ON the Beat | Ships Passing in the Operatic Night

Opera Santa Barbara’s The Marriage of Figaro | Credit: Zach Mendez

In the latest production of the current Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) season, the feel and focus of the company’s sparkling version of The Marriage of Figaro began outside the Lobero Theatre, with greeters in maritime and sailor garb. Multi-hat-donning OSB head Kostis Protopapas himself, donning a crisp captain’s hat and costume bade the incoming crowd a hearty “Welcome aboard,” before racing down to the orchestra pit to start his shift as the orchestra’s maestro.

Time and place have been conspicuously shifted in this Figaro, by Sara E. Widzer and set and projection designer Yuki Izumihara, updating Mozart/Lorenzo Da Ponte comic opera circa 1786 to a 1930’s vintage cruise ship, dubbed SS Seville. It’s a fitting conceit and concept, centering the tale of infidelities and moral comeuppance in a repressive class system, all unfolding in the tight quarters and hierarchically divided microcosm of a ship.

A similar upending of era and setting took place, memorably, in OSB’s season-opening production, in which Pagliacci was airlifted to the neo-realist and Fellini-esque Italian cinema world of the mid-20th century. Both projects celebrate the notion that standard fare opera can be subject to changing wardrobes and updated premises.

As with many an opera buffa premise, the rightfully and immortally classic Figaro is a tangled spaghetti of plot and identity twists, outlandish scheming, and a labyrinthine trajectory towards an inevitably happy ending. But we can take refuge from the gnarled plot maze by sinking into the sheer splendor of Mozart’s music, realized with an infectious energy and commitment by OSB.

Setting the stage and mood of the opera to come, Protopapas led the orchestra into the kinetic bustle of an overture, while projections on a scrim in front of the set filled in some dramatic details of what we would soon bask in for three hours. Throughout, the vocal cast was again potent, especially with Colin Ramsey’s Figaro and Sunwoo Park’s Susanna and the Count and Countess Almaviva roles as realized by Matthew Peterson and (for Sunday’s performance) Adrien Roberts, respectively.

For all its comic trappings and bones, some of the most moving passages in the opera arrive in the form of laments and gentler moments. The first instance opens Act II, as the aggrieved Countess (Roberts) bemoans the humiliations of her philandering husband in “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro [Grant, love, some comfort]” and later seconding the emotion with “Dove sono i bei momenti [where are they, the beautiful moments].”

Opera Santa Barbara’s The Marriage of Figaro | Credit: Zach Mendez

A highlight of the Sunday performance arrived in pared-down form in Act IV, as Susanna (via the spectacular voice and presence of returning OSB heroine Park, all sensuous glow and golden tone) sings the teasing faux love song “Deh vieni, non tardar [Oh Come, Don’t Delay]” to arouse the ire of a hiding Figaro.

Fireworks burst at opera’s end, at least as pyrotechnical projections, as a suitably blissful backdrop for the expected, long-labored-towards resolution in this, another roundly engaging OSB outing. Scoundrel behavior, or pursuit thereof, has been quelled, and happy couplings lean into a faithful future in a melodic “anchor’s away” spirit. For now.

Worlds in Motion and Collusion

In one of the few so-called “world music” concerts of note this season went by the ensemble moniker DoosTrio, taken from the Farsi term doost, for friend or lover. It’s an ideal name and description of the special alchemy between Iranian kamancheh master Kayhan Kalhor, eminent Chinese pipa player Wu Man, and tabla maestro Sandeep Das — each a major figure on their respective instruments.

In concert at Campbell Hall last week, part of the current UCSB Arts & Lectures season, the trio managed the feat of representing their discreet, venerable musical traditions while opening themselves up generously to cross-cultural conversation with open-eared allies. Aside from their self-evident friendship as humans and musicians, this particular threesome benefits from a ripe, working balance of sonic personae, from the percussive yet tonally attuned tabla to the plucked filigree of the pipa and the bowed kamancheh.

Opening with an extended improvisatory take on a Chinese song (improvisation was an operative mode here), the program ventured through solos, duos, and a final longer trio adventure. Melodic fragments and recurring themes wended through passages of collective energy-channeling and seemingly choreographed landing points. The project might benefit from more structured materials and compositions as bonding agents, but to catch them in improvisational flight was to get happily lost in their world(s).

Further Adventures in the Land of Trios

Last week was one resplendent with musical virtues, starting with a double-blast of the London Symphony Orchestra — in part at Hahn Hall on Monday and in full regalia at The Granada Theatre on Tuesday. But the single most affecting piece of music, to these ears, came up in the Santa Ynez Valley, courtesy of the impressive Trio Céleste piano trio’s stunning performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor.

From the famous (infamous?) and difficult cello harmonics etude of the opening — played beautifully here by cellist Ross Gasworth — through the rangy personal language of the master composer’s landscape of Russian rusticity and sidewinding rhythms and tonalities, the score’s plot keeps thickening and detouring in intriguing ways. Violinist Iryna Krechkovsky and her husband, pianist Kevin Kwan Loucks joined Gasworth in giving the score its vibrant and timeless presence due in the church.

The Orange County–based Trio’s concert, part of the estimable Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series (now in its 44th year) at the acoustically and atmospherically friendly St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley church, also subtly weighed in on worldly concerns by opening with a lovely obscurity by the Ukrainian composer/educator Vasyl Barvinsky (1888-1963). His Piano Trio No. 1 in A Minor is an attractive small gem, steeped in post-romantic spirits but with an almost impressionistic andante and a folk tune–based finale.

As the Ukrainian-born Krechkovsky explained in a post-concert talkback session, “Since the war started, people have been spreading Ukrainian culture around the world, and this is our part in that effort.”

From a different corner of the world and musical wardrobe came the short, Celtic-bouncy “Gigue” by Swiss composer Frank Martin, from his Trio sur des mélodies populaires irlandaises. Kudos to Trio for its strong and sensitive performance, but also for presenting us with a refreshingly left-of-standard program. The Shostakovich is my current earworm — not any specific melody, but a powerful general impression that lingers still.

TO-DOINGS:

Pianists Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson appear together at the Granada on Feb. 28. | Photos: Courtesy

Camerata Pacifica launched the 2025 portion of its season to things Baroque, and reinventive variations thereof, in January. February’s model, this Friday at Hahn Hall, continues in the re-tweaked Baroque mode, with a program called “Strawberry Fields.” Worry not: There will be no classical Beatles bits here, as the title taps a movement of iconoclastic 18th century British composer Ignatius Sancho’s piece “Strawberries and Cream.”

Baroque music director and traverso (Baroque flute) player Emi Fergusion will return for this juicy program of music by the lesser-known Sancho and the very well-known Handel, joined by the early music group aptly called Ruckus.

A long-standing tradition, the Dos Pueblos Jazz Festival takes place at the high school on Saturday, March 1. All day, visiting jazz bands will perform and compete for prizes, and the culminating event is an evening concert featuring the DP Jazz Band and the SBCC Lunch Break Big Band, with the special guest spotlight this year going to drummer Steve Moretti. The drummer has worked in countless pop and jazz settings, from Joe Henderson and Michael Brecker to Michael McDonald and the Pointer Sisters, and actually had an on-screen role in Clint Eastwood’s Jersey Boys.

A high point of the classical year arrives at The Granada Theatre on Friday, February 28, when prominent pianists Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson join forces in a program stocked with adventurous fare (including John Cage, John Adams, Conlon Nancarrow, Berio, and Arvo Pärt along with Schubert and Rachmaninoff, for standards’ sake). See story here.