The Barber of Seville @ The Dallas Opera
—Wayne Lee Gay
The Dallas Opera scores its third consecutive hit of the current season with a visually intriguing, beautifully sung, and unfailingly engaging production of Rossini’s timeless comedy The Barber of Seville, which opened Saturday at the Winspear Opera House.
Much of the credit for the production’s success goes to director Tara Faircloth, whose staging picked up every nuance of the libretto and score. The character of working-class hero Figaro was born from the fertile brain of French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais in 1775 in anticipation of the age of Revolution. The rise of the common man was in full swing by 1816 when Rossini set the cunning barber’s antics to a score full of clever modulations and brilliant counterpoint—equal, in its own way, to those of Rossini’s contemporary Beethoven.
Throughout, Faircloth successfully uses Rossini’s reflective arias and clever asides to allow the characters to speak directly to the audience; simultaneously, she calls for light-hearted, whimsical visual humor and a high level of physical activity without descending into slapstick. Rather than undermining the historical elements of this early nineteenth-century comedy, these visual touches underline the humor and complexity of human relationships as portrayed in Barber.
The characters may come to us from revolutionary times, but the vocal parts reflect the concurrent age of bel canto, when singers were expected to create consistently beautiful tones while navigating excruciatingly difficult trills, melismas, and running scales—and with a bit of improvisation thrown in along the way. This cast uniformly meets the dramatic and vocal demands: American baritone Lucas Meachem revels in the title role, impishly energetic but with a voice that combines requisite lightness and flexibility with perfect timing and shifts of timbre carefully calculated for comic effect (most notably in that universally recognized repetition of “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro . . . ”).
Irish-Canadian mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta brings the required vocal agility as well as a slightly dark tone to the role of the ingénue Rosina, adding a touch of sultriness to the role; she’s matched by Australian tenor Alasdair Kent with a brighter but substantial and attractive tone quality as Rosina’s lover Almaviva. Colombian bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas is appropriately pompous and bumbling as Bartolo; American bass Adam Lau as Bartolo’s conniving cohort Basilio provides one of the many high points of the evening with his entrancing delivery of the comically evil “Slander” aria. South African baritone Prosper Makhanya and Texas-born soprano Courtney Maina likewise fulfill the bel canto ideal as Fiorello and Berta, respectively. Chorus-master Alexander Rom’s troupe of male choristers romped through costume changes from street musicians to policemen with ease and musical precision.
Colombian conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados guided the forward momentum neatly; ensemble is occasionally a little off, but the balance of orchestra and singers is generally quite good, with the orchestra providing a successful level of tone and substance for early nineteenth-century opera, which is to say, not at all heavy, but not too light. The expertly realized harpsichord continuo plays an essential role in the forward motion as well during the substantial recitatives.
Though it’s ultimately all about the singing in any opera, this is one production in which the singers visually match their roles. A slender and attractive Rosina is in love with an equally handsome Almaviva; they’re facing opposition from a rotund Bartolo, but are aided by an athletic Figaro. James Scotto’s costumes underline the varying degrees of comedy in the roles: the young lovers wear fine, solid-colored fashions of Regency-era aristocrats, while Figaro and Bartolo are striking and funny in plaids.
Allen Moyer’s flat, light-hearted sets (with minimal furniture) provide a perfect backdrop for the comical adventures, with a giant portrait of Rossini looking down at a skewed angle during the Overture and returning in the final seconds to be saluted by the cast—creating a quick, transcendent instant of communion of composer, cast, characters, and audience. For one brief second, we the audience are together with the composer, the live musicians and singers, and the very funny fictional characters in a zany universe where a barber can do magic, young love wins, and the music is immortal.
WHEN: Through March 27—next @ TDO, The Pearl Fishers, April 2-10
WHERE: Winspear Opera House
WEB: dallasopera.org
