Enchanted Island at the Met

I wasn’t sure what to expect for the Met’s new commissioned opera, The Enchanted Island. On the one hand, it was Baroque opera, which I don’t really have a lot of patience for. And some of the reviews were not all that enthusiastic about the length of the piece. On the other, it’s a pastiche opera that borrows arias from the leading Baroque composers of the time, and weaved together to tell the amalgamated tale of Shakespeare’s Tempest meets the Midsummer’s Night Dream. Which sounded fun! And it’s sung by a whole host of some of my favorite opera stars today – Joyce Didonato, David Daniels, Danielle de Niese, Placido Domingo…

So I went to the AMC Theater to catch the encore HD broadcast with some trepidation. If it turned out boring, I reckoned, I could always skip out early. But my fears were unfounded. I had such a lovely time! Jimmy Sam’s English libretto is playful and hilarious. Lots of little gems like ‘Lysander and Miranda – we rhyme!’ (sung with a gleeful little hop); ‘What happened to my spell? Duh, wrong ship!’, when Ariel realized how she had mistakenly shipwrecked the wrong ship.

I enjoyed the staging and the set – the use of computer graphics and animation was marvelous, especially in the shipwreck scene and the scene when we’re brought under the sea to Neptune’s court. The costume designs were very detailed and imaginative as well, and I couldn’t help but burst into laughter when Ariel appeared before Neptune in a vintage diver’s suit complete with the metallic diving helmet.

The cast was wonderful. Joyce Didonato, in particular, gave a rousing performance with her fearless colorations and heartfelt emotions. Her entrance aria, “Maybe Soon, Maybe Now” was so gorgeously sung, as was her duet at the end with Caliban, when she was trying to console him for his lost love. My other favorites: David Daniels (Prospero), Elizabeth DeShong (Hermia), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Ferdinand), Luca Pisaroni (Caliban).

NYTimes’ Review:

Shiny Bibelot From Shakespeare, Handel & Co.

Forget “Auld Lang Syne.” The best music to ring in a new year is “Now a bright new day is dawning,” the joyous chorus that ends “The Enchanted Island,” the inventive concoction that had its premiere on Saturday night at the Metropolitan Opera. The music for this finale is lifted from the “Hallelujah” chorus that concludes Handel’s oratorio “Judas Maccabaeus.” The new words are by the librettist Jeremy Sams, who devised the story and assembled this fanciful, clever and touching pastiche by selecting arias, ensembles, choruses and dances from works by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and lesser-known Baroque composers.

But the idea came from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who has had his hits and misses since arriving at the company in 2006. This was a good idea. His vision was carried out beautifully by Mr. Sams, aided by a terrific cast, the conductor William Christie and a brilliant production team headed by the director Phelim McDermott (that team that gave the Met its remarkable staging of “Satyagraha”).

As Mr. Gelb said in a recent interview, he wanted to “play the Baroque card” at the Met in a fresh way. Why not a pastiche? In the Baroque era the practice of borrowing music from one opera and fitting it with new words for another drama was commonplace.

This project could easily have resulted in a gimmicky piece with a mashed-up score. But Mr. Sams, who is a writer, director, translator and film composer, saw both the potential humor and the richness in the idea.

The story he devised, conflating elements of two Shakespeare plays with wit and charm, centers on Prospero, the brooding hero of “The Tempest,” an exiled duke of Milan who lives on a remote island with his devoted daughter, Miranda, and spends his days immersed in books containing formulas for potions and magic spells. Here the sorceress Sycorax, only mentioned in Shakespeare, is Prospero’s former lover and a central character. Prospero has banished Sycorax to the dark realm of the island, stolen her spirit servant, Ariel, and forced her savage son, Caliban, into servitude.

Hoping to ensure Miranda’s future and end his exile, Prospero conceives a plan to have Ariel create a storm that will wash ashore a passing ship bearing Prince Ferdinand, whom Prospero hopes to match with Miranda. But the spell is sabotaged by Sycorax, and another ship, bearing the four Athenian lovers from Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” is beset. A matrix of mismatched romantic pairings ensues on the island, due to Ariel’s hapless applications of love potions.

