Combine a helter skelter libretto with a classic Rossini score complete with bel canto highpoints and you’ll have the opera L’Italiana in Algeri about to go on stage at Lambert Hall in a co-production between Opera in the Heights and Anchorage Opera.
After four performances in Houston, the cast will travel to Alaska to perform at the Anchorage Opera Performing Arts Center — a benefit to the performers who with contract extensions will make more money. In both cases, Ben Robinson, general director of Anchorage Opera is handling stage directing duties.
In the original libretto by Angelo Anelli, the Italian girl Isabella is aboard a vessel that is shipwrecked in a storm. She’s taken to the court of Mustafà who has decided he wants to get rid of his wife Elvira and marry her off to his slave Lindoro. Instead, he wants the excitement of an Italian girl and thinks Isabella fits the bill.
As it turns out, Isabella has gone in search of Lindoro, her love. Eventually, the two agree to escape together to avoid the entanglements that neither one wants. To do so involves a lot of crafty maneuvering on Isabella’s part.
Some adjustments have been made in terms of the libretto. “The piece is really full of some pretty dated references that have some racial and strange cultural overtones that just don’t land in 2025,” Robinson explained. Some characterizations — as with a court full of eunuchs — were dropped as they reset the production to modern times. Slaves in the original become members of the security team and maids. All the same words will be sung but some of the surtitles will be adjusted, he said.
“Yet the opera is really fun and funny and none of the intent of the opera was to ever lean into any of those problematic areas so what this does, it contextualizes this very convoluted plot in this kind of modern resort setting and what that does is it maintains the power hierarchy. Rather than a Bey of Algiers who has a harem, we just talk about somebody who is an oligarch who has his own suite aboard a ship.
“It’s real madcap comedy. It’s really exciting to see the genius of Rossini at work in something that is slightly less familiar,” Robinson said. “It’s almost like a bedroom farce in a way. The characters that come in each scene always ratchet up the tension of the comedy.”
Robinson has a long history with Houston and Opera in the Heights Artistic Director Eiki Isomura.
“My background is as a singer. I trained at UH and sung at Opera in the Heights in the past and Eiki and I met when I was undergrad at the University of Michigan a long time ago. So I’ve known Eiki for a long time. This seemed like the kind of project that would be really good for both organizations to collaborate on.
“I sang for 11 seasons before I realized my heart was on the directing side of the fence. I had very good teachers along the way like Buck Ross at the University of Houston. We were always trained to really listen to what the music was telling us to do.”
In this joint production Kelly Guerra sings the Isabella role, Andrew Morstein is Lindoro, Andy Papas is Mustafà, Sejin Park is Taddeo, Laura Corina Sanders is Elvira, Isaiah Musik-Ayala is Haly and Meaghan Heath is Zulma. They are joined on stage with 17 other people including the chorus.
“This is a specialist group of singers,” he said. “For anybody who knows their Rossini you recognize who all these people are.. Isabella, coloratura mezzo, just the amount of notes she has to sing is astonishing. You have to sing it in great style and great beauty and this we get in Kelly Guerra who just made her Metropolitan Opera debut this year.
“She is more than matched vocally by the tenor Andrew Morstein. That’s probably the hardest role to cast in the whole show. The tenor in this show is incredibly high. Everybody has to sort of be like circus animals too. They have to agile and they have to be funny and they have to be good actors.”
Asked why this opera isn’t performed more often, Robinson said: “My professional opinion on that is that some of the cultural appropriation issues keep it from being done more. It’s also notoriously just difficult to sing.
“What I like about this. We’re doing the opera as it is. We’re just presenting it in a context that makes a lot more sense and takes out and of the sort of the antiquated ick factor that comes with pieces that were written in certain times. We’re singing all of the same words. We are going to doctor the titles just a little bit. There are references to eunuchs that we don’t have in 2025.”
“The story is ultimately is very redemptive, Robinson said. “A woman comes in; she’s outwitted everybody. She’s in control from the very beginning and she uses femininity and she also uses her wit to make sure she does enough to get Lindoro to go back to Italy and to reunite Mustafà and his wife Elvira who are bickering from the very beginning. The music just sort of bubbles underneath her. “
Performances are scheduled for April 4-12 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Lambert Hall, 1703 Heights Boulevard. For more information, call 713-861-5303 or visit operaintheheights.org. $26-$85.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
