“The Inspector,” produced by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, is loosely based on Nicolai Gogol’s “The Government Inspector,” a 19th-century play in which a town mired in dishonesty prepares for the visit of a government official charged with getting rid of corruption. A mayor-on-the-take and his cronies hasten to make their town look honest. “The Inspector” is not an update of the original, but a wholly new concept. A collaboration of the dynamic duo composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell, it is witty and sophisticated with a satirical bite. Its action has been moved from tsarist Russia to Sicily, between 1925 to 1930, a period when Mussolini sent government representatives out to clean up the countryside.
In “The Inspector,” the mayor of Santa Schifezza, Fazzobaldi (Robert Orth), has heard that Mussolini is sending an inspector to his town. Fazzobaldi is terrified that he will find out about the graft and bribery that have gone unchecked for years. The joke of the opera is that when a man named Tancredi (Vale Rideout) and his servant Cosimo (William Sharp) arrive on the scene, the mayor and all his Cabinet ministers believe that Tancredi is the inspector. Fazzobaldi wines and dines the men at his villa.
| Onstage |
| ‘The Inspector’ |
| Where: The Barns at Wolf Trap, 1635 Trap Road, Vienna |
| When: 8 p.m. Friday; 3 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: $32 to $72, 877-965-3872, wolftrap.org |
Orth is well-cast as Fazzobaldi, capable of delivering Musto’s lively and engaging music and also capable of delivering the considerable humor of Campbell’s libretto. As the mayor’s wife, Sarah Larsen plays Sarelda as an egocentric, deluded middle-aged woman. Larsen is particularly entertaining in an aria in which she glorifies power and money, musing on the shoes, hats and gowns she will have when her husband is called to Rome to take on an important position.
Their daughter, Beatrice (Anne-Carolyn Bird), sees through Tancredi’s disguise and gets him to admit who he is and why he is in Santa Schifezza. Far more intelligent than her parents, Beatrice yearns to escape the confines of Santa Schifezza and sings a haunting, lyrical aria expressing her entrapment in the town.
The cast of “The Inspector” is excellent, especially Padre Ruffiano (Javier Abreu), the directress of Education Managementation who cannot spell (Angela Mannino) and the directress of Hospital and Cemetery Services (Dorothy Byrne).
On the surface, “The Inspector” is a whimsical little piece about mistaken identities, using many styles of vibrant music to portray simple ideas. Thanks to the intelligence of Musto, Campbell and director Leon Major, “The Inspector” is in fact something more, a subtle opera about power, hypocrisy and greed. The whimsy is simply charming camouflage.
