Based on Beaumarchais’s eponymous 1775 play, in which one sees homage to Molière, Rossini’s ebullient opera buffa in the hands of polymath Sir Jonathan Miller (1934–2019), whose production premièred here in 1987, reveals more influences and references: commedia dell’arte, even Gilbert and Sullivan (lots of patter and recitative) and Beyond the Fringe. What goes around comes around. With a proverbial nod and a wink, the audience is invited into a farcical physical comedy show. It is a tonic.
Amanda Holden and Anthony Holden’s clever verse translation and alliteration (“Lindoro adores you”, and play on Bartolo’s name) restores my faith in Italian opera sung in English: the rhyming is deliciously creative with many familiar Italian words, “buona sera”, left in for flavour. Figaro’s “bravo, bravissimo’, stays, and Rosina’s singing lesson is in the original.
A play masquerading as an opera, or vive-versa, The Barber of Seville is wearing remarkably well, thanks to revival director Peter Relton, Tanya McCalinn’s brilliant original ‘Louis Seize’ interior period set design (the exterior reminds me of eighteenth century paintings) and the pranks of the cast, who play it farcically large. I can fault none of them.
Baritone Charles Rice is a charming rascal barber Figaro who will facilitate for money—poor man has to spend time hiding in Dr Bartolo’s specimen glass cupboard—and he’s not the only one who can be bought for his pains. Count Almaviva, not short of a penny or two, has enough for them all.
Almaviva, in love with Bartolo’s ward Rosina, masquerades (the operative mot juste) as poor student Lindoro; a drunken soldier billeted in Bartolo’s house, where he causes mayhem and the army is brought in; music teacher Don Alonso, replacing her usual singing teacher, creepy priest Don Basilio. Four changes of role tenor Innocent Masuku (such a beautiful voice) tackles with agility and a wicked gleam in his eyes. Who wouldn't fall in love with him?
Sadly, soprano Anna Devin (Rosina), making her debut in the role and in the house, is indisposed. Soprano Ava Dodd, who is scheduled to perform on 27 February, replaces her. It must be nerve-wracking. I wish I could have made the first night.
Bass-baritone Simon Bailey’s lecherous Dr Bartolo goes for the whole gamut of comedic acting: wig askew, ruddy cheeked, pratfalls. He is an easy victim, though he thinks he is shrewd. His parody of a soprano is a star turn. Bartolo decides to marry his ward, but is out-pranked at every turn. As is Don Basilio (bass Alastair Miles), with his long greasy locks, straight out of Tartuffe.
And then there’s soprano Lesley Garrett, luxury casting as Bartolo’s housekeeper Berta, who might just get her man, Bartolo, though she’s anti-marriage, or does she protest too much? He should be so lucky. In former days, Garrett was a perky Rosina. All’s well that ends well...
The orchestra, led by Roderick Cox making his UK debut, is a joy under his baton, making music (the overture) I want to dance to, music so well known, we almost forget we know it. Il barbiere di Siviglia had a disastrous opening night in 1816: who could have predicted its enduring popularity… Rossini (1792–1868) stayed in bed for its second night.
Beaumarchais’s second play (of three to feature Figaro), the 1778 Le Mariage de Figaro, inspired Mozart’s 1786 The Marriage of Figaro… what a merry-go-round… “I love a happy ending…”