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Der Barbier von Kärtnerstrasse, ossia l’inutile produzione Vienna
Staatsoper
09/19/2023 - & September 23, 26, 30, 2023, February 13, 16, 19, 22, 2024
Gioachino Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione
Lawrence Brownlee (Il Conte Almaviva), Adam Platchetka/Davide Luciano* (Figaro), Patrizia Nolz/Kate Lindsey* (Rosina), Fabio Capitanucci/Marco Filippo Romano* (Don Bartolo), Adam Palka/Peter Kellner* (Basilio), Jenni Hietala (Berta), Nikita Ivasechko (Fiorello)
Chor der Wiener Staatsoper, Martin Schebesta (Chorus master) Wiener Staatsoper, Diego Matheuz/Gianluca Capuano* (Conductor)
Herbert Fritsch (Stage Director, Set Design), Victoria Behr (Costumes), Carsten Sander (Lighting)
K. Lindsey, L. Brownlee (© Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn)
This was the most humourless production of Il barbiere di Siviglia I have ever seen, and I’ve seen many. If this had been what the audience at Rome’s Teatro Argentina had experienced at the work’s premiere in 1816, Paisiello’s homonymous opera would not have been supplanted and Rossini’s masterpiece would have been a mere curiosity.
How can a director manage to so mishandle one of the funniest operas of the repertoire? In this case, I suspect he doesn’t have a sense of humour. Thinking it ingenious, he made the comprimario role of Don Bartolo’s servant Ambrogio become the deus ex machine of the plot, a sort of genie that directs the action. Since Ambrogio is virtually a non‑singing role, he is interpreted by a mime conjuring Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin slapstick, minus the comedic effect. If anything, this gesticulating, gyrating madness onstage distracts from the story’s comedic flow. This surely was one of the few productions of Rossini’s beloved opera to produce little laughter and much audience yawning.
To render the evening even more unbearable, director Herbert Fritsch had another brilliant idea: to dispense of the sets. He resorted to multicolored panels that were nonsensically raised and lowered, producing headaches to all that followed their random movements. As the title denotes, the opera takes place in Seville, a rich, colourful inspiring city, and an integral part of the action. Instead, continuing to not only miss the point, Fritsch drained the evening of any joy. The production could as easily have been set in Bielefeld, Bratislava, Des Moines or Newark.
Thankfully, Victoria Behr’s attractive costumes provided some colour to the proceedings, the most appealing of which were for Bartolo, Basilio and the ubiquitous mime. Bartolo’s excessive beehive hairdo had the effect of an unneeded comic aspect for a role that is already sufficiently funny and was interpreted by the one singer who was also, by a longshot, the performance’s best actor.
Under different circumstances, Rosina’s costume would be attractive: a stylized traditional black Spanish dress was made short to resemble a ballerina’s tutu. It would have been appropriate, for example, as Kitri’s dress in the ballet Don Quixote concurrently running at the Staatsoper. While it may have been fitting for the Rosina in the original production two years ago, it was inappropriate for the present Rosina, Kate Lindsey, a handsome slim tall woman. With high heels and an excessive beehive, Rosina became a giant, easily dwarfing Lindoro/Almaviva.
Compounding matters, Rosina’s pale makeup and the grey tint of the enormous baroque‑style wig made her look old, when in fact Kate Lindsey is young and attractive. This Rosina resembled the middle‑aged Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons dangereuses, surely not an ingénue. Rather than a coquettish young woman, we have a Rosina that looks like an old maid eager to find a husband. She may have well appropriated the middle aged Berta’s desperate plea, “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie”!
Further incongruence arose with the excessively young appearance of Bartolo’s old servant, Berta, and the conniving and usually old cleric and music teacher, Don Basilio, who was the youngest looking and most dashing in the cast. Both Jenni Hietala and Peter Kellner may be young in age, but makeup exists for a reason.
Mercifully, the singing was substantially better than the staging, but it was nonetheless below the expected. In a different production, with more appropriate casting and less calamitous staging, Davide Luciano would have been a brilliant Figaro, but his performance here never really took off. Endowed with an attractive high baritone, he had no difficulties with the high notes in the opera’s most popular aria, “Largo al factotum.” A talented actor, he more than adequately portrayed the jack-of-all-trades that is Figaro. Either due to inadequate direction or due to insufficient rehearsals, one felt little chemistry between Figaro, Almaviva or Rosina.