What gives “The Enchanted Island” its poignancy is the palpable respect for the beautiful borrowed music. In the first scene Prospero, here the charismatic countertenor David Daniels, promises Ariel, the brilliant soprano Danielle de Niese, freedom if she will summon a storm. The music for Prospero’s alluring aria is taken from a Vivaldi cantata, sung by Mr. Daniels with a transfixing blend of melting sound and forceful delivery. Ariel answers in an aptly effusive and wily aria, “I can conjure you a fire,” with vibrant music from Handel’s oratorio “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno,” which Ms. de Niese deftly dispatched.

In most numbers Mr. Sams recycled not just the arias but the recitatives, retrofitted with new words. Where he had to compose new recitatives, he did it so well that you could not tell what was what.

The mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was Sycorax, costumed at first (by Kevin Pollard) in a ragtag robe, her head all unkempt braids, giving her a slightly Rastafarian look. She commanded the stage from her first showcase scene, when she plotted her revenge on Prospero in “Maybe soon, maybe now” (music from Handel’s “Teseo”), singing with cool control, then bursting into fearless flights of passagework.

The bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni as Caliban looked menacing yet endearing in an exotic costume that suggested the Cowardly Lion with Kabuki whiteface. He relished the part and excelled in his volatile aria “Mother, my blood is freezing” (with music from Vivaldi’s “Farnace”). The lyric soprano Lisette Oropesa brought a gleaming voice and beguiling grace to Miranda. The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was a sweet-toned Ferdinand.

A strong quartet of young singers sang the Athenian lovers: the rich soprano Layla Claire, Helena; the bright-voiced tenor Paul Appleby, Demetrius; the plush mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong, Hermia; and the hearty baritone Elliot Madore, Lysander, in a strong Met debut. They first appear on ship at sea, jauntily singing “Days of pleasure, nights of love” (originally “Endless pleasure, endless love” from Handel’s “Semele”).

This episode also epitomized the creativity of Mr. McDermott’s production, with Julian Crouch as associate director and set designer. The set inventively combines traditional scenery flats with sophisticated videos. When we first see the ship, it rocks gently atop waves created by old-fashioned cutout boards that lift and dip. But when the storm breaks, frightening video images (created by 59 Productions) evoke swelling seas, hail and wind as the ship goes down.

What would a Baroque pastiche be without a star turn? This one had the tenor Plácido Domingo, no less, as Neptune: by his count, his 136th role (and first full-fledged god). Neptune, with flowing beard and silver raiment, is introduced in a dazzling underwater scene with an aquatic chorus of courtiers singing “Neptune the Great” (using “Zadok the Priest,” a Handel coronation anthem). Four mermaids float above. And Ariel, come to seek Neptune’s help, arrives in deep-sea diver’s gear.

In a gripping recitative and aria, patched together with music from Handel and Rameau, a despairing Neptune comments on the sorry state of the world and bemoans that his gift to mortals, the sublime ocean, has been despoiled by man. In this short but crucial role Mr. Domingo could let loose and really sing, which he did with heroic fervor. And as the run continues, this busy artist may not need to glance quite so much at the prompter’s box.

In the spirit of Baroque opera “The Enchanted Island” is long. Maybe too long, especially the first act, with its many contemplative arias. Still, the piece unfolds with remarkable integrity and consistency, despite the use of music from so many sources and styles.

Baroque purists who object should be quieted by the presence on the podium of Mr. Christie, who has done as much as any musician today to champion Baroque opera. I cannot imagine Handel, the Mr. Showbiz of his day, having any problem with “The Enchanted Island.” His only question would have been whether he would be paid an up-front fee or receive a percentage of the profits.

Opera News on Joyce Didonato

Opera News had an excellent write-up and interview of Joyce Didonato that I enjoyed so much, I wanted to store it here… One thing she said that particularly struck me: “We’re giving opera a bad name, in a way, by the way we present ourselves — the way we sort of say, ‘Well, we know the plots aren’t very good, but we’ve got good costumes!’ Or ‘Well, we know it’s old-fashioned, and it’s long, but we have an exciting theater director doing it.’ Let’s get out there and tell people how great this art form is! We don’t sing with microphones, and what we do is extraordinary. Let’s be excited about it and quit apologizing for it.” I wanted to add, “quit apologizing for it, in spite of the sometimes really silly plots.” Haha, because in point of fact, sometimes the plot is just completely nonsensical, at least to me. But isn’t that part of the fun?

