Conductor Ryan Murray

CHARMING "BARBER" A MENDO FESTIVAL TRIUMPH

The joyously effervescent Mendocino Music Festival, celebrating its 37th year, is unique for several reasons. First, it is pretty far from anywhere, so the audience it draws are either town and county local music lovers, Mendocino tourists looking for something different to do besides take in the gorgeous coastal and redwood surrounds, or Festival devotees who have braved the drive over mountains or ocean cliffs to get there specifically for the music.

Second, although Classical music is its centerpiece, the two-week long Festival offers something for everybody, running the broad gamut this year from Classical to Jazz, with Bluegrass, Gospel, American Roots, Zydeco and Gullah lined up in between. Featuring an inspiring assortment of mostly non-mainstream yet prominent musicians, the main Festival tent houses the large format performances, and adjacent to the tent, the Mendocino Presbyterian Church’s event venue Preston Hall provides more intimate accommodations for the chamber music offerings and smaller bands. Third, the remoteness and incredible headlands setting where the Big River empties into the Pacific create an ambiance similar to the magic of Big Sur or Santa Fe.

I was there for the the opera, which this year was Rossini’s ever-popular comedy Il barbiere di Siviglia, presented in concert form, in Italian. And it did not disappoint.

One could easily say that Gioacchino Rossini reigns forever as the king of opera buffa, and of all 39 of his operas, both comic and serious, The Barber of Seville (1816) remains his best known and best loved. Figaro’s opening aria “Largo Al Factotum” is opera’s most famous baritone aria (tied with the “Toreador’s Song” from Carmen) and the overture has been further immortalized in Bugs Bunny’s “The Rabbit of Seville”.

All the principal singers have challenging, entertaining arias and ensembles to sing, requiring range and power, replete with Rossini’s famous coloratura runs, insanely fast patter sections, and the gradual dynamic buildups up from piano to triple forte that are so endemic to his style that they bear his name: “The Rossini Crescendo”. His knack for creating music that actually sounds funny, matching the action onstage, is unparalleled. The marvelous first act finale quintet, where all the characters freeze in shock and the music goes into a stop tempo, is my favorite, with musical punctuation of endearing silliness and fun peppering the action and singing.

The composer favored the coloratura mezzo-soprano voice and composed all of his most famous leading lady roles for mezzo rather than soprano, Rosina and Cinderella being the best known. A few soprano prima donnas like Beverly Sills have had success with Rosina, but purists prefer to let it remain with the lower-voiced divas. He also promoted and composed for the strengthened 19th century high, agile operatic tenor voice. Together with the mezzos, tenors inherited in Rossini’s operas the star billing that had been possessed for a century by the celebrated castrati singers, who gradually were beginning to fall out of favor and die off.

The opera’s libretto, by Cesare Sterbini, is based on the first of a trilogy of comic plays by the 18th century French master playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, the second and third plays being The Marriage of Figaro (set by Mozart some 25 years earlier) and The Guilty Mother, which unfortunately does not exist as a stand-alone opera, but from which, characters and portions of the story were incorporated by John Corigliano into his 1991 opera The Ghosts of Versailles. The three plays form an epic dark comedy about the Almaviva family, friends and servants, and their accumulated fortunes and misfortunes.

Barber introduces us to those characters: Figaro-a local barber, general factotum and fixer about the town of Seville, his former and future employer Count Almaviva, Rosina, the Count’s beautiful and spunky beloved and the future Countess Almaviva, her elderly guardian Don Bartolo, who also wants to marry her for her dowry, her eccentric music teacher and Bartolo’s old crony Don Basilio, and Bartolo’s long-suffering housekeeper Berta.

The opera (except for the singing) is petite both in cast and setting. There is no chorus to speak of and the action all takes place on one day at, or in front of, Don Bartolo’s home, where Rosina also lives. It is lighthearted, fast-paced, compact and very funny, and its success depends 100 percent on the quality of the performers, both onstage and in the pit, and not on production values, making it an ideal choice for concert format. The version presented in Mendocino was delightful, with a cast of exceptional singers, and an excellent conductor and orchestra.

This opera is nothing without strong singers who can also speak and act in Italian, and happily this performance boasted as strong and seasoned a cast as one would see in any major opera house. The artistry in this single performance (all this work for just one night!) was uniformly outstanding. The quick-paced recitatives of connecting dialog were perfectly idiomatic. Even though there were surprisingly no super-titles, the action was pretty easy to follow due to the skillful delivery. Still, it would have enriched the performance greatly (and added many laughs) to have had the translation projected.

Conductor Ryan Murray was impressive, doing double duty as harpsichordist (on a convincing synthesizer keyboard) for the recitatives. He was also charming as the evening’s emcee, and of necessity even sang the few bars of the soldiers’ chorus. He kept the tempos extremely brisk, sometimes a little too lickety-split for the already lightening fast coloratura, so that occasionally a singer could be a hair behind a faster-than-possible tempo. The orchestra was energetic and involved, playing with great gusto and nuance, very tuned in to the comedy happening in front of them. Although the evening began with a slightly ragged sounding overture, once the virtual curtain was raised, all was well.

The title character Figaro was played by the baritone Robert Balonek, who has sung locally often with Opera San Jose. He is a terrifically energetic and well-practiced performer with a big personality and a powerful and resonant voice that shook the tent. His recitative and comic timing were spot on, and his famed aria “Largo Al Factotum” was neatly and easily dispatched.

Robert McPherson as Count Almaviva commands a high coloratura “Rossini” tenor voice that is penetrating, sympathetic, and moves very well. He was also quite funny in the role which calls for two different silly disguises. Although there was a little bit of concerning hoarseness and laboring in his first entrance aria, his strong technique and musicality carried him through, and he was fully recovered by the end of act one. His drunk soldier repartee at the end of act one was terrific.

Laura Krumm brought her fresh, rich, clear mezzo-soprano voice to the role of Rosina. She is a graceful performer with an engaging personality, and is also a relaxed and charming comedienne. With her wide range and excellent recitative and coloratura ability, she was ideally cast. Her famous aria “Una voce poco fa” was well-paced and masterfully ornamented.

Don Bartolo was played perfectly by bass-baritone Matthew Miksak. He has exactly the face, voice and personality one thinks of when imagining Bartolo, and his idiotic schemes and frustration were perfectly played. His great patter aria (“A un Dottor”) railing at Rosina how he’s going to lock her up in the house had the audience chuckling aloud.

The music master Don Basilio can be a scene stealer and Nathan Stark had many wonderful moments doing just that. His big beautiful bass voice was complimented by his hilariously grimacing facial expressions. In his great aria “La Calunnia” expounding to Bartolo the usefulness of malicious gossip, he reminded me of a combination of Don Rickles and Robert DeNiro.

Soprano Nicole Young as the housekeeper Berta was the up-and coming journeyman of the performance. Normally this role is cast as an older, life-weary woman, not as someone who looks and sounds like Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. Her light and silvery pinpoint clear voice was mostly overwhelmed in the ensembles, but her aria in act two revealed musical intelligence and serious singing talent.

The uncredited minimal staging was clear, not overdone, and worked as well as needed to tell the story. The tent, which seats 840, appeared to be about three-fourths full, with empty back rows, alas. But for the hundreds of delighted opera-lovers in attendance, this was a first class romp.