THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Rossini’s sparkling comic masterpiece, dashed off in less than three weeks when he was but 25-years-old, had a disastrous first night in Rome in 1816. The strings of a guitar broke; a singer tripped over a plank and got a bloody nose. A cat walked across the stage, not once but twice. The audience laughed, whistled, hissed and meowed.
They made such a racket in the second act that scarcely a note was heard. It was said the claque had been orchestrated by Giovanni Paisiello, who had written an immensely popular opera with the same material 38 years earlier. Two hundred years on Rossini’s comic opera is still immensely popular and Paisiello is long forgotten.
Jonathan Miller’s enjoyable traditional production, which premiered in 1987, has been regularly revived by ENO. There is some lovely singing from Charles Rice as Figaro and Anna Devin as Rosina, who get the opera off to such a good start. He with his frenetic patter and she with her aria are a truly impressive display of vocal agility. Roderick Cox conducts.
Rossini is witty, full of irony. Simon Bailey as Doctor Bartolo is funny when he is imitating a countertenor. Innocent Masuku is funny when he is pretending to play the piano. The commedia dell’arte troupe all in white clothing is a nice touch. Would that the militia had also been given something equally humorous to do, other than just stand around, cluttering the stage.
The weakness of this revival is that too much of the slapstick and buffoonery is laboured and lacking in comic invention. The performance would be better without it.
The funniest moment comes right at the end when Count Almaviva and Rosina go on and on and on, singing about their love for each other (in the way opera singers do), delaying their urgent departure and Figaro, who has organised their elopement, getting more and more exasperated. Charles Rice’s barber is a charmer.
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