Photo by Chad Lanning.

“Carrying on in public like that? You’re just a bunch of Eleanor Roosevelts!” grumbles a curmudgeonly old guy performed by actor Paul Mortimer, who juggles several small roles. He has just entered Mr. Pete’s soda shop the last year of World War II when he begins carping at the vivacious women gathered around the table sipping their malts and milkshakes.

“Did he mean to insult us?” sing the young women, laughing at his attempted cutting remark. These young women are helping with the war effort – though there’s forever a person or two who argues that women working in the effort to win the war are doing the “Eleanor Roosevelt thing.” This is a man’s world after all, and shouldn’t they be staying home and baking cookies while their husbands, brothers and beaux are overseas fighting for freedom and democracy?

The “bunch of Eleanor Roosevelts” is not the opening line in this West Coast premiere, but it explains the title of this very charming and energetic The Eleanors, playing for four performances through Dec. 7 at Portland State University’s 80-seat Lincoln Hall Studio Theater. It was a hot ticket, but it sold out a while ago. It debuted at the Savannah Voice Festival in January 2025 when PSU opera’s artistic director Kelley Nassief fell for it with its heartfelt sassiness and historic references to the almost obsolete Greatest Generation.

Jodi Goble, who has written four operas – mostly for emerging sopranos and all peppered with sly humor – based this one on her grandparents’ experience during World War II. She throws in some American Songbook standards, some swing dancing and value-adds an Andrews Sisters-like trio called The Ferry Sisters with sopranos Madeline Green and Lily Pounders, and mezzo Tayleene Ubieta-Johnson. The trio pops in and out of the soda shop where the women meet, bond and talk about their woes and sometimes, happiness.

These women are far from dull, lovesick housewives. Ramona, sung by mezzo Holly Freiberg, is pregnant and has been persuaded by her soldier husband to live with his mother while he is away fighting. She is miserable, especially now that she is beginning to ”show.” Remember, the opera was set 80 years ago, the time of the Greatest Generation, most of whose members are long gone, and a generation with which the cast was not familiar. The performers had to learn to swing dance, and the Andrews Sisters were not a household name in musical trios, said Nassief, who also heads up the PSU opera department at the School of Music & Theater.

Ramona, who brings along humor with her growing pregnancy, sings that her unwelcome mother-in-law “makes her eat her eggs boiled, not fried,” prevents her from going to the movies, and makes her wear “the most godawful hats … I hate Maaaaamaaa” she wails. The lament is among a host of humorous universally felt moments in the opera, and, of course, a familiar joke on beleaguered mothers-in-law.

The two other main sopranos have arias. Maxie (Serena Mason) sings a “letter aria” from her husband Cal, who is on the front, and captured at the Battle of the Bulge. Goble knows her operatic references: She cleverly makes use of  the “letter” for an aria (consider Tatyana’s letter aria in Eugene Onegin).

Lilian (soprano Laurien Zahn, whom I heard, double-cast with Kathryn Thomas), the spritely Rosie the Riveter-type, recites a list of GIs with whom she’s consorted. Her “list” is almost as long as Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello’s memorable tongue-twisting catalog of his master’s romantic conquests. “I had an amazing run,” Lilian sings, egged on by her soda-shop friends, and in the end, after the war is over, Lilian revisits her friends as a Pan-Am flight attendant, a suitable job for an outgoing gal like her.

Goble, with cowriter Michael Ching, constructs the opera with couplets, creating a reachable range for performers, especially for emerging opera singers. She makes language accessible and keeps the plot moving forward. For the first time in reviewing PSU operas for more than a decade, I didn’t mind the lack of supertitles. I could understand everything. This opera is in English, and lasts about 80 minutes.

Goble’s “opera” grandparents, Maxie (double cast with soprano Mason, whom I heard on Nov. 29, and Katie Erb) and Cal (baritone Izaak Thoms, whom I heard, double-cast with Felipe Araya) are at the center of the piece. Cal enters via an audience door moving down the side of the opera-goers’ rows to the stage, slim and upright, like an unwashed optimistic GI. In this scene, the lighting by Ian Anderson-Priddy with Ash Goodrich-Hendrickson is ideal, making his khaki fatigues and sandy hair come together in a warm glow. Thoms’s baritone is full and nuanced, close enough for him to go for the big time. He was a good fit for the part in looks and demeanor, and especially in his self-assured voice. In the opera, Cal is captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and thrown into prison, and Maxie gets support from her friends and from Mr. Pete, the sympathetic owner of the soda shop who keeps the story moving and his ears open. One of the more touching moments is Maxie and Cal’s duet, “I remember the moon tonight.” Maxie remembers the 16 girls who lined up to kiss Cal goodbye when he shipped out, and where were you, he asked her? This is the kind of opera where slightly corny romance finds a place.

Tenor Jere Burkholder, who performed the role of shop keeper Mr. Pete, was suffering from a cold during a couple of performances, including the one I saw. Felipe Araya, who is a baritone and double-cast as Cal, sang for Burkholder, while Burkholder walked the part. Their “performance” was seamless and synched. For the previous show, Music Director Paul Floyd performed the tenor part from the piano. The show must go on – and the opera company improvised at unexpected moments.

The opera was orchestrated for both 7-piece instrumentationation and for the piano, and in this production, it worked quite well with only the piano. It felt like one of those old-timey movie theater productions  with a live pianist, but much better.

“Heartbreaking and heartwarming,” as the marketing copy accurately portrayed it, The Eleanors appears to have lasting power, especially for developing opera artists. Who knows if it will have the staying power of Eleanor Roosevelt’s influence, but it has a good chance to make more stage appearances. Nassief has a way of choosing good operas for her students, which makes PSU’s among the country’s leading college opera companies. In her three years of leading the PSU opera department, she has put on some winners, including Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Falling Giant, a sell-out in 2023.