Serving up a frothy Rossini

HGO has out done itself with the production of Rossini's The Italian Girl in Algiers (L'Italiana en Algieri for you opera snobs out there). While, admittedly, the plot is absurd, even shallow, this comedy is made utterly palpable by Rossini's light and frothy music, further enhanced by the frenetic but oh, so funny, direction, staging and costumes, and choreography by the inimitable quartet of Font/Guillen/Faur/Dorca.

The singers are young, seemed to love their parts and this came across the footlights to the audience's delight who chuckled, even roared, their approval of the absurdity and froth perpetrated under the energetic baton of Maestro Carlo Rizzi. Acrobatics on and off stage... may have been the watchword for this lighthearted piece of opera gone wild.

Current opera studio members Lauren Snouffer-Elvira (light  clear soprano) and Carolyn Sproule-Zulma (mezzo with dark and light hues) were joined by former HGOStudio alumnus Daniel Belcher-Taddeo (bass with great sense of comic timing),  newcomer Daniela Barcellona as Isabella (rich mezzo), and Lawrence Brownley-Lindoro (High flying tenor), Patrick Carfizzi (whose rich deep voice was ideally suited to the absurdity of Mustafa, and Robert Pomakov as onehanded Haly.

From beginning to end this piece of  comic opera will surely turn into a sure fire success.

The pastel colors of sets and absurd costumes revealed on curtain raising sent the audience at this final dress rehearsal (by invitation only) into spasms of clapping. This reaction continued throughout the opera with gales of bravis and storms of applause for arias by duos, terzets, quartets, quintets, sextets and septets (all are Rossini special effects  ;-) which for brief moments allowed the singers to 'stand and deliver' the fiendish patter arias, and more, before breaking out again in frantic activity.

The excerpt is not from this HGO Production.