TWO OPERA COMPANY OFFERINGS : A SLAPSTICK ‘BARBIERE’ BY S.D. OPERA

Some opera companies actually trust Gioacchino Rossini.

They have the good taste to play his “Barbiere di Siviglia” as a human comedy. They recognize the inherent wit yet never lose sight of the essential credibility and underlying pathos.

Unfortunately, many companies prefer to approach this opera-quasi-buffa as if it were a laff riot. Elegance be damned. Brush up the clown routines. Bring out the slapstick.

In the good old days--before a distracting, unreasonable facsimile of an English translation was habitually flashed on a screen above the proscenium--self-indulgent singers claimed they had to exaggerate in order to get the meaning of the text across the footlights. Now, with the audience encouraged to read the story, and to laugh at the jokes even before they are uttered, the excuse no longer holds shaving cream.

Still, ‘Il Barbiere” as a sight-gag marathon remains a popular, trivial pursuit. So it was, for better or worse, Saturday night at the San Diego Opera. Mostly worse.

Don’t blame the designer. The set turned out to be the classy, ingenious unit created by Alfred Siercke--together with director Guenther Rennert--for the very shallow stage temporarily used by the Hamburg Opera right after World War II. In 1963, the set was appropriated by the San Francisco Opera, which, in turn, has now loaned it to San Diego.

Taking blissful advantage of adversity, Siercke constructed an adorable three-story doll-house facade for the Bartolo menage. It allowed the intimate plot to be enacted in nine separate chambers connected by a central spiral staircase. It also allowed the action to spill out to the narrow street in front and to steps that led to the orchestra pit.

When Rennert was in charge, he saw to it that the mood matched the surroundings. He insisted that the humor spring naturally from the characters and the situations. He banished all trace of cliche.

Wolfgang Weber, the current stage director, came all the way from Vienna to distort the Rennert-Siercke concept with heavy-handed sight gags. He tended to confuse mugging with acting and, in the process, let the comic characters become vulgar clowns.

Doctor Bartolo, as played by the thin-voiced Francois Loup, was a grimacing dunce in San Diego. Don Basilio, as portrayed by the mellow-toned Kevin Langan, emerged a smug ghoul. Berta, well-sung by Jane Shaulis, resembled a sneezing calliope. The soldiers’ chorus masqueraded as an ensemble of frenetic idiots.

Under the circumstances, one had to take comfort in the pretty pictures and in the individual characters who managed, wherever possible, to resist caricature.

Chief among them was Hermann Prey, the same baritone who had barbered Seville in the San Francisco premiere 23 years ago. Now approaching his 58th birthday, he seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth.

Prey sang Figaro on this occasion with staggering freshness and brio, with pervasive suavity and a wealth of ringing top tones for the cadential flourishes. He articulated the patter with clarity, in his best Berliner Italian, and traipsed about the stage with good-humored, wide-eyed swagger.

Susanne Mentzer, the Rosina, substituted spunky charm for cutesy soubrette mannerisms and traced the florid line with a nice, earthy, occasionally rough-edged mezzo-soprano.

Mark DuBois, the youthful Almaviva, revealed neither the biggest nor the most sensuous voice in the field, but it hardly mattered. He sang the ornate music with uncommon sensitivity, actually mustered a decent trill, even ventured some welcome flights of embellishment. He gave such a stylish, aristocratic performance, against the contextual odds, that one doubly regretted the traditional omission of the rondo finale.

Apart from the exceptionally sonorous Fiorello of Rodney Gilfry (obviously an incipient Figaro), the minor roles were indifferently cast.

Karen Keltner conducted with nimble energy. The amiable verve was somewhat compromised, however, by dynamic monotony. Sissy Baker, the harpsichordist, reduced the continuo accompaniment to dull chords.

Ultimately, sophistication proved as scarce in the pit as on the stage.