The Sweet Voice of Reason
Joyce DiDonato — probably the most in-demand lyric-coloratura mezzo in the world — has become a star by playing up, not down, to her audiences. She tells BRIAN KELLOW how proud she is of opera — and how proud she is to be an opera singer.

Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan

I watched the encore performance of the Met’s new production of Don Giovanni last night at the Regal Theater (tickets were sold out at AMC; and the Regal Theater actually is quite a delightful alternative with its cheap/free parking).

In reading Anthony Tommasini’s review in the NYTimes, I found myself mostly nodding and agreeing with his critique.

1. The staging was too drab… the politically correct word, it seems, is “traditional”. I did like two scenes. One was Leporello’s “Catalogue” aria where the length of balconies split open to reveal a piazza surrounded by a curved wall of balconies from which groups of women lingered, symbolizing the Don’s thousands of conquests. The other was right at the end, when the floor opened up to swallow the unrepentant Don, as flames and smoke erupted all around the terrified Leporello. Otherwise, the staging felt too staid; even the costumes of the singers blended in with the olive-toned walls. I much preferred Francesca Zambello’s production at Covent Garden (the production featuring Simon Keenlyside, Joyce Didonato, Ramon Vargas etc)

2. I thoroughly enjoyed Maruisz Kwiecien’s characterization of the Don (thank goodness he recovered enough from his back surgery to star in the Met Opera streaming). He’s truly the Johnny Depp of opera, with his debonair good looks and charm. Voice-wise, he sounded a little uneven at times – I was a little disappointed with his “La ci Darem la Mano” duet but loved his seduction aria of Donna Elvira’s maid.

3. I really liked Barbara Frittoli’s Donna Elvira… Marina Rebeka’s Donna Anna sounded a touch strident at times.. Ramon Vargas really cannot act, but his singing was beautiful as always

Le Comte Ory

It was a delectable comedy – full of slapstick but excellent acting, virtuoso singing from the leads, and colorful, fantastical costumes and stage settings. I’d been looking forward to Rossini’s last comic opera, Le Comte Ory, since the start of the season, excited as I was to see three of my admired singers together on stage: Juan Diego Florez, Diana Damrau, and Joyce Didonato.

We weren’t disappointed. The silly plot drew lots of laughs, even the ménage a trois bed scene at the end which didn’t make any sense plot-wise. Florez and Damrau were spectacular in the way they casually tossed off their super high notes while still managing to stay in role. And Didonato was brilliant in her depiction of a young page boy, right down to her hand gestures and gait.

And the bonus for the evening? The company streaming the taped HD video of the opera from the Met put in a bad tape that stopped working right at intermission, causing us a 15 minute delay while the folks at AMC hurried to straighten out the issue. Eventually, they loaded the good tape and we were back on track. To apologize for the problems, AMC gave us free passes to another Live in HD series. Hehe, this is the second time this season we’ve had free passes issued. The last was during the streaming of Don Pasquale, which kept on getting interrupted because of thunderstorms in New York. I’ll gladly put up with 15 minute delays for free passes anytime!

WSJ’s review:

A Naughty Romp From Rossini
By HEIDI WALESON
MARCH 30, 2011

‘Le Comte Ory” (1828), Rossini’s last comic opera and the only one he wrote in French, has a naughty Gallic spirit and a buoyant, witty score. The title character is a notorious seducer; his prey, Countess Adèle, can barely conceal her own lust for his page, Isolier. The second act involves the count and his followers penetrating the countess’s no-men-allowed castle disguised as nuns. And the count gets tricked into making love to Isolier, who he thinks is the countess. Bartlett Sher’s new production, the Metropolitan Opera’s first of the work, opened last Wednesday with three top Rossini singers—Juan Diego Flórez, Diana Damrau and Joyce DiDonato—in the principal roles. Yet the madcap, champagne fizz of the piece didn’t quite come across.

The main culprit was Maurizio Benini’s deliberate conducting, which flattened the effervescence of the solo singers, kept the ensembles from taking off, and set the pacing as measured, even plodding, rather than accelerated. A light touch makes this kind of piece, and Mr. Benini was just too careful.

