By Nancy Plum

Princeton Festival has arrived in the community, with recitals, lectures, and full concerts in a range of venues throughout town. Under the umbrella of Princeton Symphony Orchestra, the Festival has always included full operas in the performance schedule, and this past Friday night saw the opening of the first of the Festival’s two mainstage productions. Under a tented pavilion at Morven Museum & Garden, the Festival presented Gioachino Rossini’s farcical The Barber of Seville, recalling to the stage two singers who excelled last season and introducing new outstanding voices to Princet+on audiences.

Rossini’s 1816 Barber of Seville was part of an operatic tradition of composing for not much more than a handful of principal performers, with strong contrasting characters and complex and intricate ensemble numbers. Each of the singers in Princeton Festival’s production needed to be able to carry the stage and hold their own in duets and trios which could fall apart with one slip-up. Led by Princeton Symphony Orchestra Music Director Rossen Milanov and presented in Italian with English titles, this Barber of Seville was musically precise and clearly focused on physical comedy as well as top-notch singing.

Several singers in Friday night’s cast had performed with the Festival in the past, including tenor Nicholas Nestorak, singing the romantic lead role of Count Almaviva. Almaviva must summon all his wiles to lure his beloved Rosina into his trap, and with Barber being a comic opera, stage director James Marvel incorporated a great deal of physicality into the roles. Nestorak sang with a bright forward edge to the sound, which aided in his ability to move Rossini’s top-speed 19th-century Italian “patter” while simultaneously executing the significant amount of movement. Nestorak’s vocal edge and the size of his voice were particularly well suited to the space of the Morven pavilion.

The exacting role of Rosina would be difficult enough for a soprano, but in a holdover from the 18th-century vocal fireworks tradition, Rossini intended this role for a coloratura mezzo-soprano. Although not a common genre, Princeton Festival found a spectacular singer in Kelly Guerra, who easily handled Rossini’s challenging demands on the voice, bringing the richness of her lower register into the stratospheric range of the arias. Guerra began the signature aria “Una voce poco fa” majestically, then nimbly skipped through the racing coloratura lines covering more than two octaves.

Blair Mielnik’s scenic design resembled a cartoon-like barbershop in a geometric setting, with Marie Miller’s costumes equally as colorful. As the title character and barber Figaro, baritone Andrew Garland looked a bit like he had fallen out of the cast of Beetlejuice, but had his role well in hand amid the comic tomfoolery. Garland easily finessed the quick text and runs, especially conveying Rossini’s recitatives cleanly with crisp accompaniment from the Princeton Symphony Orchestra musicians. Garland also showed impressive movement capabilities and balance while singing.

The cast was rounded out by three other principal singers, one of whom was triple cast. As Bartolo, bass Steven Condy was commanding in superiority over his ward Rosina, but also showed he was capable of singing delicately and handling rapid-fire text. Bass Eric Delagrange, who has also appeared with Princeton Festival in the past, sang the role of the music teacher Basilio as a suave and smooth character, with clarity in a vocal register which sat quite high at times. Delagrange sang the Act I “slander” aria with dramatic and well drawn-out phrasing, and comedic movement which helped move the music forward.

Some of the most unusual staging was assigned to mezzo-soprano Kaitlyn Costello Fain, who performed the role of housekeeper Berta as equal parts singer and contortionist. Clearly a very accomplished dancer, Fain has achieved success in a tripartite career of dance, theater and opera. Director Marvel well utilized all Fain’s talents in this production, never missing an opportunity to have Fain show her acrobatic skills. The gymnastics may have been a bit distracting at times in scenes focused on other characters, but Fain proved herself to be a solid performer with a fiery onstage personality on her own and a key player in the overall consistently animated ensemble.

A Keystone Cop-like chorus of singers portraying band members in the opening scene was led by Almaviva’s servant Fiorello, well sung by bass Cody Müller. Müller returned two more times in the opera as different characters, each time commanding the stage with a rich and resonant bass voice. The “band” members were also given clever staging on their own, including one character humorously playing a trombone as if it were a double bass.

Conductor Milanov led the Princeton Symphony Orchestra players in crisp and precise accompaniment to the singers, never detracting from the action onstage. Milanov and the Orchestra began the opera with Rossini’s familiar and witty “Overture,” keeping the rhythms clean and tapering phrases to effectively maintain a restrained sound in the space of the pavilion. The intimacy of this space enabled the audience to hear every musical effect, from the high-energy ensemble numbers to the exact timing of the orchestral accompaniment.

Opera under a tent pavilion might seem risky given the weather and perhaps not able to accommodate quite as large an audience as an indoor venue. Princeton Festival has shown for the past few years that outdoor opera in this type of intimate setting is successful, and the operas presented this season well complement the wide range of musical activities which make up the Princeton Festival.

Princeton Festival continues this week with a “Mazel Tov Cocktail Party” on Wednesday, June 21, a performance of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” by the early music ensemble The Sebastians on June 22, a production of Andrew Lippa’s theatrical oratorio “I Am Harvey Milk” on June 23 and 24, and a performance of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” (including an “instrument petting zoo”) on June 25. Information about all Festival events can be obtained by visiting princetonsymphony.org.