After an eight-year absence, Barlett Sher’s 2006 staging of Rossini’s beloved Il barbiere di Siviglia, is back at the Metropolitan Opera for its eighth revival. Michael Yeargan’s simple but functional stage design – a matrix of movable door frames, screens and balconies, along with a few potted orange trees, and a walkway that extends into the audience and winds around the orchestra pit – looks tired and clunky, but a superb conductor and energetic vocal ensemble enlivened the production to keep the comedy moving. Catherine Zuber’s colorful, sometimes quirky, period costumes – including an absurdly large hat for Don Basilio and beribboned, widely striped trousers for Figaro – also help to lighten things up.
The standout performer in this performance was Davide Luciano. As Figaro, the charismatic, silver-tongued barber of the title, a character he has portrayed in multiple houses over the past decade, he displayed great comfort in the role. A strong and vivacious stage presence, he made a sensational Act 1 entrance, lounging atop of an oversized wagon pulled by adoring admirers, with a live donkey in tow. Strutting the stage with aplomb, singing with self-assurance and enthusiasm, he performed brilliantly all evening. With his appealing high baritone and impeccable diction, he had no difficulty with the opera’s most popular number, the tongue-twisting “Largo al factotum” in which Figaro reels off his numerous, highly varied talents.
Reprising her depiction of Rosina, the character she sang in her first appearance as a Met prima donna in 2011, Isabel Leonard looked as graceful as she sounded. As the feisty, determined heroine who is wooed by Count Almaviva, who is disguised as the poor student Lindoro, the alert and alluring mezzo-soprano performed her fast-paced, technically demanding music with stylish ease. She delivered a warmly expressive, technically flawless rendition of “Una voce poco fa”, in which Rosina sings of her love for Lindoro, and sounded especially lithe in her music lesson aria, “Contro un cor”.
Leonard’s mellifluous instrument blended beautifully with Lawrence Brownlee’s radiant tenor. As the youthfully idealistic Almaviva who falls in love with Rosina at first sight, he was easygoing and enthusiastic all night as his characterization moved from the broadly comic to the intensely passionate. His flexible, firmly focused voice with its faultless coloratura, glistened in “Ecco ridente in cielo”, the Act 1 cavatina in which he stands outside Doctor Bartolo’s house and serenades his beloved. In his final aria where he sings of his happiness in finally winning Rosina as his bride, his long, lyrical phrases added sincerity to the fervent emotions he expressed.
Rounding out the principal cast were Nicola Alaimo as the curmudgeonly Bartolo, Alexander Vinogradov as Rosina’s music teacher Don Basilio and Kathleen O’Mara as Bartolo’s housekeeper, Berta. With his precise baritone, Alaimo released the patter of “A un dottor della mia sorte” with speed and gusto, while bass Vingradov intoned “La calunnia” with extraordinarily vindictive pleasure. Making her Met debut, O’Mara was in fine voice, her sizeable soprano offering a spirited and perfectly placed “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie” with clear sound and finely articulated passagework.
Sher’s stage direction is littered with sight gags that complement the inherent humor in the libretto. In the grandest of these, a giant anvil drops down from the fly space and crushes a rickety cart of pumpkins pulled by Bartolo’s maladroit manservant Ambrogio – hilariously depicted by non-singing actor Jay Dunn in his Met debut – while the other characters run around and sing that their heads are hurting.
In his company debut, Giacomo Sagripanti made a strong impression. Following a dazzling rendition of the overture, he elicited a delightfully fresh and exciting account of Rossini’s relentlessly tuneful score, with wisely judged tempo choices, exquisitely articulated playing, and a wide range of dynamics – making this outing of Barbiere particularly blithe and bubbly.