Certainly there was fun happening on stage. The story’s conceit is that all the men have gone off to the Crusades, leaving the field free for the marauding count and his followers. As Ory, Mr. Flórez, brilliantly channeling his inner satyr, spent most of the first act disguised as a venerable hermit offering intercession for lovelorn village women in return for lavish gifts, and the second act disguised as the excessively affectionate “Sister Colette,” perplexing Adèle with his wandering hands. Unforced Rossini tenors are a rare breed, and it was a treat to hear Mr. Flórez navigate the vocal extremes of the role, popping out high C’s while adopting a rascally but winning demeanor.

Ms. Damrau was equally funny, using her lustrous soprano and command of sinuous bel canto line and coloratura precision to communicate Adèle’s histrionic personality. Her entrance aria, an over-the-top proclamation of lust and despair, was especially glorious. Ms. DiDonato was a winning and collegial Isolier, keeping the comic tension high in her numerous duets—usually at cross purposes—with the other principals. Stéphane Degout brought great patter skills and French diction to the role of Ory’s dissolute henchman Raimbaud, and Susanne Resmark was imposing as Adèle’s confidante Ragonde. Only bass Michele Pertusi seemed oddly bland as Ory’s long-suffering tutor.

Another high point was Catherine Zuber’s costumes, a dizzying farrago of color and shape—especially the witty headgear, which included stovepipe hats and turbans on the village women, raspberry-hued wigs on some of the castle ladies, and the wings, veils and ruffled wimples (sometimes framing beards) of the counterfeit nuns. And Mr. Sher pulled out all the stops for a hilarious scene in which Raimbaud unearthed some cases of wine in the castle and led the “nuns” in a jolly drinking number, interrupted with effusive prayers designed to fool the suspicious Ragonde.

There was medieval armor for the departing Crusaders; otherwise, we were in fairy-tale land, especially given Ms. Damrau’s oversize violet and fuschia costumes. Michael Yeargen’s set—inspired by pictures of a 17th-century Italian theater and commedia dell’arte—featured a raised wooden platform, candles for stage lighting, visible weights and pulleys for scenery changes, onstage devices for generating thunder and lightning, and an ancient, doddering stage manager who cued assistants and cranked levers. This opera-within-an-opera concept was amusing, and gave the Met’s large stage a more intimate, handmade quality. Brian MacDevitt’s lighting nicely suggested candlelight, daylight, and the Act II storm.

For the most part, Mr. Sher’s directing capably balanced lust and playfulness. But in the big payoff number, when Ory, still pretending to be Sister Colette, arrives in the darkened bedroom in pursuit of Adèle, he is supposed to fondle Isolier by mistake. The music is a wonderful, sensual trio, and Mr. Sher staged it on a tipped-up bed as an actual threesome, with Ory in his male clothes and all participants seemingly having a lovely time. This choice, like the conducting, missed the point of the joke.

Back at the U of C, a Joyce Didonato Recital

We first heard Joyce Didonato when she made her Lyric debut in 2008, as Rosina in Barber of Seville. She gave an inspiring performance, and we were enthralled by her consummate acting and singing of Una Voce Poca Va, the aria which shot her to international acclaim. Afterwards, we had the good fortune of catching her give Roger Pines an hour long interview at the newly dedicated drama center up the street from where we live.

Over the past three years, I’ve kept up with her rapid ascendancy to the international stage, through her blog and her DVDs (including the one of her remarkable performance in Covent Garden, where she sang on a wheel chair after having fallen off the stage on opening night).

So it was with great excitement when I found out that the U of C had managed to snare her to give her debut recital concert in Chicago. What amazing fortune! Tickets at Mandel Hall were only $35 ($5 for students, though I was ethical enough time time around to cough up the full fare, even though I still have my student card, hehe), and we had great seats! She’s ending her US recital tour at Carnegie Hall, where tickets will doubtless be many times more dear.

Anyway, I had such a terrific time! Though I had only heard a couple songs in her chosen program before, we were provided with copies of the translated texts so we could follow along. Her voice filled every corner of that intimate space and sent shivers down my spine. She sang selection of songs and arias by Haydn, Charminade, Hahn, and Rossini.

Although we had originally arranged to meet up with friends after the concert, we had to take a rain check at the end because the concert went on for longer than we’d expected. Even then, I didn’t want the evening to end.

The following is a review by the Washington Post of her recent recital there, which was the same program she gave tonight. We were luckier in Chicago though – Mandel Hall is a much cosier space (seats less than 1000).

