Baritone Happy to Help Create New Opera Buffs

SAN DIEGO — As a statement on the human condition, Franz Lehar’s frothy operetta “The Merry Widow” does not begin to approach Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, and Theodore Baerg would be the first to admit it. But the Canadian baritone sees a role for this turn-of-the-century Viennese confection in bringing converts to the temple of Wagner and Verdi.

“I’m one who’s big on audience expansion,” Baerg said, “because I came from a non-audience background. Where I grew up, no one went to opera, and even if I had said the

word opera , I would have had my mouth washed out with soap and water. ‘Merry Widow’ brings in people who have never seen opera, and then they’re sold on live opera.”

Baerg will sing Danilo in San Diego Opera’s production of “The Merry Widow,” which opens at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Civic Theatre. Unlike the stereotypical singer who is preoccupied with his image and his precious “instrument,” Baerg is affable and easy-going. He exudes the unassuming self-assurance of a high school social science teacher, just the type to cajole some tyro into trying opera for the first time.

The 40-year-old singer is particularly sympathetic to the potential opera patron who is daunted by the institution’s exotic nature and stuffy conventions.

Baerg, who grew up in a strict Mennonite household in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a small town in southeast Ontario near the U.S. border, explained that opera was not even an acceptable topic of table conversation. Twenty years ago, his fellow townspeople looked askance at his career choice, and their attitudes have not mellowed over the years.

“The last time I was home, I ran into some old friends at the hardware store. ‘You still doing that opera stuff?’ was their first question.”

Fortunately, Baerg did not need the approval of his peers to become an opera singer. After studies in Canada and Italy, he apprenticed with Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company, then under the leadership of Lotfi Mansouri, now San Francisco Opera’s general director.

“I auditioned for Mansouri several months after he got there,” Baerg said. “He gave me my first chance on the opera stage.”

Baerg made his U.S. debut in 1985 at a summer festival in Des Moines, Iowa, after which he went to New York City Opera to sing Hajj in a production of “Kismet.” He described his vocal range as an unusually high baritone, what the French call baryton-martin .

“It means that I can do things lots of baritones can’t, such as sing Danilo’s big aria in the original key.”

He counts Figaro in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” as his most rewarding role, along with Marcello in Puccini’s “La Boheme,” which was his San Diego Opera debut vehicle. In the local company’s 1990 “La Boheme” production, Baerg sang opposite his wife, soprano Irena Welhasch, who was also making her debut here as Musetta.

Family is as important as career to Baerg. With the assistance of a nanny, he brought his two sons, Daniel, 5, and Alexander, 2, to San Diego to be with him for the duration of “Merry Widow.” The boys’ mother remains at home in Toronto, where she is singing Carlotta, the diva in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera,” six nights a week. Baerg hopes his sons will grow to see music as a positive force for the family.

“When I was singing at New York City Opera, Beverly Sills gave me the best advice. She said: ‘Don’t ever tell your children you’re leaving the house to sing, because then music is what takes Mommy or Daddy away all the time. Just tell them you’re going to work. Then they won’t despise music.’ ”

Although Baerg usually sings standard repertory, he is game for an occasional new work. After “Merry Widow,” he will dive into the score of fellow Canadian composer Harry Somers’ “Mario the Magician,” a new opera based on a Thomas Mann story.

“I like doing a premiere simply because there is a real challenge involved in doing a role that someone’s never done before,” he said. “In Somers’ opera, the construction is similar to Benjamin Britten’s ‘Death in Venice,’ which is also a Mann story. ‘Mario the Magician’ is a tale about intolerance set in fascist Italy.”

Although Baerg is eager to make a political statement with an opera such as Somers’, he is content with the purely entertaining aspect of “The Merry Widow.”

“With ‘Widow,’ the public comes to be entertained--it wasn’t written to make a political statement, just to be enjoyed,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to make political statements all the time. Who wants to get so weighed down with the world’s ugliness that you cannot stop and enjoy the good things?”

San Diego Opera’s production of Lehar’s operetta “The Merry Widow” (in English) will be staged at the Civic Theatre, at 7 p.m. April 4 and 7; 8 p.m. April 10; 2 p.m. April 12, and 7 p.m. April 15. Tickets are $12-$60 and available by calling 236-6510 or 278-TIXS.