Since it was published four decades ago, Mordecai Richler’s children’s book Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang has been turned into two movies, an animated TV series and a theatre musical.

Now the classic tale is being made into an operatic work backed by a chamber orchestra.

It’s the first commissioned work by the Montreal Chamber Music Festival (MCMF) in its 21-year history.

Dean Burry, composer-in-residence of the Canadian Opera Company, is composing the score for a chamber septet. Jacob Richler, the youngest of the author’s five children, for whom the book was written, is creating the libretto.

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The work is family programming – also something new for the MCMF – sponsored by the Azrieli Foundation, with support from Mordecai’s widow, Florence Richler, and the Jane Skoryna Foundation.

This Jacob Two-Two will have its world premiere June 12 at McGill University’s Pollack Hall, during the MCMF’s annual season. Renowned Canadian tenor Ben Heppner and businesswoman Danièle Henkel, this year’s MCMF ambassador, will narrate the work. The seven musicians will be led by violinist Andrew Wan of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

Denis Brott, the MCMF’s founder and artistic director, said he has been enamoured with Jacob Two-Two, since he read the stories to his four children. The first book, published in 1975, was followed by two sequels.

Heppner gave a taste of what the audience can expect at the unveiling of the MCMF lineup on Jan. 26.

To great dramatic effect, the burly singer related how a boy who was “two plus two plus two years old” found himself in a children’s prison for the crime of getting on his parents’ nerves. Because no one paid attention to him the first time, Jacob had the annoying habit of repeating everything twice.

In this version, the younger Richler author has Jacob sprung from his cell by two caped superheroes, Shapiro and O’Toole, who lead him on a fantastical and scary journey to the lair of the dreaded Hooded Fang.

The villain turns out to be a washed-up ex-boxer whose career hit the mat when a kid laughed at him before a big match.

As usual, most of the MCMF’s 14 concerts take place in June, but there are three earlier ones through the winter and spring.

The opener Feb. 23 is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, presented by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre at Place des Arts.

Again this year, Israeli musicians are highlighted during the MCMF’s main run.

“La Connexion Israël” consists of three concerts.

On June 11 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Bourgie Hall, Israeli clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein is the featured soloist, backed by the MCMF String Quartet, in which Brott himself plays cello.

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Fiterstein performs Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and Kegelstadt Trio, and Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock with Quebec artists, soprano Aline Kutan and pianist André Laplante, as well as colourful klezmer selections.

On June 14 at Pollack Hall, Israeli Alon Goldstein is in the spotlight with an evening dubbed “Mozart the Magnificent”, accompanied by the Fine Arts Quartet, which was founded in Chicago in 1946. This will be the Canadian premiere of newly discovered transcriptions of two Mozart concertos arranged by the 19th-century German composer Ignaz Lachner.

A recent recording of these masterpieces by Goldstein and the Quartet on the Naxos label received applause in a New York Times review.

The third in the series, June 16, also at Pollack Hall, is called “Pablo Casals’ Cello.” Israeli Amit Peled will play an actual cello bowed by the legendary Casals – a 1733 Matteo Gofriller. He is joined by pianist Goldstein and violist Miguel Da Silva, and accompanied by the Fine Arts Quartet.

Peled will present the Montreal premiere of Sulkhan Tsintsadze’s Five Folk Pieces and Casals’s own Song of the Birds, in a program that includes Mendelssohn and Brahms compositions.

“La Connexion Israël” is made possible with support from the Consulate General of Israel and the Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust. For full information on the MCMF, click here.