The American Wild West Meets Italian Opera

A brilliant concept, consistently realized, made San Diego Opera’s new production of Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” a tidy success when it opened Saturday night in Civic Theatre. Only vocal weaknesses in the otherwise effective quartet of principals kept the enterprise, the handiwork of set designer Tony Fanning and stage director David Gately, a muted triumph.

Relocating--not updating--the action from its Italian origins to the wild American West certainly does not contradict the very human, very funny predicament of the mature, successful gentleman attempting to take a younger wife. Surrounded by Fanning’s attractive, if cliched, western backdrops and decors, and underlined by Gately’s effective and sometimes inventive staging, it all works, in a cheerfully comedic way.

Pasquale’s mansion becomes a hotel, with an office attached; the estate garden in the finale turns into a sagebrush and cactus yard; Ernesto laments Malatesta’s apparent betrayal not by himself, but in a brothel, while being given a bath by ladies of a certain profession.

Each locale is suggested by a set drop, which, unfortunately, does not help the singers acoustically. There is, this time around, a lack of vocal clarity on the Civic Theatre stage; projection seems at a minimum, and one suspects all these voices are better, and larger, than they seem to be.

Best of the singers is tenor Matthew Polenzani, who warms up by Act 2 into a most pleasing Ernesto and looks suitably heroic while enacting the stage director’s clever inventions. Equally good-looking is his pert Norina, sung by Ying Huang--all four principals are making San Diego Opera debuts. Huang is small and pretty, reliable in all her high notes but undistinctive and colorless vocally. She wears her varied costumes with panache; otherwise, she is not memorable. The Italian baritone, Bruno Pratico makes a stock Pasquale, ordinary of voice and pedestrian as an actor. He does not indicate the dimensions or the contradictions in the character, and he ends by walking through the part. American baritone Christopher Schaldenbrand looks almost villainous as Malatesta but disappoints with one-dimensional singing and acting. David Marshman makes the most of his cameo as the Notary, and actor Robert Dahey steals scenes as Hop-Sing, Pasquale’s valet. A resourceful chorus, trained by Timothy Todd Simmons, impersonates the household servants and, at the end, a mariachi band, in good humor.

The strongest participant in the production is the orchestra, which again boasts first-rate soloists and commendable ensemble and balance. Consequently, the genuine hero of the Saturday performance was conductor Edoardo Muller, who held the entire enterprise together with elan and wit.

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San Diego Opera’s “Don Pasquale” will be repeated Tuesday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1200 3rd Ave., San Diego. $33-$107. (619) 570-1100.