A Truly Wacky Barber
Novaya Opera stages an inventive version of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville."
By Raymond Stults
Published: November 7, 2008
"It's going to be wacky," remarked director Elijah Moshinsky just before the curtain rose last Thursday at Novaya Opera on a preview performance of his new staging of Gioacchino Rossini's "The Barber of Seville." And wonderfully wacky it was indeed from beginning to end.
Composed in the space of a mere three weeks, "The Barber" made its debut in Rome in 1816. Moscow first saw it performed in the early 1820s by a visiting Italian troupe under the direction of Luigi Zamboni, the buffo bass-baritone for whom Rossini wrote the opera's title role. Most recently, it came to the Moscow stage by way of a production last year at Helikon Opera that saw words and music buried under a pile of silly gimmicks and incomprehensible conceits heaped upon them by director Dmitry Bertman.
Based on a play of the same name by late 18th-century French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, "The Barber" tells of the pursuit by a certain Count Almaviva of the lovely Rosina, a ward of the aged Dr. Bartolo, who also seeks to capture Rosina's hand in marriage. Bartolo's quest is aided and abetted by the scheming music master Don Basilio. But both Bartolo and Basilio eventually find themselves outmaneuvered by Almaviva's clever cohort, Figaro, the barber of the opera's title.
In an interview shortly before last week's premiere, director Moshinsky emphasized that his production was based on narrative, character and invention. The result, as seen last Thursday, gave ample evidence of his mastery in each of those realms. The plot was narrated with superb clarity from beginning to end. Each of the principal players, save perhaps for Don Basilio, came across as a fully fleshed-out character. And the stage was repeatedly filled with invention, none of it gimmicky or in any way at odds with either libretto or score.
Among the novelties on view was Moshinsky's handling of Figaro's familiar aria "Largo al factotum." In traditional productions, Figaro tends to come to center stage and simply stand there, belting out the words and music. At Novaya Opera, he enters accompanied by a trio of gentlemen carrying chairs in which they proceed to seat themselves. As he sings the aria, Figaro shaves each of them in turn, in a manner that would not have been out of place in an early Charlie Chaplin film. Moshinsky's numerous other original touches included moving the final section of the first act from Bartolo's parlor to the waiting room of his surgery. The result is an uproarious scene of total chaos, as Bartolo attempts to deal simultaneously with a crowd of patients clamoring for his attention and a drunken soldier – actually Almaviva in disguise – who claims the right to be billeted in Bartolo's house.
Moshinsky's decision to place the action in a 1920s-like setting is nicely supported by the decor and costumes of British designer Anne Tilby. The scenery includes a row of cut-out, constructivist-style buildings at the rear of the stage and a pair of interiors decorated with bright, bold geometric figures that seem vaguely derived from the paintings of Kazimir Malevich. The array of eye-catching costumes fit perfectly with the decor. Unfortunately, the very brief appearance on stage of the ladies' chorus allows little time to savor Tilby's sumptuous display of flapper-era fashion.
The role of Rosina was written for a so-called coloratura contralto, but over time it became the almost exclusive property of airy-voiced coloratura sopranos. During the past half-century, however, preference has gradually been given to voices of the original lower register. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, to find Rosina sung last Thursday by a high coloratura. But that lack of authenticity hardly mattered at all, given the lovely voice of Galina Koroleva and her secure execution of the highly ornamented passagework, to say nothing of the winning charm and grace of movement that she brought to the role.
The four principal men in the cast produced no vocal revelations, but each sang well, and all but Aleksey Antonov, as Don Basilio, treated both music and action with the light touch on which Moshinsky placed so much emphasis in the interview mentioned earlier.
Novaya Opera's esteemed music director, Eri Klas, paced the score to near perfection, though some rough playing here and there by the orchestra seemed to call for further rehearsal.
With the staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "The Magic Flute" by the German Achim Freyer; of Giuseppe Verdi's "Nabucco" by the Latvian Andrejs Zagars; of Richard Wagner's "Lohengrin" by the Danish Kasper Holten; and now British-based Moshinsky's version of "The Barber," Novaya Opera has managed in four successive seasons to come up with an operatic production by a foreign director of truly world-class standard.
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