Lawrence Brownlee is one of today’s leading coloratura tenors, whose singing I have enjoyed over the years in several Rossini operas (Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Le Comte Ory). He had no difficulties in his first aria, “Ecco ridente in cielo spunta la bella aurora,” and in the high notes in several ensembles. A veteran of comic opera, he managed to amuse as the fake drunken officer at the finale of Act I.
Victoria Behr’s costumes for Almaviva were conceived for Juan Diego Flórez in the original 2021 production. They may have suited Flórez, but they made Brownlee look clumsy as Almaviva and ridiculous as the fake music teacher Don Alonso. In the latter disguise, he wore a cap and sunglasses meant to make him look like an anachronistic rock star. Alas, he looked more like a comic Count Dracula.
American mezzo Kate Lindsey’s voice is impressive, ranging from a creamy, warm low mezzo–almost contralto–to a light soprano‑like mezzo. At the lower end, she reminds one of the late marvellous Lucia Valentini-Terrani. At the higher end, she sounds like the wonderful Frederica von Stade in her prime. She often started her arias with those rich, solemn low notes. She used this double nature of her voice to great effect, but after a while it became a predictable gimmick. Nonetheless, her emphasis on and enunciation of certain words such as “mi risuonò,” “la vincerò,” “sarò una vipera,” “e cento trappole” in the Act I aria, “Una voce poco fa,” and “io già moro d’impazienza!,” “Ah, tu solo, amor, tu sei,che mi devi consolar” in the duet with Figaro, “Dunqu’io son,” were delectable. However, her portrayal of Rosina remained incomplete. Beyond the unfortunate costumes and makeup, Lindsey wasn’t properly directed to be a coquette, the essence of Rosina’s character. This rather “mature” Rosina was too worldly and knowing, making Figaro’s machinations superfluous, Bartolo’s reproaches vacuous and Almaviva’s flirtations puerile.
The most brilliant actor in this production was Marco Filippo Romano as Bartolo. Even more than Davide Luciano’s Figaro, the other native speaker of Italian, Romano made the most of his lines. Wit and frivolity come naturally to this talented singing actor. Alas, Fritsch wanted to introduce some forced humour in his humourless staging. He gave Almaviva, disguised as the music teacher Don Alonso, a lisp to convey the impersonator’s feigned homosexuality. In return, Bartolo–apparently closeted–responds to Don Alonso’s fake advances. I had thought that such cheap shots had long disappeared, but apparently not in Vienna. At least this thick parody provided one of the few laughs of the performance.
Slovak bass Peter Kellner is probably the best‑looking Basilio in history. Since Feodor Chaliapin’s assumption of the role a century ago, Basilio has most often been a sort of comic version of Mephistopheles, buffoonish yet malevolent. Dramatically, a young handsome Basilio is implausible given how apprehensive Bartolo is of anyone snatching his ward Rosina and her inheritance. However, the issue with Kellner isn’t his good looks but his voice. Miscast, his pleasant voice is more of a bass baritone than the required basso profondo or even basso cantante. He would be an effective Don Giovanni, Leporello (Don Giovanni) or Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), but he is ill‑suited for Basilio. Without the deep notes, his aria “La calumnia” lacked bite and was as insipid as Fritsch’s staging.
Not even the normally dependable orchestra could ignore this train wreck production. Maestro Gianluca Capuano started by leading the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper in a promisingly lively overture, but was thrown off course once the heavy‑handed action took over, and the orchestra lost steam. The tempo in Rosina’s “Una voce poco fa” was too slow, “La calumnia” lacked panache and the usually exhilarating finale of Act I dragged on.
There is a tradition in opera of the composer and librettist giving an elaboration of the opera’s title. For example, Don Giovanni, ossia il dissoluto punito; La Cenerentola, ossia la bontà in trionfo; Così fan tutte, ossia la scuola degli amanti; and Rossini’s Otello, ossia il Moro di Venezia. The subtitle for Il barbiere di Siviglia is L’inutile precauzione. In this instance, it should be changed to L’inutile produzione.
Ossama el Naggar
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