Opera Company's "Italian Girl in Algiers'

The Berlin Opera nearly canceled its 2006 production of Mozart’s Idomeneo after receiving an anonymous threat. The problem? An alleged insult to Islam by director Hans Neuenfels, who added a “severed-head” scene in which King Idomeneo carries a bag containing four heads—those belonging to Neptune, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed—before placing each one on its own chair.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia takes no such risks its current staging of The Italian Girl in Algiers, even though Rossini’s opera offers a potentially far more controversial ridiculing of Islam.

Rossini penned Italian Girl to Angelo Anelli’s libretto at a time (1813) when the Ottoman Empire posed a huge threat to Europe and when North Africa’s Barbary Pirates enslaved European and American slaves by the thousands (completely unlike today, of course). It’s telling that when Thomas Jefferson met with a Muslim ambassador to ask why his government was treating our ships hostilely, the ambassador quoted the Koran’s imperative to plunder and enslave the citizens of unbelieving nations. And just two years after Italian Girl’s premiere, America waged the Second Barbary War to eliminate the slavery and plunder of North African Muslims.

The search for the perfect woman

In Rossini’s opera, the Algerian bey Mustafa (Kevin Glavin) tires of his wife Elvira (Keira Duffy) and seeks to pass her off to his slave Lindoro (Lawrence Brownlee). Mustafa dreams of the perfect woman, someone with stars in her eyes, a gorgeous figure, and enough fire to excite him. In short, he wants an Italian woman.

He finds his prize in Isabella (Ruxandra Donose), who is shipwrecked off the coast while searching for her lost lover, who happens to be the slave Lindoro. Mustafa determines to wed Isabella against her will. But while he rages at servants and threatens death to Isabella’s “uncle” Taddeo (Daniel Belcher), this liberated Western woman quickly and cleverly tames her dimwitted and ineffectual Muslim host to the point of near-cuckoldry.

I’m surprised that director Stefano Vizioli left in the obvious references to Islam and Allah. Had the late Dutch director Theo van Gogh shot a straightforward film with a similar plot, he’d have received far more than eight gunshots from a militant Islamist.

A cartoon Arabian Nights

Of course, it’s hard to even notice those references in the context of the Opera Company’s delightfully silly romp of a production. With their billowing drapes and skimpy outfits in bright colors, set designer Paul Shortt and costume designer Richard St. Clair went out of their way to render this production a caricature of The Arabian Nights, complete with storybook pop-ups of ships and waves.

Rather than heighten the comedy, this cartoonish overkill hampers everything but the singing. Although the servants report that Isabella has “turned the lion into a lamb,” Glavin as Mustafa has already evoked derisive laughter from the moment he waddled onto the stage. Glavin’s characterization is delightful: When he enters Act II with a flower— peeling petals in a game of “she loves me not”— it’s predictable, but his dumfounded look renders the episode priceless. But because he’s more comical than imposing, we never perceive the full humor laden in his conversion, and consequently the otherwise hysterical Act I finale appears tacked on, rather than the climax of an escalating comedy.

Drew Biliau’s lighting does create at least one moment of pure enchantment, as his light plays across Donose’s lithe movements in Isabella’s dressing scene, when she dons Turkish garb and emerges looking positively gorgeous in her belly dancer attire. I got thoroughly lost in Donose’s murky mezzo, drawn along in her seduction as she stirred the deep richness of her voice with the quick notes of the score. Both she and Brownlee (as Lindoro) display an impressive verbal dexterity, though he sounds far more monochromatic (and strains obviously onto tiptoes for the high notes).

Let the feminists take a crack at this

The logic of Rossini’s opera implies— albeit comically— that if we really wanted to bring a regime change to the patriarchal Middle East, we should’ve sent in legions of seductively domineering Isabellas rather than warships and Marines.

I wouldn’t demand historical accuracy in opera any more then I’d expect it in a production of Shakespeare. But it’s worth noting that this month, progressive Americans threw a (fully justifiable) nationwide fit against a religion (Mormonism) that pushed Californians to enforce second-class citizenship on gays. By contrast, Western feminists and their allies in the arts still make little similar noise about the acid attacks and honor killings against women who behave like Isabella in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I’m not saying we should insult by provocation— but my God, I’d love to see a feminist Italian Girl that packed the balls (metaphorical or otherwise) to fully take advantage of this plot.

Were Vizioli inclined to stir the pot like Hans Neuenfels in Berlin, he could have had Mustafa walk in reading from a Koran. But instead, despite the apparent (and intentional) nationalist and Islam-mocking themes of Rossini’s opera, the folks at the Opera Company play it safe. Their job is not to provoke but to entertain, which is what art is all about. Or is it?