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Rossini, The Barber of Seville: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of English National Opera. Conductor: Rory Macdonald. The London Coliseum, London. 22.9.2008 (JPr)

John Tessier (Almaviva) Andrew Shore (Bartolo) and Garry Magee (Figaro)

Jonathan Miller’s Barber still has a cutting edge!

With its controversial origins, who would have believed that when it was first performed in 1816, The Barber of Seville  would become one of the most loved operas of all time ? Why controversial? Well,  firstly it was far from original. Beaumarchais' famous play written in 1772 had already attracted another composer, Giovanni Paisiello and his operatic version (1782) was a great hit. (This is very similar to what happened with the Phantom of the Opera story for which there were other now-forgotten attempts at musical versions of it before it brought Lloyd Webber his great success.) When Paisiello's admirers heard about Rossini's new work they caused a commotion at its première - the opening performance did not go well and things looked fairly bleak for Rossini afterwards.  In the end however,  his version soon surpassed Paisiello's in popular appeal throughout Europe, with performances from London to St Petersburg. In 1825 it was the first opera to be sung in Italian in New York, and Rossini was arguably the most popular composer in the world at the time.

As it happens, The Barber of Seville can now feel like quite a modern idea because today's cinema and television audiences are more used to the idea of ‘prequels’ than people in the early  nineteenth century would have been. Beaumarchais' original play had been followed by The Marriage of Figaro in 1778 which resulted of course in Mozart's wonderful opera eight years later, featuring the continuing story of Rossini's Barber characters .

Beaumarchais’ original drama was rather old-fashioned even in its own time however, because his characters have their roots in the  commedia dell’arte tradition dating back to sixteenth-century Italy and still popular in much of Europe two hundred years later. Figaro, Count Almaviva in his soldier disguise and Doctor Bartolo reflect the ‘stock’ characters of the cunning servant, the braggart soldier and the duped, doddery old man. The opera also has the hoariest of plots in which a pair of young lovers is united after overcoming a number of obstacles.

Both for his contemporary audience, and for Rossini’s later success, Beaumarchais filled out the characters to make them very recognisably human and added a subversive socio-political theme:  when the young Count goes to Seville to pursue his heart’s desire, he not only leaves the Madrid court and his family but also turns his back on a proposed  marriage arranged for him. He woos his beloved Rosina, in disguise to be sure that she accepts him for himself and not his wealth or title. The play affirms that in matters of love,  we are all equal and that true feelings - not money or property -  are the best basis for marriage. In a small way,  Beaumarchais gave some voice to the rising revolutionary zeal of the 1780s which would soon overwhelm a decaying aristocracy and herald the Age of Enlightenment, the Romantic era and the rise of democracy.

Anna Grevelius (Rosina) and John Tessier (Almaviva)

Sir Jonathan Miller and English National Opera have been a successful partnership since 1978 and his stagings of Rigoletto and The Mikado have been two of the company’s greatest successes over these past 30 years. This is the tenth revival of his 1987  Barber and no doubt ENO will be hoping for similar longevity from his new staging of La bohème to be seen early next year.

It is in fact 21 years ago since I saw this production myself for the first and only time with the original cast, including Alan Opie as Figaro and intriguingly with Jane Eaglen as Berta. Although Jonathan Miller was in the audience this time, the revival was directed by Ian Rutherford. The dusty, slightly claustrophobic, ‘inside of the house’ set where Rosina seems imprisoned has aged well – even though it sounds a little arthritic when moved - and it continues to provide a restricted platform for the plot's farcical events.

There are lots of sight gags; the ladder emerging from the trunk brought on stage at the start by the Count’s performing troupe, and the ducking and diving caused by Don Basilio’s large hat are just two examples. The humour is anarchic, anti-authoritarian, a little sardonic but rarely cruel. Pomposity may be deflated and no-one suffers long-term harm as The Marriage of Figaro shows. It is Rosina perhaps  who comes off worst but at the end of The Barber of Seville she is yet to know that her marriage to the Count will be a loveless one. Miller wraps up commedia dell’arte, the Marx Brothers and the Whitehall Farce tradition to give the audience an evening of unalloyed pleasure, insight and subtlety of characterisation, extraordinary wit and good humour, as well as huge amounts of humanity.

For me at least,  the surtitles for the opera in English proved unnecessary as the balance between stage and orchestra, and the fine ensemble cast that ENO have recruited allowed all of Amanda and Anthony Holden's translation to be heard clearly. This varied from rhyming couplets such as ‘It’s time to take a sounding / Ah, how my heart is pounding’ to expositions such as ‘Figaro has booked a lawyer to marry off his niece’ and Doctor Bartolo’s response ‘He hasn’t got a niece’ - which drew an ‘Ahh!’ from the audience to show how much they were wrapped up in the story.

With his rich voice, excellent diction and wonderful comic turn, Andrew Shore’s Bartolo is at the very heart of the performance. It is amazing to think that this most versatile singer was last month singing Alberich at Bayreuth. His fussy physical humour and pained expression of piqued pomposity reminded me of Arthur Lowe in Dad’s Army. He imposed himself on everything around him and all eyes were attracted to him whenever he was on stage.

Yet with a revival cast of such surprising depth,  Shore never seemed to unbalance the ensemble. Garry Magee made Figaro a considerable presence in his own right,  if just lacking a smidgeon of the insouciant charm that the great interpreters bring to this role. Brindley Sherratt was a magnificently baleful and po-faced Don Basilio and I look forward to his Pogner for Welsh National Opera. Jennifer Rhys-Davies busied herself well as Berta and sang pleasantly enough. But Anna Grevelius has a flexible high-mezzo voice with the limpid clarity and gorgeous tone that is just right for Rosina; she also seemed to be very much a modern women, both feisty and sexy. She is Swedish but this was impossible to tell from her wonderful use of English.

Making a notable British debut was the Canadian John Tessier, a tenor who fearlessly attacked this high-lying role with much ease and lyrical charm; the occasional moments of strain in his top notes I put down to first night nerves. His English suffers a little from a transatlantic drawl but he acted well in his various guises and disguises. He reminds me very much of another John, John Brecknock, an ENO stalwart of these type of roles who sang the Count in the early 1980s.

The young conductor Rory Macdonald, a former Covent Garden Young Artist working with ENO for the first time, delivers an account of the score that is brimming with youthful energy, well-judged tempi and not a little fizz and verve.

For all of its 192 years, this staple of the operatic repertory complete with the tongue-twisting Largo al factotum and its repeated 'Figaros' is something that rarely disappoints. Here it remains as witty, as often laugh-out-loud funny, as touching and as tuneful as it ever was. 

Jim Pritchard

Pictures © Alastair Muir

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