KAREN KELTNER’S BATON KEEPS BUSY OUT OF TOWN

While the San Diego Opera presents its share of globe-trotting guest conductors, Karen Keltner, the company’s resident associate conductor, is doing her part to even the artistic balance of trade.

Keltner is conducting the opera’s first production of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere de Siviglia,” which opens Saturday at the Civic Theatre. But when general director Ian Campbell can spare her, she is out on the circuit.

With composer Gian-Carlo Menotti as stage director, she conducted a holiday series of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” for Florida’s Orlando Opera in December, and after San Diego’s “Barbiere,” she flies to Alaska to conduct another production of Rossini’s redoubtable opera buffa for Anchorage Opera .

Though Keltner’s last conducting assignment with San Diego Opera was Peter Maxwell Davies’ decidedly serious and surreal contemporary work, “The Lighthouse,” she has more frequently conducted the comic repertory here: Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” and Offenbach’s “La Perichole.”

“I think I have a good personality for opera buffa , and while some conductors think it means conducting inferior opera, I don’t. I enjoy it immensely.”

To those who cast aspersions at Rossini’s craft, Keltner observed, “He may have written (‘Barbiere’) quickly, but it’s certainly not thrown together. The ensembles with all of their changes of tempo can be quite treacherous--it’s my job to make it all sound effortless.”

Working with the production’s multilevel set from San Francisco Opera, a cut-away of Dr. Bartolo’s three-story house, is Keltner’s major logistical problem. “We have characters singing from the various lower levels, and at one point, the chorus sings from the top floor of the house. Ian Campbell came through during a rehearsal and joked that my orchestra was working in Bartolo’s basement.”

When Keltner was invited by Orlando Opera to work with Menotti, she snapped up the opportunity because she was already scheduled to collaborate with Menotti this May in his two one-act operas, “The Telephone” and “The Medium,” which San Diego Opera will present at the Old Globe Theatre.

Notoriously less than punctual, Menotti arrived for the Orlando production the week before opening night. “He was of course charming, gracious and civilized,” Keltner said, “but he entirely restaged the opera four days before the opening.”

Her expectations of meeting the 75-year-old composer were tempered by her experiences with composer-teacher Nadia Boulanger. “Before I went to France to study with Boulanger, I had it all worked out in my head that I would just adore her, and she would adore me. It turned out that we hated each other.”

Keltner’s sense of diplomacy made her quickly modify her instinctive choice of verb. “Hate is too strong a word. I admired her, but I didn’t like her. And she grudgingly came to like me when she found out she couldn’t beat me down.”

Keltner hit it off with Menotti in Orlando when she picked him up in a rented VW to get to a ballet performance. “When I apologized that I didn’t have a stretch limo to take him around in, he replied in his thick Italian accent, ‘Oh, I cannot stand limos--they are like coffins.’ ”

A product of Indiana University, where she received her doctorate, Keltner has no shortage of musicological integrity. But working with Menotti offered an insight into the flexibility of the composer’s point of view.

“He is so much a man of the theater that he is eager to adapt (his music) to what’s going to make the most sense theatrically,” she explained. Looking over the conductor’s shoulder, he tactfully suggested changes that contradicted the printed score. “ ‘So you want me to rewrite your music?’ I asked him, but he had not the slightest qualm about making changes. As late as final dress rehearsal he was tinkering with the music--to make it work in that production.”

As an opera conductor, Keltner has worked with other composers: Vincent Persichetti, Karl Husa and Carlisle Floyd. “When you have the composer present,” she explained, “your primary concern is if he’s going to be on your back the whole time. What we forget is that they’re just eager to have their stuff performed. And when it’s done well, they’re happy.”

San Diego’s “Barbiere,” which Keltner affectionately calls “my show,” will present noted German baritone Hermann Prey in the title role, with soprano Susanne Mentzer singing opposite him as Rosina. Canadian tenor Mark DuBois will make his San Diego debut as Count Almaviva and the role of Dr. Bartolo will be sung by Swiss bass-baritone Francois Loup. San Francisco Opera’s popular bass Kevin Langan will return as Don Basilio.”