The weekend brought the welcome return of Vera Lucia Calabria to the San
Francisco Opera, where she was one of notable stage directors through
the 1980s, working first with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and then on her own.

Calabria's direction of the Merola Program production of "The Barber of
Seville" in Yerba Buena Center had an interesting Concept (instead of
our newly fashionable Konzept), robust - if occasionally over-busy -
action, and, most importantly, brilliant execution.  The commedia dell'arte
setting, the Count fooling around even while courting Rosina, non-stop
shticks were all fine and good, but the beauty of it was turning young
performers into a crack ensemble of effective, seasoned actors, or better
yet, comedians.

Comedy is hard, indeed, and while the quality of singing was, ahem,
"various" in Sunday afternoon's Cast B, the acting was uniformly delightful.

First among equals: Lucas Meachem in the title role.  A big but nimble
blond, with a goofy smile and utterly at home on the stage, Meachem is
a likeable, memorable Figaro, born to musical theater.  The voice is as
big as the man, the baritone from North Carolina having some huge peak
moments and handling parlando passages expertly, but there is much work
to be done in-between in matters of technique and sustained projection.
It's a good thing that Meachem is not perfect yet because this young man
with a dozen contest titles already could become complacent and "peak
too early" otherwise.

There was a notable debut on the podium: famed accompanist Martin Katz
conducting the orchestra, in a crisp, tight performance that served the
singers well and had everything but space for the few quiet passages in
the score to breathe.  I wish the poorly xeroxed programs (is the Opera
trying to save money?) listed the musicians because the concertmaster
and the harpsichordist deserved mention by name.

Half of this year's Merola class sang Saturday, so attending the Sunday
matinee gave only a partial impression of musical abilities in the group,
whose stage work was so uniformly satisfying.  Besides Meachem, the
vocally most prominent cast member was Australian Joshua Bloom, singing
a big, involved, fervent Bartolo.  Magdalena Wor, from Poland, sang a
fine but unexceptional Rosina.  Tami Petty had a commandingly comic
presence as Berta.

The Almaviva was Thomas Glenn, a Canadian tenor with a small, fine voice,
who ran into some vocal problems at this performance.  Matthew Trevino,
from Texas, was the Don Basilio, Teppei Kono - from Fukushima, Japan -
sang Fiorello.

laura Fine's portable design of boxes (this must have been the Western
Opera production-to-go before the program was maligned and axed) and
Leon Wiebers' colorful costumes combined with Calabria's direction and
the cast's sterling performance to provide serious competition for the
upcoming main-stage SF Opera production of "Barbiere."

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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