ON the Beat | Frivolity in Serious Clothing

Opera Santa Barbara's 'The Daughter of the Regiment' | Photo: Zach Mendez

It started with a sad clown and proceeded with two seriously funny riffs on the theme of marital follies. Now that the current Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) season has wrapped, with last weekend’s juicy and bold production of Donizetti’s 1840-vintage The Daughter of the Regiment, we can get a general overview of the season’s threesome landscape. The current plan of focusing energies and resources on just three operas, compared to earlier, denser schedules, is working out nicely, given the high standards of the three gems this season.

Two-thirds of the 2024-25 season were devoted to comic operas, of varying stripes, between the high standard of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Daughter, the giddy frivolity of which can be of the groansome sort, but is surrounded by a gorgeous musical setting. As OSB Director (and conductor) Kostis Protopapas told a gathering at the post-performance reception, the opera embodies “silliness punctuated by sublime music.”

Silliness and sublimity prevailed at the Lobero Theatre, in a lavish production — in Josh Shaw’s staging, straighter than the recontextualized earlier operas — rich in the resourcefully used sets, impressive costumes (Stacie Logue), a strong and game cast of many and, most importantly, a captivatingly accomplished “daughter.” Soprano Jana McIntyre stole the proverbial show with her alternatively comic and wile Marie, who has been raised by a French regiment and becomes ensnared in a tug of marital options between her true, but poor, love Tonio (tenor Chris Mosz) and aristocratic family scheming.

Mosz hits a high note, many of them in fact, in the famous high C-stocked aria “Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!” McIntrye juggles the absurd and the profound, sometimes in close proximity, as during the opening of Act II, when she tackles the feat of singing badly during a vocal lesson, and segues into one of the opera’s most emotionally rich and resonant arias, “Par le rang et par l’opulence.”

The Act II also includes an insider touch, with OSB co-founder Marilyn Gilbert making a witty cameo as the Duchess of Krakenthorp and major classical music patron Bob Weinman appearing as The Notary. Gilbert delivered one of the ripest jokes of the night, a modern Trump-trashing reference: Her character is asked why her husband was deferred from military service, she quips “bone spurs.” Much laughter ensued in the house, tinged with rue. Suddenly, we were momentarily yanked from the escape zone of an opera house into awareness of the tragic comedy unfolding in the White House. But that’s another story.

Daughter served to remind us of the golden cultural resource we have in Santa Barbara’s opera company. Coming next season, a well-balanced three-pack of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, a welcome blast of Handel in the double-header of Caesar and Cleopatra, and Aldridge and Garfein’s Elmer Gantry, for American repertoire’s sake.

‘Bone Lover’s Delight

SBCC’s Lunch Break Band with Ben Patterson | Photo: Josef Woodard

For the final “Big Band Blowout” of Santa Barbara City College’s fine jazz ensemble program, last week at the Garvin Theatre, the trombone — that too-often second fiddle status instrument in the jazz world — got more than its due spotlight. This was largely due to the presence of the guest of honor, the staggeringly gifted trombonist and composer-arranger Ben Patterson, whose own impressive songbook accounted for much of the evening’s program.

Patterson, who spent 22 years in the acclaimed Air Force band The Airmen of Note, played with SBCC’s three big bands — the emerging student Good Times Band (led by Eric Heidner, a trombonist, by the way), the bolder Lunch Break Band, and the boldest aggregate, the stellar Monday Madness Band. The latter two are led by Andrew Martinez, who knew Patterson in college and put forth the invitation to bring him to town.

High points of the night included the wittily titled “Stank Face” (so named for the admiring wince jazz fans and musicians cop in approval of something hip), the multi-trombone feature on “Hello Young Lovers,” arranged by the late, great Kim Richmond, “Trombone Detritus,” and Patterson’s chart on Joe Henderson’s “Shade of Jade.” Patterson’s inventive devil on the shoulder was behind the tricky “The Mix Up,” a mutated blues which heads hither and yonder, and then some. Big band culture remains alive and well at Stanford by the Sea.

To-Doings:

For an alternate view of choral music, after the impressive massed choral forces filling the Granada stage for the recent Santa Barbara Symphony take on Brahms’s A German Requiem, head over into the intimate splendor we’ve grown to love in Nathan Kreitzer’s a cappella Quire of Voices. In keeping with its long-standing custom, the ensemble’s Songs of Remembrance concert takes place on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, May 10 and 11, in the invitingly old worldly, sacred, and spacious venue of St. Anthony’s Chapel.

Featured items on the program include Herbert Howells’s “Requiem” and a new commissioned piece by composer-in-residence Stephen Dombek. The Quire of Voyces experience ranks among Santa Barbara’s more cherished musical traditions. One feels transported, on multiple levels, a quality of transcendence we need more of in this strange, strained time on the planet.