By generalizing standards of the high-low cultural spectrum, the worlds of comic books and grand opera are worlds apart, one pulpy fun and the other lofty by nature. Or are they? The implied question came into focus with Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) sharply realized and roundly entertaining production of Zorro, which closed out OSB’s season with great crowd-pleasing gusto last weekend at the Lobero Theatre.
Both realms, after all, innately indulge in irrationality of dramatic means, free-range melodrama and overstated conflicts of good and evil. Villains and heroes often arrive without shades of gray, and there is an understood pact with the audience that realism has been suspended for the broad storytelling cause.
At the Lobero, the twain of the two worlds met in various ways, and with surprisingly natural crossover. It started with David Chapman’s imaginative staging scheme using projections on large moveable panels onstage to convey shifting scenery, backstories, and sometimes flashing comic-book-style illustrations of swordplay. Even the supertitle text winked in the direction of comic book culture, in the Comic Sans font.