Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” the most beloved and spoofed of comic operas, brings Virginia Opera’s season to a rousing close with a stellar cast onstage, the Richmond Symphony in the pit and a bottomless bag of tricks conjured by Broadway veteran stage director Greg Ganakas.
“This is my third appearance as Ambrogio with VO since 1996, and this is the best production yet,” says Bill Warner, the former school reading specialist who segued from retirement to multiple theatrical roles.
“Ambrogio is an old man, a deaf narcoleptic who yawns and falls into deep sleep without warning. The first time I played him, I had trouble being old and crotchety. Now that I’m 73, I’m playing myself. That first director saw him as an alcoholic, so I come onstage stage at a party and worked my way across the stage greeting everyone and drinking until I collapsed into a chair totally drunk.”
For most of his adult life, Warner taught in Stony Brook, in Long Island, N.Y. He had appeared with New York theater companies as Mordred in “Camelot,” Richard Henry Lee in “1776,” Rooster Hannigan in “Annie” and the Emcee in “Cabaret.” Retirement took him to Norfolk, where he could enjoy his love of sailing, walking to the art museum and attending the opera, but when Norfolk’s National Public Radio station broadcast a call for supernumeraries, he became intrigued and investigated.
Since his first entrance on the Harrison Opera House stage as one of four supernumeraries holding the corners of a canopy in “Turandot,” he has manipulated spears, made merry, despondent or riotous in crowd scenes as the plot required, and spread his talent around Norfolk playing Herr Drosselmeyer in “The Nutcracker” numerous times for local productions.
Although he sings in the church choir, he does not consider himself a serious singer. He is perfectly content in non-singing roles that allow him to be onstage surrounded by glorious music.
He modestly concedes that the major talent cementing him to Virginia Opera is as a volunteer “houser.” The owner of a beautiful three-story town house facing the water in Ghent Norfolk (so named for the treaty that ended the British blockade of Norfolk during the War of 1812), he has entertained Brunhilde, Tristan, and a jolly array of singers, directors, stage managers and crew during their stay in town.
“My connection with Virginia Opera has turned my retirement into fun. If you’re a supernumerary, you take your curtain call as a group,” he said. “As Ambrogio, I get to take my own curtain call. Who would have thought I’d be doing that in regional opera at this time in my life?”
If you go
Virginia Opera finishes its season with Rossini’s musical laughfest, “The Barber of Seville.”
Where: George Mason University Center for the Arts
When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Sunday (a preperformance discussion, free to ticket holders, begins 45 minutes prior to the performance on the Center’s Grand Tier III)
Info: $44 to $98; 703-218-6500, tickets.com
