Florida Opera Theatre performs Menotti’s short comic opera The Telephone

Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 26-27 – The Telephone 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday 2 p.m. Sunday Germaine Marvel Building 210 W. Packwood Ave., Maitland 407-718-4365 floperatheatre.org $30

Just when you thought land lines were utterly irrelevant, here’s a delightful program that might change your mind. Yes, we all have mobile phones now, and they’ve taken a lot of the joy out of telephonic communication. But the assortment of sounds bequeathed to us by Bell’s invention – the clicking void of the dial tone, the thrum of the spinning numbered dial, the pealing ring you’ve been anticipating or the disappointing burr of a busy signal – gave rise to Gian Carlo Menotti’s short comic opera The Telephone, which in turn inspired Florida Opera Theatre’s Eric Pinder and Robin Stamper to put together A Musical Review of Ringing Proportions, an assortment of operatic bits and bobs exploring human communication. (May we request a smidgen of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine if it isn’t too late?) The ticket price for these two short lyrical performances also covers admission to the Maitland Telephone Museum, right across the street, should you like to peruse the evolution of the instruments for yourself. – Jessica Bryce Young

This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2013.