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Rossini, The Barber of Seville: (Revival Premiere) Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, Gareth Jones conductor, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 26.9.2008 (GPu)

Conductor: Gareth Jones
Director: Giles Havergal
Designer: Russell Craig
Lighting Designer: Gerry Jenkinson
Chorus Master: Stephen Harris

Cast:

Count Almaviva: Colin Lee
Figaro: John Moore
Rosina: Laura Parfitt
Bartolo: Eric Roberts
Berta: Naomi Harvey
Fiorello: Philip Lloyd-Evans
Ambrogio: Paul Gyton
Basilio: Tim Mirfin
Officer: Jack O’Kelly
Notary: John Gilbert
Children: Rhys Battle, Aron Cynan, Erwan Hughes, Jac Skuse

L-R John Moore (Figaro) Eric Roberts (Dr. Bartolo) Laura Parfitt (Rosina) Colin Lee (Almaviva)

At its notoriously shambolic premiere (with a Bartolo who fell over at his first entrance and had to perform the rest of Act I with a heavy nose-bleed, a cat which got on stage during the already complex finale and added to the mayhem … and much else) on 20^th February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, Rossini’s opera was entitled Almaviva, ossia L’inutile precauzione. When it was revived in Bologna it had become Il barbiere di Sivigla. No doubt the choice of the first title had something to do with a desire to avoid simply parroting the title of Paisiello’s already familiar and popular work of the 1780s Il barbiere de Siviglia, ovvero La precauzione inutile (supporters of  Paisiello were among those who enjoyed – and perhaps prompted – the chaos at Rossini’s Roman first night). But the alternative titles of what was to become the most loved of Rossini’s comic operas also suggest another line of thought. Who is the main character of the opera? The inventive barber or the disguised count? Might one not, indeed, make a case for calling the opera Rosina? Or, perhaps, we should acknowledge that it simply isn’t an opera in which any single character comes at all close to monopolising – or even dominating – out attention and our interest. It is the network of relationships between the characters that interests us and the characters themselves are little more than well-established stage types. ‘The Barber’, surely, is essentially one of the great ensemble operas.

Giles Havergal’s production –a co-production with Opera North and Vancouver opera – was first performed at the New Theatre in Cardiff as long ago as the 6^th of May, 1986. It has had many revivals in the years since then. With Giles Havergal on hand to keep an eye on things and to add some renewing touches, the production emerges as a well-oiled comic machine, not yet showing any signs of rust. It places its emphasis on team work and gently parodies the idea of star soloists receiving the plaudits of their admirers, in the way in which it employs its central conceit - the use of a scaffold stage-on-the-stage, with an onstage audience to the side of it, watching a performance (and we, of course, are watching them, as well as watching the performance they are watching). With stage curtains designed in a pastiche of early nineteenth century theatre and stage-audience and ‘performers’ all dressed appropriately the production has an engaging, slightly ramshackle quality. The self-conscious theatricality of it all is wittily exploited throughout (but not, I think, over-exploited – it never gets in the way). The English libretto prepared by the late Robert David MacDonald is, with its quotations from Shakespeare and its allusions to Mozart, well suited to this approach. There is plenty of lively comic business – both from a substantial cast of mute extras and from the performers of the main roles.

Eric Roberts has taken the role of Bartolo in more than one production of the Barber, and in more than one of the incarnations of this particular production. It is not hard to see why – he inhabits the role with convincing physicality, with a repertoire of physical ailments and weaknesses and a mean-spirited irritability that work admirably, even if he isn’t the most precise or powerful of singers (though I did love his momentary imitation of a castrato voice). Roberts is a splendidly comic presence – as, in commedia dell’arte white face, is Tim Mirfin’s Basilio, a thoroughly unpleasant embodiment of mercenary greed and hatred of the vitality of the young. Vocally, too, he was impressive; there were enough indications to suggest he could handle basso cantante roles as well as the basso buffo repertoire. Throughout he sang with intelligence, authority and judgement, not least in the famous ‘Calumny’ aria.

John Moore’s Figaro was somewhat disappointing; there is more brilliance to be found in his music than John Moore’s found, and at times he struggled to be heard above the orchestra. Nor, in either musical or dramatic terms did he altogether persuade one of Figaro’s energy and resourceful inventiveness. At times there seemed a degree of nervousness in this performance and it may well get much better as the run goes on – judging by the patchy success of this first night.

Laura Parfitt

Laura Parfitt was making her debut as Rosina, and she made a generally very favourable impression. She was a constantly flirtatious and capricious presence and she handled most of the vocal demands competently and attractively. There was plenty of sparkle in her arias, and a liveliness in recitative and dialogue that contributed well to the working of the whole. Vocally she had a powerful and generally precise top end; dramatically speaking she worked particularly well with Colin Lee in the Music Lesson and in the Act II denouement. Colin Lee is a considerable Rossinian tenor and one of the pleasantest tenore di grazia of the moment. I have heard him sing with slightly more variety and subtlety of tone than he did on this occasion, but his presentation of coloratura flourishes was a joy, and it is a delight to hear a tenor singing at the top of his register with so little sense of strain.

Amongst the minor roles, the Berta of Naomi Harvey was a particular source of pleasure, well conceived in terms of characterisation and sung with verve and security. Given the Shakespeare allusions of MacDonald’s libretto, it was not perhaps fanciful to see in her a slightly younger version of the Nurse from Romeo and Juliet!

The orchestra’s work, under the baton of Gareth Jones, was perhaps a little stiff in the early minutes, not quite articulating the panache of the music and the string tone suffering from a non-Italianate thinness; but things rapidly improved, and soon the rhythms were building up momentum, the violins were echoing vocal phrases responsively and the crescendi were accumulating in the quintessentially Rossinian fashion.

This wasn’t, in short, a Barber that one would recommend primarily for ‘star’ quality singing. Sung decently and competently, rather than with outstanding brilliance, the ensemble work (in which voices and orchestra generally dovetailed beautifully, and stage business complemented libretto inventively) and the attention to stage detail made for a richly enjoyable evening in the theatre. This was a triumph of team work. And team work is surely what this opera needs.

I hope it isn’t just a kind of snobbery that makes me regret the use of an English version of the libretto. Robert MacDonald’s adaptation is clever and inventive, the rhyming a constant source of enjoyment in its own regard. Yet … this is such quintessentially Italian music; the mechanism of the story is so quintessentially Mediterranean – the basic plot machinery goes all the way back to the ancient Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence, after all; though it may be based on a play by a Frenchman, Cesare Sterbini’s libretto looks at Spain from an Italian point of view – and we might remember how long Rossini spent in Naples, ruled by the Spanish. Music and text alike could scarcely be more Italian in spirit and letter. Though the use of an English text has obvious advantages in terms of immediate comprehension, the use of surtitles has surely done much to obviate the necessity, even in comic opera, for a sung-text in English? Especially when a good deal of atmosphere is lost in the process.

Even with this considerable reservation, however, this remains a Barber worth seeing and hearing, a production which shows no signs of its age – the production as a whole moves a good deal more easily, indeed, than Bartolo does when he painfully falls to his knees to propose to Rosina.

Glyn Pursglove

Pictures © Johan Persson

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