A Night with a Gentleman Thief:
Pacific Opera Project’s Delightful Fra Diavolo

Daniel Auber’s Fra Diavolo amassed over 900 performances at the Opéra Comique during the 19th century before being dropped from the repertoire in 1907. Pacific Opera Project’s current production at The Highland Park Ebell Club makes a case for why this neglect is unwarranted. The work whisks its audience along through a well-crafted plot while maintaining a violent criminal underside. Auber’s music highlights this irony deliberately, encouraging a light-hearted view of Fra Diavolo’s murderous behavior. The overture captures this duality perfectly, juxtaposing airy optimism with darker military motifs.

Sabrina Langois and the chorus

Eugène Scribe’s libretto was based on Michele Pezza, a bandit who harassed Napoleon’s forces and became a folk hero during the Italian occupation. Scribe borrowed only the name, using it as shorthand for roguish charm. The plot deploys standard comic devices: disguises, misunderstandings, cupboards. At an inn in Terracina, a British lord and his wife arrive after being robbed by Fra Diavolo. Lorenzo’s Carabinieri hunt the bandit while Zerlina, the innkeeper’s daughter, loves Lorenzo but faces marriage to a wealthy farmer. Fra Diavolo arrives in disguise, havoc ensues, his henchmen’s stupidity leads to capture, and the lovers unite. Yet the work resists simplicity. Fra Diavolo acts without ethical reflection but remains charming and courageous. The opera asks whether we should identify with him, leaving the question suspended.

Sabrina Langois and James Stevens

There is a moment when the titular rogue, pretending to be a marquis, turns to his future victim and sings a line so light it could float away. The music moves with a neat, offhand lilt. Ironic and efficient. A half smile hides a blade. Everything seems amusing until you register the stakes: a woman’s virtue, a man’s wallet, the French border. Yet Auber refuses to raise his voice. He has crime to commit and an audience to entertain.

This is not some dusty artifact. It is an origin point. Long before Rodgers and Hammerstein or Sondheim, Auber was folding operatic wit and spoken dialogue into a form that moved with startling narrative ease. His 1830 triumph wears the face of opéra comique but functions as a prototype for something more ambitious. It toys with hybrid structure, smooths over transitions with surgical precision, prefers cleverness to climax. One could stage it on Broadway tomorrow and the shape would feel familiar.

Randall Bills

That this does not happen reveals more about our cultural blind spots than about Auber’s limitations. Fra Diavolo has been nudged into the comic opera cupboard, that dusty corner where we store things we no longer understand how to value. It is too tuneful for postwar modernists who mistrust melody, too subtle for those who prefer vocal acrobatics to psychological nuance. It offers no grand tragedy, indulges in no melodrama, feels no need to apologize for its delight in human folly. Yet beneath the French decorum lies a machine built for speed and dramatic revelation. If Offenbach represents the winking uncle of operetta, perpetually nudging his audience in the ribs, Auber emerges as the older brother who already knows how to deploy subtext. The work’s opéra comique style occupies an awkward position between grand opera’s weight and operetta’s entertainment. The title role demands a virtuoso tenor capable of elegant coloratura with impeccable comic timing, a rare combination, and the soprano and baritone require similarly specialized skills. The rise of verismo and psychologically unified drama made Auber’s blend of bandit adventure and bedroom farce seem tonally inconsistent compared to the emotional directness of later Romantic works.

Fra Diavolo slides cleanly through sung numbers and spoken scenes without pausing to admire its architectural cleverness. No recitatives bog down the momentum. Choruses step in and out like seasoned professionals. Each musical moment justifies itself through dramatic necessity rather than vocal display. Consider the Act I quintet where five characters navigate the arrival of English travelers while laying elaborate groundwork for the evening’s deceptions. The music maintains conversational ease while each voice contributes to an escalating web of dramatic irony. An innocent-looking ensemble reveals character depths while accelerating the plot toward crisis. The technique anticipates Sondheim’s underscoring by nearly a century and a half, moving with mechanical precision that never feels mechanical.

