Mozart juvenilia delivered with zest
Everyone involved in the Merola Opera Program’s production of “Il Re Pastore” (“The Shepherd King”) — cast, audience, stage director and conductor — has a lot of fun with the undertaking. There’s really no other way to get through it.
Mozart’s youthful two-act opera, or serenata, or pastoral (it’s not easy to slot into any of the standard genres) doesn’t get performed very often, and the reasons are perfectly obvious. It’s the work of a burgeoning musical genius yoked to a libretto of no discernible dramatic content.
To say that nothing happens in this piece may be an exaggeration, but not much of one. The cast comprises one benevolent
Il Re Pastore: 2 p.m. Saturday, July 21. $55-$80. San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak St., S.F. 415-864-3330. www.sf opera.com.
dictator — Alexander the Great since you ask — and two pairs of well-matched lovers who spend about 20 minutes thinking they might not get to marry one another after all before everything works out happily.
There are no antagonists and no particular complications, unless you count the central premise of a shepherd who discovers he’s the heir to a throne he really doesn’t want. Mostly, it’s just a bunch of people singing their hearts out.
So director Tara Faircloth, in the production that opened a two-performance run on Thursday, July 19, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, clothes the opera in some nicely judged comic high
jinks.
Alexander gets a detail of four stony-faced bodyguards in suits and dark glasses. There is some boisterous stage business designed to convince us that something it taking place, and a steady infusion of charm to make sure we don’t take any of it too seriously. Laura Fine Hawkes’ stage design, all geometric shapes and primary colors, looks like a Lego diorama, and Callie Floor’s costumes are just as sleek. A pair of topiary sheep mounted on wheels encapsulates the tone perfectly.
But all of this is really just a delivery system for the buoyant delights of Mozart’s score. Even without any hint of the psychological depth that would come later — when he had both the technical wherewithal and librettos worthy of his efforts — the work of the 19-year-old composer still bristles with energy and inventiveness.
Much of that energy goes into the flights of ornamental passagework that are designed to show off both his own creative virtuosity and that of the singers executing the music. The standout in that department was mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh as Tamiri, one of the two women — in addition to bringing rhythmic verve and tonal beauty to her assignment, she tore through the all-important coloratura with a dexterity and precision that were marvelous to behold.
Sopranos Cheyanne Coss (in the title role of Aminta, originally written for a male castrato) and Patricia Westley (as his beloved Elisa) fared better in music of a more lyrical or expressive bent, and joined forces beautifully in the florid love duet that ends Act 1. Tenor Charles Sy gave a vibrant, richly colored performance as Agenore, Alexander’s deputy and Tamiri’s sweetheart.
Standing apart from the romantic couplings was the Alexander of tenor Zhengyi Bai, whose radiant, fresh-toned singing and technical bravura made the character a perfectly persuasive ruler. Conductor Stephen Stubbs led a vivacious, rhythmically alert performance that made the best possible case for the piece’s musical riches.