DiDonato keeps everything in the moment at recital
By Anne Midgette
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Be they bored, rapt or somewhere in between, everyone in a concert hall is moving together through the same two hours. The great achievement of a performance, though, is to suspend time so that everyone is existing, however briefly, in the same moment – a piece of distilled awareness in the form of sound.

It happened at the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato’s recital at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Tuesday night, more than once. Whether she was singing a dramatic monologue, such as Haydn’s challenging “Scena di Berenice,” which opened the program, or a song by Cecile Chaminade, fleeting and iridescent as a soap bubble, DiDonato would find a phrase and sing so solidly to the heart of the music, luxuriating in each note, that the sound opened and breathed and blossomed. Rather than being propelled forward, everyone hovered in the moment, together, not wanting it to end.

This is an awfully highfalutin way to describe a singer who isn’t highfalutin at all. DiDonato, 42, has reached her current career heights – she’s one of the biggest stars in opera – precisely by being so eminently herself. She’s a down-to-earth presence, giving not artifice, but herself, whether in music, in spoken interludes between her sets, or even, offstage, on the blog (“Yankeediva”) she’s kept for years.

And part of the magic of her recital Tuesday is that it wasn’t flawless, but human. The huge spaces of the Kennedy Center are anything but ideal for the intimacy of a song recital, offering smaller-scale works for a single unamplified voice, and DiDonato succumbed at times to the temptation to push her voice a bit, particularly in some of the faster songs (the end of the Haydn, or “La Chanson de Zora” in a Rossini set, or Chaminade’s “Villanelle”).

But the humanity is precisely what made the singing so luminous in the vast majority of the offerings. Rather than a china doll, or an image of perfection, DiDonato is always present as a real person who cares about what she’s doing. She backs this up with a gorgeous vocal technique and ease of delivery (indeed, I should qualify the quibble about her pushing by adding that she never tries to take her voice into the wrong repertory).

Her voice is lyrical rather than heavy or dramatic, with a shining freshness that gave a particular radiance to the French songs (the Chaminade set and Reynaldo Hahn’s cycle “Veneziana), and a caramel warmth to its depths that glowed in the showstopping aria from Rossini’s “Otello,” supported by her eager accompanist, David Zobel. (This opera, now nearly forgotten, was a huge hit in its day, and this particular aria heavily influenced Giuseppe Verdi’s treatment of the same scene in his own “Otello” 70 years later.)

DiDonato is on tour with this recital, leading up to her mainstage Carnegie Hall debut in March that will include the world premiere of a new song cycle by Jake Heggie. At the Kennedy Center, she replaced that with the Hahn cycle and with three light serenades, including the sugary “La Spagnola” by Vincenzo Di Chiara. For some singers, this would have been too much sugar, but DiDonato pulled it off with the force of her own conviction – and countered any incipient charges of lightness with the aria from Rossini’s “La Donna del Lago,” stunningly sung, as a generous encore. (She followed it with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as a tribute to Gerald Perman, who 20 years ago founded Vocal Arts D.C., a producer of the event along with the Washington Performing Arts Society.)

Before her encore, DiDonato made a few comments from the stage that segued into her feelings about the largely peaceful transfer of power in Egypt. In a field that so often seems to exist in a rarefied atmosphere away from the world, she has the directness of a pop musician – not to try to impose any kind of political message on a program, but just to remind everyone of the world of which classical music is a part.

Of course, when you give as lovely a recital as DiDonato did, you can say just about anything you want.

The Things that Matter

I came across this question recently, “what matters most to you”? A relatively simple question really, but I was momentarily flummoxed by it. I’ve pondered over the question, and will continue to think about it, though I think I have at this point some preliminary notion of the things important to me.

In the meantime though, I’d like to borrow a recent post from Joyce Didonato, Big Invisible Pieces, an American opera singer whom I’ve had the good fortune to listen to at the Chicago Lyric, as well as at an interview hosted by Lyric’s dramaturg Roger Pines, at the Center of Halsted last year. In her post, Joyce shares a welcome address given by Karl Paulnack to the freshman at Boston Conservatory:

Welcome address to freshman at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

Conversation with Joyce DiDonato

Last night, Roger Pines, the dramaturg for the Lyric Opera House, hosted an interview with Joyce Didonato, who is currently starring as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. Jon, Bruce, Jeff, Kyrie, and I, who had caught the show, were thrilled at the opportunity to get up close to a real diva, and hear first hand her accounts of her path to some of the best mezzo soprano roles today.

