THE
BARBER OF SEVILLE
Longborough
Festival Opera (July13)
One of the many heartening elements of this joyous
production is the fact that the cast was so youthful, many of them making their
Longborough debuts. The future looks set fair.
This was the final performance in a run which had begun
early in June, insterspersed with Pelleas et Melisande, but there was no
sense of end-of-term undisciplined high jinks. No, this was a grippingly tight
presentation from a superbly well-drilled company, unfolding with unstoppable
momentum under the fluent conducting of the batonless Elaine Kelly.
Underlying everything was the deft playing of the
Longborough Festival Orchestra, lithe and crisp, absolutely every instrument an
important presence.
Max Johns designed a set which doubled as a public square in
Seville (close your ears and you could imagine Carmen) and the foyer of
a swish apartment block, with a crucial staircase leading to a grilled-door
balcony. Once again Peter Small’s lighting provided both atmosphere and wit.
And capitalising upon all this was the busy, imaginative,
shrewd direction of Louise Bakker, injecting humour, the occasional moment of
pathos, and indeed a little social commentary in this modern-day setting. Now
that the run is over, there are no spoiler alerts: the wonderful moment when
the spurious Don Alonso’s keyboard accidentally bursts into its preset heavy
rock rhythms: when Dr Bartolo (Benjamin Bevan dressed as a typical old fart in
Bermuda shorts and long socks) extols the music of the olden days, and bursts
into Tom Jones’s “Delilah”; and when Almaviva erects the ladder to rescue
Rosina, but, scared of heights, pausing fearfully upon every rung.
All of this is helped by the brilliant updating of the
surtitled translation, full of apt, slightly near-the-knuckle colloquialisms,
and with dialogue in more than convincing Italian coached by tenor Alessandro
Fisher. This was a show which made me laugh out loud, probably a first for me.
All of this would be nothing without the tremendous cast.
Henry Neill the hyperactive, articulate Figaro (a well-delivered Largo al
Factotum); Joseph Doody an appealing, resourceful Almaviva, ringing and supple;
Benjamin Bevan a baffled Bartolo, superb in patter; Trevor Eliot Bowes an
archetypal Basilio, smarmy and sniffy, with a well-delivered La Calunnia;
Shafalia Jalota an angrily put-upon Berta. And above all the feisty Rosina of
Lauren Young, spirited, resourceful, light on her feet, and with a coloratura
which was truly impressive and a fullness of tone which could ping the highest
notes even above the busiest of ensembles.
A musicological footnote: Rossini was composing this
masterpiece as a prequel to an even greater masterpiece, Mozart’s The
Marriage of Figaro. He picked up Mozart’s novelty patter for Bartolo, and
employed it not only for that character in this opera, but for others too. But
I have yet to see any reference to the fact that in Il Barbiere Bartolo
and Figaro are as yet unaware that they are father and son – and there is even a
throwaway reference to Marcellina, Figaro’s mother.
Christopher Morley