Friday, March 15th
QUICK LINKS
We had a look at Rossini in 2017. Read our web page on him which has lots of links to longer articles. As does our web page on The Barber of Seville.
Synopsis and history of the opera (Wikipedia).
Compare Figaro's famous opening cavatina Largo al Factotum from two great interpreters, Dimitri Hvorostovsky and Luciano Pavarotti.
If you can't wait, or can't bear to see just bits on Friday, watch this splendid full opera video with Cecilia Bartoli as Rosina.
THE BARBER - A WATERSHED IN OPERA
We farewelled Shakespeare in opera with the two Otellos, contrasting Rossini's (1816) vocally and orchestrally show-off style with Verdi's (1887) much more romantic and emotional style. When the young Rossini wrote Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione ("The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution" - also 1816 - based on a play by Beaumarchais) the Italian taste was for comic opera buffa. Rossini obliged, sticking to the formula of the travails of two young lovers surrounded by old buffoons who must be outwitted. Doctor Bartolo has indeed become the - almost beloved - archetype of that character.
But Rossini was pioneering at this time the style of singing and orchestration that became known as bel canto, beautiful singing. And maybe there is no better opera to mark this shift than The Barber. Music became much more ornamented, and singing made great demands on the poor singer - apparently it took Rossini a few years to establish his authority over often resentful vocalists. The style was taken up by Donizetti and Bellini and led to an era where the critical focus of an opera was on extravagant, artistically and technically complex and demanding music and song. It took Verdi and Wagner in their separate ways to (re)introduce the importance of the theatrical, the dramatic, into opera. Meanwhile well into the 20th century we watched a stagey, stand-and-deliver style of opera production that showed off the great, brilliant, voices and orchestras - and de-emphasized acting. You have to wonder if bel canto influenced that approach and helped turn opera from a popular entertainment to something seen by most as an esoteric "intellectual" art form.
Our times are less content with that and demand the great singers to look their parts and be great actors as well - which may well help to re-popularise opera. And so it has to be with modern bel canto productions, Our production of The Barber does this superbly. The sets are movie sets, rich and realistic. The acting (and clowning) of our singers is a joy to watch. But the extraordinary singing and glorious orchestral playing certainly do not take a back seat. We toured through this production in 2017; this time we will pick out some of the bel canto highlights to enjoy their beauty but also to see how a clever production and great acting can add richness and depth to a magnificent if deliberately silly opera.
OUR PRODUCTION
...comes from La Scala, Milan, in 2005 under the baton of Claudio Abbado. But you won't see the opera house - it's a movie. Designed, staged and directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who four years later filmed The Barber's sequel story but prequel opera, The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart (1786).
The eponymous Figaro is baritone Hermann Prey, scheming (for a fee) with love-struck Count Almaviva (tenor Luigi Alva) to wrest Rosina (mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza) from the clutches of her guardian Doctor Bartolo (bass Enzo Dara). You can guess the denouement in the best tradition of opera buffa, but it's the twists and turns on the way that provide the laughs - and the great singing.