Joyce DiDonato shot this portrait of herself with Wayne Tigges. They were part of the cast of Barber of Seville, she as Rosina and he as Basilo

She immediately charmed her audience with her easy laughter and witticisms. It’s not everyday I get the chance to see an interview being conducted live, and I came away impressed by her relaxed manner and stage presence; she owned the crowd. During the course of her interview/conversation with Mr. Pines, she admitted that choosing the operatic path had not come easily to her, for she had debated for a while with whether it was a true calling that would provide value to society vs. a career in teaching. She realized, in the aftermath of 9/11, when people were struggling to come to come to grips with the ugly notions of hate and destruction, that through opera, she could also make a difference in the world by helping affirm people’s belief that there was also beauty in life. I’m in finance, so admittedly, I’m not too into trying to save the world. Nonetheless, she does serve as inspiration, in the way she perservered through her dozen auditions before she landed a role on her 13th try, and the way in which she lives in the moment and finds the little things in life to be grateful about.

Of the picture she took of us the audience after the Q&A session, she noted:

I’m grateful for moments of reflection. Tonight I participated in a Q&A session at the Center on Halsted (a wonderful local gay/lesbian community center) sponsored by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, hosted by the dashing Roger Pines, and attended by a lovely crowd who so kindly obliged me in my request to take a group photo! Because Roger had put so much thought into the questions, and the audience was so attentive, I had the opportunity to reflect and express various elements of why I do what I do, what it means to me, and why I love it so much. Being given an opportunity to do this (in a public forum, no less!), reminds me that music is something that unites people, empowers them, and lifts them up – and how lovely to be given the chance to celebrate that! Thank you to everyone who attended and making me feel so much at home!

The Barber of Seville

Thoughts in a nutshell: Whimsical set, absurdly silly plot, but absolutely charming and delightful (e.g. the well-toned baritone Nathan Gunn as Figaro).

The Daily Herald writes:

Lyric warms the heart with ‘The Barber’

One of the masterpieces of comic opera, Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) is back at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and a most welcome return it is based on Saturday’s well-received opening-night performance.

This is the Lyric’s own John Conklin-designed production, last seen here in the 2000-01 season, with its creative sets that combine late 18th century Spanish furnishings and costumes with a series of impressionistic, brightly colored scenic “drops” and scrims designed to silently come and go throughout the evening. This is real operatic eye candy, and it is supported by a musical performance conducted with flair by Italian maestro Donato Renzetti.

In a season in which last-minute cast changes have been frequent at the Lyric, the company hit the jackpot with Iowa native John Osborn, who took on the challenging tenor role of Count Almaviva after Juan Diego Florez was forced to cancel all performances for a least a month on doctor’s orders. Osborn has portrayed the Count at New York’s Metropolitan Opera as well as in Vienna, Berlin, San Francisco and several other major opera houses. He’ll take his well-honed interpretation to Dresden, Germany, later this year.

One of the high points of the opera is the music-lesson scene in Act 2, when the count, disguised as a music teacher, makes a romantic play for Rosina, portrayed by American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in her Lyric Opera debut. The pair’s performance just glistens, with DiDonato also giving a heartfelt interpretation of her earlier aria “Una voce poco fa,” in which she swears her love to “Lindoro” – Count Almaviva in disguise.

Of course, this character-in-disguise plot element is common to operas from Mozart to Verdi – the latter’s “Falstaff” fits that description and is playing at the Lyric through Feb. 23.

American baritone Nathan Gunn, one of his generation’s genuine operatic superstars, was seen here as Guglielmo in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” last season, and he was a sensation in the title role of the Lyric’s acclaimed production of “Billy Budd” six years ago. Gunn really revels in his energetic portrayal of Figaro, the well-intentioned, but somewhat misguided Barber of Seville of the title. A handful of arias have transcended the world of the opera house and entered popular culture. Figaro’s first-act “Largo al factotum” is so well known that it has been heard in movies, TV commercials, cartoon spoofs and the like. Gunn brought the house down Saturday night in performing this tongue-twisting scene, in which he awakens in his second-floor bedroom, glides down a firemen’s pole and prepares for another day’s work.

Although the weather remains chilly – after all, it’s February – the Lyric’s “Barber of Seville” is destined to warm your heart.