Funny ‘Great Scott’ winks at modern opera

In “Great Scott,” the opera that made its West Coast premiere Saturday at the San Diego Civic Theatre, a young stage manager tells an older classics-loving conductor that opera is dead.

Whether the art form can survive today in a world obsessed with sports, pop culture and social media is the central question in the Jake Heggie/Terrence McNally comic opera. San Diego Opera co-produced the new work, which debuted last fall in Dallas.

Although “Great Scott” is a flawed piece of theater, it does present a positive, creative and clear path forward for companies like San Diego Opera, which — like the fictional troupe in the story — has struggled to stay relevant and financially afloat.

Under Jack O’Brien’s, skillful direction, “Great Scott” is visually spectacular, modern, approachable, honest and frequently hilarious. But the three-hour production is also overstuffed with subplots, underdeveloped characters and relationships, jokes that falls flat and occasionally tedious musical passages.

The opera is named for Arden Scott, a famed mezzo-soprano who returns to her native Texas to help rescue the symbolically named American Opera company, where she got her start. She’s set to star in the world premiere of “Rosa Dolorosa,” a long-lost 19th-century bel canto opera, but its opening night is up against the Super Bowl at a stadium across town featuring the city’s Grizzlies football team.

Meanwhile, a ghost is haunting rehearsals, an ambitious soprano is trying to steal Arden’s spotlight, her high school sweetheart wants to rekindle their relationship, and the opera company’s next season is in doubt, among other plot threads.

Heggie’s score is an ear-pleasing mix of contemporary melodies and homage to operas past. There’s a rumbling Rossini-like ensemble piece and a Mozartian septet, as well as some gorgeous modern duets and quartets. There’s also a large role for countertenor, a vocal type most often associated with baroque repertoire.

Soprano Joyce El-Khoury plays Tatyana Bakst in San Diego Opera’s “Great Scott.” Karen Almond

(Karen Almond)

Unfortunately, the first act is overburdened with recitative, which becomes tiresome, and long musical sections in the second act suffer from a lack of variety. Fortunately, conductor Joseph Mechavich does well leading the San Diego Symphony, and the vocal cast is excellent.

Kate Aldrich, who virtually never leaves the stage as Arden Scott, shines in the second act, where her creamy vocals highlight the premiere of “Rosa Dolorosa.” She’s got great chemistry with Nathan Gunn, the charismatic, robust-voiced baritone who plays her former love Sid Taylor.

Mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade is charming as Winnie Flato, the donor and volunteer trying to hold the company together. Bass-baritone Philip Skinner is a powerhouse as both the aging conductor and opera ghost. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is a striking presence as the stage manager Roane. Tenor Garrett Sorenson and baritone Michael Mayes add a comic element playing up the clichés often associated with their voice types.

The show’s scene-stealer is Joyce El-Khoury as the calculating soprano Tatyana Bakst. Her over-the-top coloratura rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” (“with variations,” as she says in a thick Slavic accent) is the show’s highlight.

A dazzling scene from “Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei” the opera within the San Diego Opera production of “Great Scott.” Karen Almond

(Karen Almond)

McNally’s libretto needs a trim. The ghost subplot is extraneous, the relationship between Arden and Sid is underwritten, and Winnie is one-dimensional. On the plus side, “Great Scott” is an opera of today: real people with real problems, a backstage gay romance and contemporary jokes, visual humor and curse words.

O’Brien smartly contrasts the old-fashioned style of “Rosa Dolorosa” with the loose backstage physicality and interaction rarely seen on opera stages. The projections, flying and lighting effects and motorized scenery (especially a volcano that erupts in the second act) are dazzling.

“Great Scott” is both a love letter to opera and an S.O.S. for the art form, and locally, life is imitating art: San Diego Opera is in a last-minute push to close this season in the black. Though flawed, this work is thoughtful, funny and perhaps also a forecast of the opera of tomorrow.