Review

By Janos Gereben

The bedraggled prisoner shouts in despair: "Gott! welch' Dunkel hier!"
In the audience, a few giggles, some loud laughter.
Then, the abandoned lover, trying to hang himself, gives fate another chance and counts to three.
After each slow count, we hear Papageno's flute.
Is this a botched performance of "Fidelio," with a touch of "The Magic Flute"?
No, it's Daniel Helfgot's idea of operatic in-jokes, in his splendiferous staging of Offenbach's "La Périchole," at West Bay Opera, under Barbara Day Turner's now-bubbly, now-sizzling, ever-so-French musical direction. Although fun is very important in this Gilbert & Sullivan-Lite tale of the Peruvian Viceroy and the spunky street singer, it's not the jokes that make this show in the Lucie Stern Theater a highly recommended event.
It's everything . . . with some very minor exceptions.
Making a thousand things come together
"Everything" is what makes the vast majority of opera productions fail — especially those on a stage 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep, populated at one point by some 30 singers and dancers . . . dancing, so help me, the Can-can, on Peter Crompton's simple and clever set.
West Bay, a very small company, with severely limited resources, must meet the same challenge as its big brothers 40 miles to the north or 3,000 miles to the east.
David Sloss' West Bay, the San Francisco Opera, the Met, and companies everywhere — regardless of the size of their stage or resources — must pull it all together, matching voices, finding good musicians for the orchestra, providing sets, costumes and lighting to aid, rather than destroy suspension of disbelief, and work on a checklist of hundreds of items. Opera works only if everything does — and even that's not enough.
With all in place, and with the best of luck, you still need a kind of feeling in the house, a spirit that pulls the audience into the performance, and creates an experience of community.
And that is what happened at the Sunday matinee of "La Périchole." It all hung together, with the addition of that certain je ne sais quoi, that joie de vivre . . . and none of it in French, but rather in Donald Pippin's sparkling and eminently singable translation.
A true ensemble cast
Principal singers were well matched and worked consistently together, in ensemble, serving the music, not their own egos. In the title role, Layne Chianakas was a joy. With a warm, caressing, Flicka-type mezzo, and dead-on-pitch (except, appropriately, in "Ah! quel diner" as "my pitch begins to sag"), Chianakas also exhibited confidence, presence, remarkable comic timing.
She could even wring true emotion from love scenes usually played for laughs. In Offenbach's prequel to "Bill" from "Show Boat" ("You are all that I want, / You're the rogue I adore"), Chianakas was believable and affecting.
Roberto Perlas Gomez' Viceroy matched the production's vital, likeable Périchole better than I've ever seen that relationship work on any stage. He too had the voice, the presence, a kind of strutting that evoked smiles, not derision.
The irreplaceable Pippin at work
Put together Offenbach, Pippin, and Gomez, and you have this fabulous character "With whiskers, cloak and smoky glasses, / At liberty and on my own, / I comb the street for lively lasses / That hanker for a baritone." In the same aria, Pippin takes the impossible "Je vais, je viens, je me vais faufi-lé, / Je me vais faufi-lé, je me vais faufi-lé / Incognito, incognito . . ." and makes perfect (singable) sense with "[On the town, with a stack to squander,] / Alert and in disguise I go; / At large and known to none I wander, / And known to none I wander / Incognito, incognito . . ."
Even with a lighter voice than the other two principals, Brett Colby did well as Piquillo, bringing eagerness and a fine comic touch to the role.
Heidi Moss, Amy Stalcup, and Ariela Morgenstern create an excellent trio of cousins (and then as the quick-changing ladies-in-waiting); Michael Morris and Mark Hernandez are a hoot as the Mayor and the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, respectively, if not respectedly.
Turner's conducting started on the cautious side and violin solos were disappointing, but soon enough, the music caught fire and it stayed on an impossibly high level consistently. The chorus sang well — I am still trying to figure out how an army of six can be so impressive — but diction was mostly poor. Supertitles to the rescue, wisely, considerately.
The titles accompanied all music, not the spoken passages — that was the right thing to do, even though diction (outside the chorus) was clear enough throughout. Still, to enjoy Pippin's work to the fullest, hearing and reading make a good thing better.
Pippin makes the tough job of opera translation look easy. For example, to render "Aux maris re / Aux maris cal / Aux maris ci, / Aux maris trants, / Aux maris recalitrants!" in a singable form, Pippin just tosses off "Married men-RE, married men-CAL, / married men-CI, married men-TRANT / For married men-RECALCITRANT."
"La Périchole" runs through June 1. The Website is http://www.wbopera.org/.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)