Publication Date: Friday Oct 23, 1998

Proper disrespect

Faced with an early work by one of the greatest composers ever to draw breath, West Bay Opera had the temerity to show him complete and utter disrespect. Thank goodness.

Treated with kid gloves, Rossini's early "roadshow" farces (see "The Turk in Italy") tend to die terrible aesthetic deaths, numbing modern ears with the sameness and repetition of the music (see Sullivan, Gilbert &) and formula devices like the doddering suitor and slo-mo stupefaction scene (see "Barber of Seville," Act I finale).

Fortunately, West Bay is a playful company these days (see '97's Fellini-era "Don Pasquale") and had no such intentions for "The Italian Girl in Algiers," opting instead for a 1920s adventure tale straight off the movie-serial screen. The performance begins, in fact, with a novelist conjuring exotic tales on his typewriter to the jaunty rhythms of Rossini's overture (see Warner Bros., "The Rabbit of Seville").

From there we go to a palace in Algiers, where Mustafa, the Bey (or governor) of Algiers, has grown weary of his No. 1 wife, Elvira, and decides to foist her off on his Italian captive, Lindoro (the novelist in new dress), while he searches for a replacement wife of the hot Italian variety. Well, who should drop by (in a dirigible, no less) but Isabella, not only a hot Italian female but also Lindoro's long-lost girlfriend (imagine that!). And so the fun begins.

Under stage director Yefim Maizel, the West Bay cast is like a comedy dairy farm, allowing no joke to pass without full milking (see Williams, Robin). The menu includes playful massages using ripe Italian tomatoes, suggestive gestures toward various body parts, and all manner of leering, lechery and debilitating enchantment. Rossini would have loved it.

The comic interplay largely operates between the sprightly presence of Brian Staufenbiel's Lindoro and the towering testosterone dupe of Clifton Romig's Mustafa, with asides from Matthew Cavicke's cowardly, nebbish Taddeo (Isabella's undesired suitor, trying mostly to save his own hide). The fuel is provided by the females, led by Shawn Marie Williams' sexually sly Isabella and Amy McKenzie's laughably suffering Elvira.

The spark plug to all this horseplay is local legend Donald Pippin's English translation, a constant source of scandalous rhyming. "Othello" and "bordello," maybe. How about "jubilate" and "castrati"? But none better than the area-specific "To cross the Bey bodes naught but ill/We'd find ourselves in Emeryville."

Most of the musical treats come from sheer speed and onomatopoeia, most vividly in the amphetamine delirium of the first-act finale, "din, din" (see also "tac tac," "cra cra" and "bum bum").

Rossini takes little time to include the graceful arias that would enrich his later works (see "Barber"'s "Una voce poco fa," "Cenerentola"'s "Non piu mesta"), although Staufenbiel, who possesses the perfect light tenor for the composer's constant coloratura, takes full advantage of Lindoro's cavatina, "Languir per una bella."

Other vocal treats are Cavicke, who underneath all of Taddeo's shtick has a quite pleasant baritone, and McKenzie, whose shining soprano receives sadly little exposure. Romig's bass-baritone seems almost too huge for such high-tempo navigation, and Williams' mezzo, though often too far back in the throat, rings out beautifully in her Act II fortes.

David Sloss's orchestra is almost too perfect to be noticed (except for the almost inevitable occasions when the chorus races ahead with the tempo), and credit goes also to Robyn Spencer-Crompton for Mustafa's lush Act II ensemble, a collage-in-silk of cool purples, blues and greens.

As always, set designer Peter Crompton does a masterly job, taking us on a constantly changing tour of Mustafa's palace, extending the small Lucie Stern stage with a gorgeous Algerian skyline, even dropping an airship gondola from the sky and sliding a full chorus in behind it (see it to believe it).

What: West Bay Opera presents "The Italian Girl in Algiers."

When: Show runs through Sunday. Curtain times are 8:15 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.

Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto.

How much: Tickets are $33. There is a youth ticket price of $17 for those under 18 available for the Sunday matinees.

Information: Call 424-9999. 

Back up to the Table of Contents Page