Baritone enjoys fun side of Figaro

An hour before a performance, he would tremble at the thought of all those eyes on him, the overwhelming amount of text he had to remember. It could be paralyzing.

But one day, it all turned around. An instructor set him free with one little piece of advice: The character you're playing on stage is not you.

"Somehow that was the click. From that point on, I felt so comfortable," said the 40-year-old Pop, who is making his Arizona Opera debut as Figaro in Rossini's "The Barber of Seville." There are two performances this weekend.

Ironically, as Figaro, Pop sees a lot of himself in the character, who is the instigator of much of the humor and mischief in Rossini's opera. When he plays the role, Figaro is "not Figaro; he's me. I'm playing myself in that time. It's so nice, you know."

He brings to the role his inherent sense of humor, honed by his keen and often quirky observations that many people would dismiss or miss altogether. Take his recent stay in Phoenix, where "Barber" opened last weekend:

"It's pretty hot, sometimes," he mused in a phone interview from his Phoenix hotel. "One day I went outside and it was like a hammer in the head. It was 34 degrees Celsius (about 93 degrees Fahrenheit). That's a lot. I don't know - the dry air, it felt like a big weight on my shoulder."

Then he affected a parched SpongeBob voice, the one the cartoon character uses when he's about to shrivel up and dry out: "Oh my god, I'm not going to make it to the opera house."

Pop also was fascinated by the "orange men," the guys wearing orange T-shirts with "Ask Me," running around downtown helping people with directions and such.

"It's just an amazing idea, helping people out," Pop explained in impressive English thick with a Romanian accent. "There were so many people around, and they were asking directions about restaurants and ticketing places. And they were available at any corner."

But Pop acknowledges that he's had little time to play Arizona tourist, which he'll do briefly on a quick sightseeing trip to the Grand Canyon next week. He's here to feed his unquenchable desire to perform, which goes back to that stage-fright revelation that set him free so many years ago.

Comic roles have become his stock in trade - he recently debuted the title role in David DiChiera's new opera "Cyrano" to rave reviews. But it is to Figaro that he is most closely associated. He has performed it more than 200 times and calls it "the top of my opera; this is what I love to do."

"I love this guy. I love to play this role, and I have the ability of singing the part, and I feel really comfortable playing this character," he said.

His affection goes back to his childhood. He can't remember exactly, but he is sure the first time he heard the music was while watching a cartoon.

"Almost everyone has heard it in the movies or on TV and radio," he said. "(It's) added in cartoons so future big fans can hear this music."

This familiarity makes "Barber" a near fail-proof opera. And according to early reviews of this production, Arizona Opera has scored a hit, largely because of Pop.

The Arizona Republic's Richard Nilsen said Pop "as Figaro, the barber and schemer, energized every scene he was in . . . with a booming voice that carried over the orchestra and comic antics (that) were actually funny. . . . This was a great 'Barber' with a great barber. Pop actually got 'Bravos' from a Phoenix crowd that normally just give us obligatory standing ovations."

Pop, who is married and has a 4-month-old son in Romania, would likely dismiss such praise and direct it more toward the cast, which he called "like family."

"Look, just by singing the music, it's already a success," he said. "And if you add acting, the whole jokes, the coloratura - the fast-paced music what each singer adds to the role to make it a personal signature - it's flourishing from performance to performance. You can add stuff, and it grows very nicely. It's always a success."

If you go

Rossini's "The Barber of Seville"

• Presented by: Arizona Opera.

• Conducted by: Joel Revzen.

• Running time: Three hours.

• Sung in: Italian with English supertitles.

• When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

• Where: Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.

• Tickets: $16 to $100 through www.ticketmaster.com

Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@azstarnet.com or 573-4642.