"Close, but no cigar"
A minority report, to be sure: for a long time,directors who would stage "The Marriage of Figaro" with the utmost sensitivity have felt free to make its Beaumarchais predecessor,"The Barber of Seville" into a farrago of sight gags, pratfalls, slapstick and any other device to set the groundlings in a roar. This is particularly disappointing in the present instance because the elements for somegthing better were present in abundance: after an extraordinary reading of the overture, the curtain rises on a magical setting...and almoost immediately things begin to go downhill. Joyce DiDonato (demonstrating incredible pluck singing from a wheelchair) and Juan Diego Flores are superb singers but show little involvement in the characters they play. Ferruccio Furlanetto spends an awful lot of energy in "La calunnia" climbing all over Bartolo, bringing down the house, but missing all the real rascality of the part. Why we needed to see Berta, drunk, dismantling the piano during the storm scene...
Dream cast
You really can't get much better. Luxury casting in every role, and all the singers deliver memorable performances in different ways. DiDonato, in this her second Barbiere video, possessing a technique that is both reliable and adaptable to any situation, again blesses us with some stunning fireworks as well as musicality. Her intelligence shines through every moment she is on the stage (in a wheelchair). Florez is his usual "bel" canto self, elegant, stylish, a beacon to all lyric tenors everywhere. Spagnoli, who was called in to replace an ailing Simon Keenlyside, is sturdy-voiced and charming in the title role. Corbelli, in only his third staged outing as Bartolo (his first on video, and a CD in 1993), once more opts for a more human and less buffoonish characterization (witness his recent video of Magnifico from the Met), amazing in his delivery of text and still in possession of considerable vocal prowess. Furlanetto, the Don Basilio, though vocally a bit rough, gives us one of...
Go for the Laffs, Moshe, Go for the Laffs!
This is a "Barbiere" intended to be a 'laff-fest', staged, directed, and conducted for maximum slapstick commedia. If you want your "Barber of Seville" to retain any of the social indignation of Beaumarchais's revolutionary drama, you'd better look elsewhere. That insidious anti-aristocratic message needs to be present in Mozart's "Figaro" but it has always seemed extraneous to Rossini's. I truly doubt that Rossini gave a fig for Beaumarchais's edgy politics. I suspect old Gioachino would have been happily flabbergasted at this broad musical and uproarious dramatic interpretation of his most popular opera. In too many productions, Il Barbiere has become a stodgy 'sacred cow' aimed at traditionalists in the box seats. Rossini had only one use for sacred cattle: tournedos with black truffles.
Conductor Antonio Pappano exposes his buffo nature to the camera as he conducts the overture. Watching him burble and twirl, despite the suave perfection of the orchestra in this...
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