A Mozart opera for the masses

TAMPA - That audiences need help getting into Mozart's operas, at least the less familiar ones, is the idea behind Orlando Opera's Abduction!, which had the first of two performances Friday night in Ferguson Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

It's an adaptation of The Abduction from the Seraglio, which drew the famous response from Emperor Joseph II: "Too many notes, my dear Mozart." Perhaps the emperor would have approved of the Orlando version, adapted by company general director Robert Swedberg, who also staged the production. It shortens the original by 45 minutes and gets rid of quite a few notes, eliminating one tenor aria and many aria repeats. Three acts have been compressed into two.

Nothing new there, since the opera is usually cut nowadays. Where Swedberg took a risk is in rewriting the archaic libretto to give it a Florida flavor, having been struck by the coincidence that Tampa's favorite pirate, Jose Gaspar, was swashbuckling around the gulf in the 1780s, the time the opera was premiered under the German title Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. Duly inspired, he shifted the setting from a seaside palace in Turkey to Captiva Island, and changed the villain from a pasha to Gaspar.

In theory, this sounded unpromising, but Abduction! works surprisingly well. The cast features a fine young soprano, Meagan Miller, in the demanding role of Constanza, the damsel kidnapped by Gaspar.

Miller successfully negotiated the remarkable back-to-back arias that bring down the curtain of Act I (they're in Act II of the original), going from a moving lament to octave-leaping coloratura in persuasive, lovely fashion.

Buffo bass Rod Nelman was another highlight, mastering the wide range of Osmin, Gaspar's overseer, including some mighty low singing, all the way down to low D. Tenor John Osborn, as Belmonte, the Spanish nobleman who loves Constanza and sails to Captiva to rescue her, was smooth but bland in terms of tone color and expressiveness.

Servants Pedrillo and Blonda were in lively hands with tenor Aaron Pegram and soprano Janette Zilioli. Simon Needham, an actor, was strangely formal in the nonsinging role of Gaspar. His dialogue bogged things down.

Abduction! is performed in English, which is as singable as German, but the maniacal rhyming gets to be a bit much. Swedberg takes a gauche liberty with Osmin's tipsy declaration of male bonding to Pedrillo, borrowing "I love you, man," from a beer ad and getting a laugh from the crowd.

Abduction!, performed earlier in Orlando, is the first collaboration between Orlando Opera and Opera Tampa, which is presenting it this weekend. Ferguson's cozy dimensions are a revelation for Mozart and a big improvement over cavernous Carr Performing Arts Center in Orlando.

Conductor Anthony Hose, with about 25 members of the Orlando Philharmonic in the pit, didn't do justice to the nuanced Mozart score. Lisa Buck-Goldstein's unit set filled the stage nicely, creating a colorful tableau of beach house, palms, sun and sea.

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