SFist Goes to the Opera: The Italian Girl in Algiers.

It happens on top of and inside a huge book, which covers the whole stage, to symbolize we are in the land of fairy tales. The production, from the Santa Fe Opera and designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, is very witty. The book works as a symbol, but as a stage prop as well. It closes to reveal the main character, Isabella, in a humorous and effective entrance. It re-opens, then closes again at the end of Act I, when all madness has broken loose, when the singers sing a frantic septet full of ding-dong-ding-dong and tac-tac-tac, and the collapsing cover only adds to the mad energy and zaniness on the stage. You know you are in a land of fantasy when the sultan’s soldiers wear a burgundy fez and peach-colored leather gaiters. Or when a Lindorro in shackles looks at a medallion of his lover: slaves don’t typically wear bling bling.

The story is that of Isabella who arrives in Algiers to retrieve her lover Lindorro. He has been enslaved by the sultan, Mustafa, and soon she is captured to become Mustafa’s new wife. Meanwhile, Mustafa’s current wife despairs at being abandoned. Isabella has enlisted in her travels another suitor, Taddeo, whose unrequited love provides comic relief aplenty. The story is but a pretext to feature a soprano being wooed by three lovers, a tenor, a bass, and a baritone.

All sing the music beautifully, which is quite a feat due to the always on-the-move direction by Chris Alexander. They also act the slapstick comedy with conviction, getting many laughs from the audience. There is as much play with hats on stage as a Beach Blanket Babylon performance. Ildar Abdrazakov’s Mustafa is deliciously ribald, and perfectly pompous and ridiculous. William Burden’s Lindoro is bright, his comic timing is perfect, and his voice faultless. But the most impressive performance is Olga Borodina’s Isabella: she carries the show as the cool and strong woman who toys with her three suitors.

If one must nitpick, the pace of the overture was so frantic, it came at the expense of the orchestra’s crispness. Strangely, we did not notice this on Sunday at the Opera in the Park. Maybe the otherwise excellent conductor Donald Runnicles was just happy to see us again. And the one-dimensional comic bent of the directing renders the patriotic bit at the end a bit moot: when Isabella sings about returning to Italy, the patriotic gravitas was undermined by all the fun before, and we were thinking of Dorothy pining for Kansas.

Lightness prevails eventually, and the opera ends in an escape in a hot air balloon, another sign we were in for a light and bubbly evening.

The Italian Girl in Algiers
More info at San Francisco Opera
Performances on 9/16, 9/18, 9/22, 9/24, 9/30, 10/4, 10/6.
Tickets from $25 ($10 for standing room).
301 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 861-4008