Seattle Baroque ends season on comic note

The Seattle Baroque Orchestra, which closed its season this weekend, has had a year of superb, invigorating programs, encompassing 17th-century songs, a jazz collaboration, Handel's "Messiah" at Town Hall and music tied together by its use of similar bass-line patterns, or ground bass.

Saturday night at Nordstrom Recital Hall was one of its most stimulating, enlightening and fun programs with a comic opera, "La serva padrona," by Giovanni Pergolesi.

It was framed by two instrumental pieces of Telemann and Johann Gottlieb Graun, a generation younger than Telemann.

Despite their felicitous pleasures, the main attraction of the evening was the buffo opera, written when the Italian composer was only 23, nestled between his graduation from the consevatory in Naples and his death at 26, in 1736. "La serva padrona ("The Maid Turned Mistress") was originally conceived as a two-part intermezzo for a more serious work, "Il prigionier superbo" ("The Proud Prisoner"), but it became one of the most popular in the repertory and influential in the development of opera. It was a rallying cry between traditional French opera and Italian opera buffo.

Its means are slender: only two singers and a silent role. It was done in a semistaged manner that was witty and deft. Melissa Fogarty sang and acted the role of the capricious and determined Serpina with aplomb. She has a bright, attractive soprano and an ample technique, all of which she applied skillfully to the part.

David Stutz, the baritone, was an amusing Umberto but not as technically equipped as Fogarty. Jennifer Grisebach's direction was apt.

Telemann's "Burlesque" overture was an engaging beginning and performed with real polish and quickness of touch. Graun's E-Flat Viola Concerto offered the excellent Stephen Creswell, a SBO member, as the soloist. His winsome musicality, handsome tone and nimble technique served him well.

Next season, Ingrid Matthews, music director/concertmaster of the ensemble and its co-founder in 1994, is taking next year off to "refresh" herself.

John Lenti, associate director, who plays lute in the group, will take over.

The new season is already planned and includes notables such as Stephen Stubbs, Cyndia Sieden, David Greenberg, Marion Verbruggen, Monica Huggett and Stanley Ritchie.