heliconian Club, with two young singers and a harpist from the Glenn Gould School. The audience was enchanted. The ancient Mysteries, inexplicable in our contemporary context, still held enough magic to encourage us to move forward towards a full-length chamber opera.

Over the next five years Pomegranate developed, growing in complexity during two Tapestry-sponsored workshops with invited audiences. By June 2019 we had sufficient funding to present a run at Buddies in Bad Times. Subsequently, Pomegranate was picked up by the Canadian Opera Company and developed further, with the addition of a 6-member Chorus, a larger orchestra, and a reworking of the libretto and score. In June 2023 we premiered with the COC to sold-out houses.

- Amanda Hale, librettist

“The really striking thing about this piece that hit me right away was the juxtaposition between these two incredibly different worlds, ancient Pompeii and 1980s Toronto in the gay village, and I was intrigued to figure out why these 2 worlds co-existed.”

- Jennifer Tarver, Director

“At our curtain call the entire stage was filled with women, except for one man, our Centurion. We are so proud of Pomegranate and all of us who are working on it.”

- Rosemary Thomson, Music Director

“People ask me, why opera for this story? Because music, married with the words, can bypass the brain and speak directly to the heart.”

- Amanda Hale, Librettist

“… our Toronto queer history brought to life with such wit and passion and utterly gorgeous, aching music …”

- John Greyson

“An ambitious work … that underlines themes of identity, acceptance and the role of community”

- Catherine Kustanczy, The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2023

“Kye Marshall’s music completely enthralls … a highly effective piece of theatrical magic.”

- Ian Ritchie, June 6, 2023

Pomegranate website: www.pomegranateopera.com

A spark of inspiration

The first foray into the opera world for librettist Amanda Hale, Pomegranate was born out of the novelist and poet’s trip to visit the ruins of Pompeii. Inspired by the setting and the fresco images housed inside the Villa of Mysteries—telling tales of rituals passed through by young women—Hale wrote and published the poetry collection Pomegranate: A Tale of Remembering in 2007.

From stanzas to songs

Eclectic composer and musician Kye Marshall similarly adds Pomegranate to her list of career accomplishments as her first full-length opera. Marshall originally set five of Hale’s poems to music, capturing the arc of the central love affair, presenting it as a 10-minute cycle at Toronto’s Heliconian Club in 2014. An encouraging audience response saw the duo develop the production further, showcasing a version at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and eventually leading to the development of this work, with orchestral arrangements and an expanded storytelling palette.

A local reunion

Much of Pomegranate’s Toronto-based second act arises from the lived experiences of its librettist and composer, Hale and Marshall. The duo first met in the lesbian-feminist community of 1980s Toronto, and have worked together since 2014 to recapture that setting within this deeply personal work, in consultation and collaboration with fellow community members.

Not just any bar

Tapping into the historical setting of 1980s Toronto, Hale and Marshall chose one lesbian bar in particular as their inspiration—the Fly By Night. Located in the heart of Toronto’s downtown core, the bar was run by Pat Murphy, a local feminist and activist, who was famously one of the Brunswick Four, a group of women arrested for singing “I enjoy being a dyke” in the Brunswick House pub. The production even honours Pat herself, with the character of Jules the Bartender in Act II, inspired in part by Pat.

Operation Soap

Widely considered to be the Canadian equivalent to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, “Operation Soap” was the codename for a series of Toronto Police raids on gay bathhouses in 1981. Nearly 300 men were arrested in these raids, sparking mass outrage, protests, and rallies denouncing police violence. This public protest empowered Toronto's growing LGBTQ movement, and it serves as a key moment of historical background depicted in Pomegranate.

A queer love story for the ages

The show’s first act sees Cass, recounting the moment she and Suzie fell in love, being transported from the Fly By Night bar to Pompeii 79 AD. There, the Priestess vows to protect the two lovers—now named Suli and Cassia—against the “coming devastation” of both the Roman Centurion and his Legion, and the threatening eruption of Vesuvius. Act II sees this historic explosion devastate in new ways, as the couple’s reunion is forced to contend with the immediate homophobia of Suzie’s uncle when he bursts into the supposedly safe space confines of the Fly By Night.

The sounds of Pomegranate

Pomegranate features an eclectic score—incorporating styles such as classical, blues, ballads, bossa nova, and avant garde music—that expresses the opera’s two disparate settings. At the 2019 Buddies in Bad Times performance, audiences praised the music for its strong evocation of the ancient world through harp, flute, oboe, and cellos, pairing well with the more modern, urban sounds of keyboard and saxophone. In the 2023 COC production, that same stellar music enjoyed the added enrichment of a six-member chorus and expanded, full orchestral palette. In being a women-led, lesbian opera, Pomegranate represents an important milestone in an industry where the presence of female creators and composers has been historically absent from view.