The Barber of Seville is reprised at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb 3 at the Palladium Theatre. Tickets are $22-$67. Call the Opera box office at 727-822-3590 for availability.
It’s trite these days to remind people that Shakespeare was a popular entertainer in his day — the Michael Bay of Old England, with bigger words and much, much more blood. But the same can be said for a lot of opera — and for proof, you need look no further than Giacchino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
Barber is the story of a smitten count who jumps through a series of absurd hoops to win the heart and freedom of a spirited young woman kept as a grouchy old doctor’s ward and intended bride. In this weekend’s great production by the St. Petersburg Opera Company, Barber is lively, full of genial laughs and a little randy around the edges — less Bridesmaids than Philadelphia Story, but still totally without the haughty seriousness that the word “opera” might conjure in the minds of most anyone under 50.
The cast is clearly having a great time. Figaro, the titular barber and money-hungry love broker, is a winking, double-dealing, but ultimately sympathetic ball of energy in the hands of Orlando’s Gabriel Preisser, and Megan Marino’s Rosina is at once unhinged, desperate and empowered. A subtle surprise is Basilio, a Machiavelli to Figaro’s playful schemer, who Todd Donovan gives a dark, weighty presence that’s a nice counterpoint to the rest of the manic proceedings.
Like any good comedy, Barber lives on reactions and the cast squeezes every possible bit of character-driven tomfoolery in between the lines — above all, in Figaro’s tolerant condescension for the besotted Count Almaviva. It is a little hard to tell why Rosina would fall so hard for Blake Friedman’s rather blank Almaviva. She might just really appreciate farce, though, as Friedman becomes a man on fire when Almaviva dons a series of absurd false personas as part of his plot to spring Rosina.
The orchestra is great, and Rossini’s compositions have stayed popular for 200 years because they frequently transcend the slapstick they support. But the set is a bit of a hindrance if you’re there for the music as much as the screwball. Barber’s story requires a towering façade for the cast to run up and down, and the orchestra has to squeeze behind it. They’re barely visible through three arches, and the percussion, stuck entirely behind a two-story balcony, sound like they’re at the bottom of a well.
The only other shortcoming of the production are a few challenging ensemble passages where, thanks either to acoustics or real stumbles, the cast seem to trip over each other. Even that is redeemed, though, in the manic closing scenes, where the whirling pieces come together with the precision of a maddened cuckoo clock.
Connecting with culture from an earlier time is a powerful reminder of our shared legacy and deep roots (my favorite example is Rossini’s very modern metacommentary on the absurd operatic conventions of his own time). But The Barber of Seville should be more than homework — in the hands of this fun-loving and sharp ensemble, it’s a joy in its own right. See it.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.