The Company

The score shimmers with deceptive grace, but Auber’s deeper innovation lies in his approach to dramaturgy. He trusts the music to handle character development and plot advancement. Characters lie and dissemble with operatic abandon, yet the orchestra maintains perfect emotional composure. When Fra Diavolo disguises himself as an aristocrat, the musical language refuses to turn cartoonish. Instead, it almost persuades us of his nobility. His musical moments maintain aristocratic elegance even as they celebrate banditry. The melody soars with genuine refinement while the character boasts of criminal enterprise. That calculated ambiguity between authentic emotion and fraudulent performance, between mask and motive, would become central to musical theater in the century to come. It lives in Desiree’s second act number in A Little Night Music, runs through the storytelling of Into the Woods. Sondheim’s characters spend their lives performing versions of themselves for various audiences. Auber’s characters perfect the same skill. The only meaningful difference lies in their musical accents and historical contexts.

Auber had a talent for memorable melodies and ingenious ensemble writing. His choral writing was outstanding, here performed with gusto by the 10-person POP chorus led by Benjamin Beckman. The Rossini influence is clear, but Auber stands on his own. Each finale is carefully crafted, with intertwined vocal lines that lead to satisfying conclusions.

Randall Bills and Meagan Martin

The English libretto, cobbled from modern and 19th-century versions plus modern translations including new work by Josh Shaw, confirms why I am not a fan of opera sung in English translation. Auber and Scribe wrote this as opéra-comique, a genre that lives and dies by the rhythm and wit of its spoken French dialogue interlaced with tightly phrased, melodically agile arias. The Victorian adapters prioritized singability and decorum over dramatic fidelity. In translation the language loses its snap, its innuendo, its music-driven prosody. French vowels and syllabic stresses align organically with Auber’s phrasing; English, with its heavier accents, sits awkwardly against the same musical line, forcing distorted word stress or rhythmic fudge. Scribe’s quicksilver repartee becomes stilted, and the sly irony that defines Fra Diavolo’s double life turns literal and blunt. The humor shifts register: what was once urbane and satirical becomes pantomime. The result sounds broader, slower, far less stylish than what Auber wrote. In English, you feel the seams between speech and song; in French, the dialogue flows seamlessly into music, the wit lands naturally, and the characters retain their mischievous intelligence. The English libretto turns a sparkling, linguistically precise comic thriller into a serviceable but clumsy operetta. I would have preferred the original French, not for purism but because that’s where the piece’s dramatic economy, musical fit, and sly humor actually live. Yet the production gains accessibility: the audience grasps the plot instantly and laughs easily. What it sacrifices in elegance, it recoups partly in immediacy.

Pacific Opera Project sold tickets for tables of two or four, each with a charcuterie board and wine from Cobblestone Vineyards, creating an immersive experience. Josh Shaw‘s direction emphasized the Rossinian nature of the score, including the frozen tableaux typical of Rossini’s finales, but more importantly reflected a joie de vivre radiating from the highly committed cast.

Randall Bills, who has sung extensively in German opera houses, brought swagger and playfulness to the title role. His lyrical tenor contrasted well with James Stevens‘ brighter Lorenzo. Stevens used the steely quality of his voice to portray a lovelorn simpleton while Sabrina Langlois completed the trio as Zerlina. Langlois took time to warm up on opening night but eventually produced a well-rounded performance marked by ease of coloratura in her Act II aria, her top notes floating with delicacy. Matthew Ian Welch and Meagan Martin stole scenes as Lord and Lady Hardcash with their constant bickering and sarcastic jabs. E. Scott Levin and Krishna Raman played the comic henchmen Giacomo and Beppo enthusiastically for laughs. Errol Wesley Shaw‘s booming Matteo worked hard to fend off nuisances and marry Zerlina to a wealthy farmer.

Kyle Naig conducted the nine-person orchestra in a lively reading that matched the stage action. The absence of a full orchestra’s sound was noticeable, but its size was suitable to the intimate hall.

Josh Shaw and Pacific Opera Project are to be commended for bringing quality opera performances at popular prices to Los Angeles audiences. Opera lovers should not miss the chance to see this lovely operatic rarity.

Fra Diavolo
Pacific Opera Project
The Highland Park Ebell Club,  131 S. Avenue 57
ends on November 16, 2025
for tickets, call 323.739.6122 or visit POP