BRITISH-FLAVORED MOZART : ‘MARRIAGE OF FIGARO’ IS CELEBRATED IN SAN DIEGO

Contrary to some expectations, it wasn’t “Le Nozze di Figaro” with English supertitles Saturday night at the Civic Theatre. It was “The Marriage of Figaro,” sung in British.

The prevalently prissy tone actually might have suggested something like “The Nuptials of Figaro, the Crafty Servant-Gentleman Who Over All Adversity Doth Rise.”

It was good, of course, to be able to understand what the infernally convoluted plotting and prancing were about, without having to read distracting lines projected atop the proscenium arch. It was good, too, to be spared the American corn-ballization of “Figaro” as projected in the popular Ruth and Thomas Martin translation.

Andrew Porter’s veddy English and frequently stilted version, however, didn’t exactly do revelatory wonders for Mozart and Da Ponte. Although the text sang reasonably well, it often affronted linguistic flow and colloquial inflection. Here, after all, was a “Figaro” in which the deadpan hero could make this claim to his suspicious boss:

“My face, not I, is lying.”

And so, the intelligibility problem in opera lingers and lumbers.

In general, the San Diego Opera “Figaro” looked cozily familiar, even when it sounded strange. The stately sets of Carl Toms, often seen at the Music Center, came from the New York City Opera. So did John Copley’s conventional but eminently reasonable staging scheme. Because the costumes designed for this production were destroyed in a recent warehouse fire, Zack Brown’s clothes--lovely, muted, occasionally unflattering clothes--were borrowed from San Francisco.

The cast consisted, for the most part, of old young-American friends from New York, Santa Fe, and San Francisco. It was a strong, hard-working, attractive cast. It also was a cast desperately in need of stylish musical leadership and sensitive accompaniment.

Making his local debut in the pit and at the continuo harpsichord was Thomas Schuback, a Swede active in Australia (Ian Campbell, the general director of San Diego Opera, happens to hail from Australia). Schuback conducted a fast and feeble “Figaro” that often created coordination problems with the stage, that slighted the pervasive magic and poignancy of the score, that ignored most benefits of dynamic nuance, and that often reduced the scrappy orchestra to a scrambled band.

Under the circumstances, the strongest, most seasoned singers dominated the evening independently and easily.

Alan Titus, whose baritone seems to be growing and darkening with every breath, brought splendid, heroic bluster to the macho stances of the Count--and, like most Almavivas, encountered minor vocal problems in the final, ascending flourishes of his aria.

Kevin Langan once again delineated a neatly pointed, classically grouchy Bartolo. Susan Quittmeyer, vocally more aggressive than necessary, offered an increasingly appealing, lithe and witty Cherubino who actually bothered to ornament the final section of “Voi che sapete.” Faith Esham, though hardly the warmest and sweetest Susanna in memory, made the eternal ingenue exceptionally pert, alert and pretty.

The Countess was to have been Pamela Coburn, an American soprano active in Germany. However, she was deemed expendable--rightly, it would seem--when it became apparent that commitments in Munich precluded her attending all the San Diego rehearsals. Kathryn Bouleyn, Coburn’s worthy replacement, is a remarkably intelligent, resourceful artist who made much of the character’s essential aristocratic bearing, who managed the comic turns with elegance, who added discreet embellishment to the repeated verse of “Dove sono,” and who sang with breadth and flair, some discomfort in the top range notwithstanding.

The propulsive force in any “Figaro” should be Figaro. In his first outing with the role, J. Patrick Raftery produced needlessly loud and pearly tones, projected the pudgy blandness of the all-American boy next door, and suggested that he has yet to find the mercurial wit and dramatic light and shade that define this revolutionary hero.

The secondary roles were routinely dispatched, and, as usual, Marcellina and Basilio were deprived of their arias. Heather Begg came a long way (from Australia) to sing a strident, Katisha-like duenna. Jeffrey Thomas drew a nice-and-nasty portrait of the perpetually preening music master, but someone certainly should have stopped him from popping a pimple in Susanna’s mirror.

Carlos Chausson overdid Antonio’s alcoholic indulgence. Julia Holland introduced a shrill little Barbarina. David Hall stammered dutifully as Curzio.

Nothing here suggested grounds for divorce. But there have been better marriages.