Toronto: Four years after their offbeat short Toothpaste struck a chord with performing arts fans, Matt Hornburg and Larry Weinstein are about to finish the sequel, an hour-long special called Burnt Toast, set to air next season on Bravo! and CBC’s Opening Night.

It’s been an enjoyable, but by no means easy project, says Weinstein.

‘In a way it’s the worst kind of film, in terms of problems you’re setting up for yourself,’ he says. ‘I mean, god, I don’t know where to start.’

The show is made up of eight vignettes about the foibles of modern love and hangs on – brace yourself – the likes of Colin Mochrie, Paul Gross and Cathy Jones singing opera.

Or at least, trying to. The vocal tracks had, in fact, been laid down months beforehand by professional singers, but when it came time to shoot, Weinstein, the director, insisted that the cast should at least attempt to sing their lines. So that it would look right.

‘Colin Mochrie is not someone you think of as an opera singer,’ he notes dryly. ‘But I think everybody was believable. Leah Pinsent, who’s a wonderful actress, was frightened of having to do the opera singing. But she was great, I don’t know what she was talking about.’

It was also tricky getting away from the traditional opera sound. ‘It was not to look or sound like big opera singers on a stage,’ he says. ‘There had to be an intimacy. Sometimes I knew that somebody would be a few inches from someone’s face and I wanted a real intimacy.’

Composer Alexina Louie penned the music and recruited most of the vocal talent, including grande dame Barbara Hannigan, while comic Dan Redican wrote the libretto and rounded up his acting chums, including Mark McKinney, Sean Cullen and Jessica Holmes. David Franco (La Turbulence des fluides) was DOP.

‘We worked really hard to get a few names and after that it started to snowball,’ says Hornburg. ‘It was pretty hard to describe the project, so it’s amazing we got so many people involved.’

The $1.6-million HD show is a copro between Hornburg’s Marble Media and Rhombus Media, backed by the CTF and CBC. It shot in Toronto last year and is set to air next season, after editing by Rhombus regular David New (Ravel’s Brain). A DVD release is also in the works via CBC Records.

Weinstein is also closing in on the final cut of his feature doc Beethoven’s Hair for Rhombus.