TIRED ROSSINI : S.F. OPERA DUSTS OFF ‘BARBIERE’

For opening-night festivities back in the good old days, opera companies always presented their best productions--usually new ones--and always drafted their most glamorous casts. One wanted to start the season with something special.

The good old days seem to be over at the San Francisco Opera as run by Terence McEwen. For his inaugural effort this year, the beleaguered impresario volunteered no exertion and little stimulation. He merely pulled an ancient production from the warehouse and peopled it, for the most part, with mediocrities.

The result, seen Friday night at its last performance of the season, resembled a cynical celebration of tired routine. Promise them artful musical-theater, but give them another lazy “Barbiere di Siviglia.”

The clever set designed by Alfred Siercke--a three-tiered facade that opens up to become the nine-chambered home of Dr. Bartolo--was created in conjunction with the director Gunther Rennert for the temporary quarters of the Hamburg Opera shortly after World War II. It has been used here at regular intervals since 1963. It has traveled to Los Angeles twice. San Diego borrowed it only last year.

Although the set still exerts a faded charm, it has seen better years. It has seen better singing actors. And it certainly has seen more stylish and more sensitive stage directors than Giuseppe de Tomasi, the hack currently imported.

Rennert’s name no longer even appears on the program. Under the circumstances, that may be just as well.

De Tomasi discards some of Siercke’s costumes and their replacements contradict the period originally invoked (ca. 1840). Worse, he plays loose with the integrity of the basic scenic design.

Sometimes we are supposed to think we see the front of the house, and sometimes the rear. Yet the stubborn furniture always stays in the same place.

De Tomasi also plays loose with logic. He suggests that the rooms next door belong to Almaviva’s hotel, then allows Rosina to blithely walk through its wall from her second-story boudoir. He tells us that Figaro, the tonsorial factotum, actually lives and sleeps in Bartolo’s attic--a silly ruse that enables the hero to make his gimmicky early-morning entrance sliding down a balcony pole.

Whoopee.

These matters are mere details, of course. Still, they function as symptoms of theatrical indifference. For most of the evening, De Tomasi is content either to play traffic cop or to interpolate hoary sight gags.

Forget about credibility and wit. Forget about Beaumarchais’ human comedy. Above all, forget about elegance.

While De Tomasi directed traffic clumsily on the shallow stage, Alberto Zedda raced breathlessly through the score in the somewhat muddled pit. A fast “Barbiere” admittedly is preferable to a slow one. Nevertheless, a little more time would have abetted the shaping of phrases, allowed the music to ebb and flow, reinforced the lyricism as well as the patter.

The program credits cited the use of Zedda’s own critical edition. This explained some spicy details of orchestration, the occasional redistribution of lines, snatches of unaccustomed vocal embellishment and a few restored recitative passages. It did not explain the traditional transposition of “La Calunnia” or the generous cuts. Almaviva’s lengthy rondo finale, recycled in “Cenerentola,” was missing as usual.

Even the finest scholars make compromises, it would seem, when they take up the baton in a house like this.

The cast was dominated, for better or worse, by Leo Nucci, who sang Figaro with a free, dark, ringing baritone and plenty of Italianate brio. One could not call his performance subtle, and his smirking tomfoolery seemed a bit forced. Still, one had to admire his bravura authority.

On the other hand, one didn’t have to admire his willingness to drop the characterization in mid-scene and milk the crowd for post-aria applause. Most of his colleagues, it should be noted, followed his dubious example in this respect.

Susanne Mentzer repeated the lovely, warm-toned, standard-soubrette Rosina she had introduced in San Diego. She also served notice that her mezzo-soprano is less than comfortable in the lowest lines.

Patrick Power, a tenorino bianco from New Zealand, emitted healthy, pretty sounds as Almaviva but found the inherent demands for agility and finesse troubling. His acting remained pleasantly passive, though he did mime the keyboard accompaniment in the Lesson Scene brilliantly.

Nicolai Ghiaurov struck broad stock poses as Basilio and boomed imposing noises. Conversely, Renato Capecchi as the very crotchety Bartolo eschewed buffo mannerisms but faked his voiceless way through much of the music.

The most interesting sounds on the stage emanated, believe it or not, from the Berta. A young soprano named Susan Neves enacted all-purpose comic-servant charades but, at the same time, turned the simple vocal challenge into a tantalizing preview of what may be coming dramatic-coloratura attractions.

She ventured surprising stratospheric excursions in her little aria and capped the evening with climactic flourishes normally associated with the heroine, not the maid. Her voice is a striking instrument: big, rich, smooth, wide-ranging, uncommonly flexible. Her technique seems solid.

Remember the name.