Mayor Rob Ford did not attend the world premiere of the opera he inspired.

It’s probably for the best. While it’s safe to assume Ford does not know Puccini’s Madame Butterfly from a Portobello mushroom, he would have understood this production. And as his life story was reimagined inside a packed MacMillan Theatre on Sunday afternoon, there’s a good chance he would have called 911 to demand the immediate arrest of all involved.

Described as a “surrealist fantasy based loosely upon the personality of Toronto’s current and much discussed mayor,” Rob Ford: The Opera is a tragicomic tale about a man who is by turns bumbling, petulant, obtuse, delusional, lonely and ultimately doomed by those he has wronged.

This list includes Toronto librarians, mistreated underlings, his exasperated parents, an injured cyclist, a forlorn seagull and an angelic Margaret Atwood who, at the end in a wacky dream sequence, forces the mayor into judgment day.

In the opening scene, we meet Ford’s parents (played by Eliza Johnson and Fabian Arciniegas). They are presented as Marxist hippies with “optimistic dreams” for their son. As they sing early on: “Our child would end the pain of the world / His smile would raise the spirits of the poor / His touch would heal those who had lost hope.”

But as the second scene begins — with dry ice billowing from Rob’s crib, his outstretched fingers reaching up like a hand from the grave and orchestral flourishes reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith’s score from The Omen — it’s clear something is hilariously wrong.

Ford (Andrew Haji) mounts a red tricycle and breaks into a solipsistic aria in which he bemoans a despised revelation concerning the universe: It does not revolve around him.

Laughter inside the theatre, where the balconies were hastily opened to accommodate more than 800 people who lined up long before show time — was frequent and violently enthusiastic.

Rob Ford is no friend of the arts. But as it turns out, the arts can punch back.

By the fourth scene, Ford is now hunched over his desk inside City Hall, exhausted by all the cuts he’s making to social programs. Three pale secretaries sit on the floor, shackled and in tattered clothes.

They sing about putrid working conditions: “He took away our coffee breaks / He banished words like ‘Equality,’ ‘Competitive wage’ and ‘Union.’”

One by one, as they leave for the night, Ford has another painful epiphany. He swigs a tumbler of scotch, wanders out from his desk and into the spotlight for a soliloquy:

“8 o’clock and I’m still here / I want to share dinner with another / Even my neighbour refuses my invitation / Humiliating, since she’s my mother.”

It’s an oddly touching moment. In fact, composed by University of Toronto students Massimo Guida, Anna Hostman, Adam Scime and Saman Shahi, the music often helps Opera Ford seem far more sympathetic than Mayor Ford. The real fellow might consider digging an orchestra pit at City Hall or hiring a string quartet for future press conferences.

Rob Ford: The Opera ends with our beleaguered hero missing and presumed dead. After stealing the wings on Atwood (Rosanna Murphy), like Icaraus, he flies too close to the sun.

When the show ended, the crowd roared, thundering with applause. If there were any members of Ford Nation present, they were masterfully disguised as people who don’t think very much of the mayor.

Michael Patrick Albano, resident stage director with the university’s opera program, wrote the libretto this summer. This explains why much is made of Ford’s dust-up with Atwood (played by Rosanna Murphy) and why a character named “Josh Colle” never rappels down from the rafters in a mask and cape.

Albano’s goal with Rob Ford: The Opera, a presentation of the school’s Student Composer Collective, was to embrace “the theatre of the absurd.” He succeeded.

“By pushing things to the absolute edge of exaggeration, you actually make a point,” Albano told me Saturday night. “It’s as if Rob Ford had gone in extremis as far as he could go.”

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He says a DVD of the performance will be sent to the mayor. And while this was originally billed as a “one-time only” performance, that could change given the blistering interest on display Sunday.

“We had no idea that it would catch fire as it had,” says Albano. “Ford is a lightning rod for political discussion, which is a great thing. I think it’s fantastic that Torontonians are talking about their city and where it’s going.”

vmenon@thestar.ca

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