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Barber
better seen than heard.
Bear in mind the old saw that opera's about just one thing-voices, voices, voices-and you'll have a pretty good time at Rossini's The Barber of Seville, now playing at the Santa Fe Opera. Richard Gaddes and company concentrate on some of the SFO's tried-and-true vocal traditions. You'll hear fresh young voices making company debuts: Four of five singers are new to principal roles here. You'll hear the close-knit ensemble work the SFO is famous for. You'll enjoy the same youthful energy and high spirits that made the Barber a star that first season in 1957 and remain very much alive 48 years later.
Old-timer Kenneth Montgomery is back in the pit, leading a lively orchestra that's playing with greater accuracy, brightness and transparency every year. Bruce Sledge sings a fresh, light-voiced Almaviva.***image2*** Former apprentice artist Kristin Chávez sparkles through her role as Rosina despite uneven vocal fireworks. SFO veteran Dale Travis makes a dependable Bartolo. Wayne Tigges' Basilio is a creditable comic menace though he could stand to pile on more dark-toned malevolence. And Brian Leerhuber, another ex-apprentice, is the vocally stellar Figaro, accurate, agile, multi-hued and probably on the brink of a brilliant career.
But there's another old saw, this one from Voltaire, that occurs to some of us whose memories go back to the SFO's last Barber in '94: "The best is the enemy of the good." That Zambello-staged production with Dwayne Croft in the title role, Evelino Pidó conducting, was among the company's best ever-witty, risky and all-too-human. By comparison, the current show is merely good.
Mainly because it tries too hard. Stefano Vizioli's staging recalls the manic, over-the-top madness of any classic, cold-hearted Marx Brothers movie (and even includes one of Harpo's standard gags). Almaviva's serenade becomes a production number, complete with footlights and painted drop. Seven, count 'em, seven counterfeit Basilios turn up during La calunnia. The storm scene bewilders with a shadowy pas de deux on a ladder.
Rossini's fallible, lifelike characters become caricatures, nearly indistinguishable from the commedia stereotypes they're meant to transcend. Mercurial Figaro is too often reduced to a caper and a leer. The show rolls along, merrily but superficially. Anna Marie Heinreich provides handsome costumes, but the scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez is of a piece with the staging: clever but hollow. Four large, bland periaktoi rotate to represent Bartolo's house against a background of giant architectural renderings of Baroque facades. Maybe that's appropriate. This musically worthwhile production is, when it's a matter of dramatics, all about surfaces.
