Ah, summer in San Diego! For many, summer is not complete without at least one visit to the Embarcadero to hear the San Diego Symphony perform. Ignoring motorboats that gun their engines as they cruise by and freight trains that repeatedly sound their horns as they head through the Gaslamp District toward the docks, audiences enjoy the cool night air, the refreshments, and the chance to relax to some music. Most of the time, the music is popular (indeed, the symphony has music by the Beatles, Burt Bacharach, José Feliciano, and The Doors upcoming), but this season the Summer Pops management was persuaded to program an evening of classical music. The outdoor location of the concert pretty much required that the music would flow easily from the stage to the ear (and, that it could be amplified effectively).

"Passport to the World: A Night in Italy" was the theme, and romantic Italian opera music was on the program, along with a couple of "bookend" numbers, one from just before and one from just after the Romantic period. The orchestra responded with a mixed bag of performances that nevertheless highlighted some fine individual playing.

Laura Parker

Undoubtedly the centerpiece of the evening came in the form of Southern California soprano Laura Parker. Ms. Parker's performances with local opera companies have branded her as a contemporary opera specialist, but here she was given the opportunity to show off her "diva" by singing two of Puccini's most famous arias, "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta," from La Rondine (which replaced the performance of "Nessun Dorma" that was announced in the program), and "O Mio Babbino Caro," from the comic opera, Gianni Schicchi. While Ms. Parker is not yet at a stage of her artistic development where her performances of these arias were going to erase memories of legendary recordings by the likes of Leontyne Price and Maria Callas, she made each aria her own and showed off a liltingly lovely upper register in the process.

The members of the San Diego Symphony, under the baton of resident Pops conductor Matthew Garbutt, also took a turn at opera, performing two Intermezzos, one from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, and the other from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The orchestra produced a lush sound in the former, while at the same time not exhibiting a great deal of finesse in the performance. The latter featured impassioned solo work by cellist Chia-Ling Chen and violinist Nick Grant. The first half began with a shaky version of the overture to Rossini's opera, La Gazza Ladra, and ended with a brass-dominated performance of Verdi's "Triumphal March," from Aida. Mr. Garbutt conducted Verdi in much the same way as he would a Sousa march, and the orchestra responded dutifully.

After intermission, Mr. Garbutt and the members of the symphony tackled Ottorino Respighi's well-loved symphonic portrait, "Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome)." Host Nuvi Mehta did his best work of the evening in explaining the programmatic nature of this piece, and the orchestra played snatches of various parts to accompany Mr. Mehta's explanation. The orchestra did its best playing of the evening here, from an outstanding clarinet solo by Sheryl Renk, to strings that shimmered as they had not managed to do earlier, to the well-modulated french horns that were featured later in the piece. The city noises managed to intrude more than they had done all evening, but to no avail. The audience was caught up in the evening and the music, and nothing else mattered.

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