In a year when the most prestigious classical music institutions — from Boston to San Francisco — appear to be cannibalizing themselves over financial matters, it is refreshing to see a local institution managing to keep itself afloat without charging a month’s worth of a college student’s salary for a ticket.
The Pacific Opera Project (POP), a local Los Angeles-based organization devoted to reviving opera for modern audiences, easily fits this description.
Tickets to their performances of Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera, “Il fortunato inganno” (The Happy Deception), have prices in the low double digits. Having previously seen them perform a gloriously fun Auber’s “Fra Diavolo,” I looked forward to what they would have in store for Donizetti. “Il fortunato inganno” depicts the tricks an opera company plays on a snobbish aristocrat, an entirely comical setting.
Seats at a table started at $35 and included a satisfactory plate of pasta and a glass of wine. At the LA Opera, each item might have individually exceeded the cost of a POP ticket. However, if we subtract the cost of the pasta and wine from the ticket, we arrive at a remarkably economical price for the actual performance.
And this, not to put too fine a point on it, was apparent from its quality.
To be fair, the problems are not all on the part of POP. The work itself, as the program’s brochure reads, is quite obscure among Donizetti’s oeuvre — to the point that even finding a legitimate score was quite an arduous task for their artistic director. There is undoubtedly a reason why this opera is not as well-known as other works by Donizetti.
It would be a dereliction of duty not to mention the several positives of the show. Most obviously, this is not an opera that you would have seen anywhere else in the country: This was actually the American premiere of the work! “Il fortunato inganno” went entirely ignored for 175 years between its publication in 1823 and its (oddly enough, Swedish) revival in 1995, and this is the first time it has been performed in the Western Hemisphere.
The set design and costumes were simple, but entirely appropriate for an opera that never takes itself too seriously, with each ensemble member identifiable by a single color they wore from top to bottom. And, of course, the venue itself was quite distinctive. The Società Garibaldina di Mutua Beneficenza of LA was founded in 1877 and has a history dramatic enough to warrant an opera. As the oldest Italian American cultural center in the western United States, it was the perfect place to watch the American premiere of a forgotten Italian work.
The libretto, focused on wacky hijinks instead of hard-hitting emotional resonance, does not lend itself to melodramatic flair. The music can often sound repetitive, a parody of the classical tendency to devolve into cutesy melodic fragments that never truly coalesce into a memorable theme.
The libretto, focused on wacky hijinks instead of hard-hitting emotional resonance, does not lend itself to melodramatic flair. The music can often sound repetitive, a parody of the classical tendency to devolve into cutesy melodic fragments that never truly coalesce into a memorable theme. There is little sense of dramatic development through form or harmony. The orchestration is not notable, and the singers are scarcely given a chance to show off. Listening to “Il fortunato inganno” makes it clear how stale Italian opera was growing in this time period.
Yet, there are still some bright spots that illustrate specific charms of this era. The trios in both acts are delightfully light, with a strong bassline providing a solid foundation for airy interactions in the upper voices. Moreover, the scenes in which the singers complain self-referentially about the inadequacy of their musical writing justify a description as a “comic” opera. One might even be tempted to grant Donizetti a pass for his faults in this work as the necessary sacrifice to make these jokes land so successfully.
The performance itself was broadly successful, but was still plagued by some avoidable errors. Some inadequacies, to be fair, are structural. It would be vindictive to criticize the venue’s unflattering acoustics or the orchestra’s rather slight sound. POP coped well enough with the limited space. The quality of the singing, unfortunately, was noticeably variable, both across scenes and among cast members. Throughout the first act, it seemed as though the singers were constantly behind the orchestra. When it was necessary, no individual singer had a powerful enough voice to sit above the remainder of the chorus.
While this was certainly not a perfect performance, opera has survived through imperfect performances, and POP plays an important role in the local classical music scene, bringing attention to little-known works and staging them with enthusiasm in unique locations with particular local histories. Despite my curmudgeonly tone towards the musical merits of the performance, I was thoroughly entertained.
Their next run will be over Halloween with Sweeney Todd, and I recommend seeing what else they have to offer — it certainly won’t break the bank.
Akshay Seetharam HM ’27 is an advocate for ignoring all music composed before 1820 and after 1870. Reading his column will probably give you an unfair advantage in solving his crosswords, which are now the longest-running way to waste your time in TSL. Any complaints about the opinions expressed in this article should be expressed in a strongly worded Letter to the Editor.