Festival Opera’s take on Mozart: not over till the Klingon sings

Unless you’re a literalist of the most dogged kind, you can see the dramatic possibilities of “Fidelio” in a modern totalitarian state or the comic virtues of “The Mikado” set in Renaissance Italy.

[...] the performance Monday, Aug. 8, at Oakland’s Holy Names University, a co-production by Festival Opera and the Oakland Symphony, had the necessary virtue of treating Mozart’s music with a full measure of respect and virtuosity under the leadership of conductor Michael Morgan.

The piece is the handiwork of director Josh Shaw, who created the English libretto two years ago for Pacific Opera Project, the company he runs in Los Angeles.

Belmonte, the leader of the rescue mission, becomes a thinly veiled Capt. Kirk, while his sidekick, Pedrillo, is Spock; the Turks are Klingons; and Constanze — the female lead and Belmonte’s beloved — is recast as Lt. Uhura.

The premise is a fertile one, since the clash of civilizations underlies not only “Abduction” but a whole tradition of operas that were popular during the decades in the 18th and early 19th centuries when tensions between Christian Europe and the Muslim Levant were high (sound familiar?).

Space wars make a neat analog, and the Berkeley Opera years ago gave a similar treatment to Rossini’s “Italian Girl in Algiers,” an opera with a more or less identical plot.