A little-known ‘Barber’ gets a rare revival

After its 1782 premiere at the Imperial Court in St. Petersburg, Russia, “Barber” was such an international smash that Mozart tried to capitalize by writing a sequel, “The Marriage of Figaro,” and then Rossini wrote his own opera on the same material.

The original piece does still live on in libraries and the occasional revival, and on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 7, the enterprising folks at the West Edge Opera brought it out for an attractive and altogether ingratiating concert performance, the first of two.

The vocal writing is sprightly and tuneful, the comic pacing deft, and the emotional undercurrent affecting without disrupting the general air of conventionality.

In other words, it’s a fine representative of the comic style as practiced at the end of the 18th century by composers with plenty of talent and technique but none of the transformative genius of Mozart or Rossini.

The company’s second annual spring season of little-known repertoire, dubbed “Opera Medium Rare,” is devoted to what the organizers are calling doppelgangers — familiar material in unfamiliar guise.

The plot, based on Beaumarchais’ play, is the same, and even the placement of some of the key musical moments — Almaviva’s Act 1 serenade, the comic ensemble in Act 2 in which Don Basilio keeps resisting everyone’s attempts to get him out of the house — remain in place.

Sunday’s performance in the Lisser Theater of Mills College was a bare-bones affair, with Music Director Jonathan Khuner leading an ensemble of three instrumentalists from the keyboard, and supertitles doing the work of scenery and staging.

In a series of elegant showpieces, including a broadly lyrical aria to end Act 1 and a sumptuous number for her phony music lesson in Act 2, Duchovnay brought tonal purity and shapely phrasing to the role.