by Gioachino Rossini (libretto Cesare Sterbini after Beaumarchais)
seen at the Coliseum on 7 October 2017
Jonathan Miller's 1987 ENO production, conducted by Hilary Griffiths and designed by Tanya McCallin, is revived by Peter Relton with Eleazar Rodríguez as Count Almaviva, Sarah Tynan as Rosina, Morgan Pearse as Figaro, Alan Opie as Doctor Bartolo and Alastair Miles as Don Basilio.
The setting is naturalistic, with the first act outside Doctor Bartolo's house and the remainder in the upper floor reception room whose window conveniently looks over the street. This all works extremely well with the eighteenth century costumes and the references to commedia dell'arte figures (principally the musicians Count Almaviva employs in the opening scene, but this sets the tone). The lightness - not to say frothiness - of the music is allowed full rein with no intrusive directorial distractions, and the relative absurdity of the plot survives because it is all dressed safely in the past.
The singing was excellent, with Morgan Pearse cutting an extremely confident and attractive figure as the fixer Figaro, while Alan Opie did not overact the buffoon as the put-upon Doctor Bartolo. Sarah Tynan's Rosina was suitably self-possessed, and she has a wonderfully clear and bright tone - one can recognise the descendants of such a part in the ingenue parts in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and even the heroines of mid-20th-century musicals. Eleazar Rodríguez gave Almaviva the right measure of determination, and made his two disguises suitably amusing.
The two most famous arias - Figaro's self-advertising and Rosina's coloratura claim to be in control of her destiny - were a great joy to listen to, and the English translation neatly managed the hurdles posed by the musical style which was made for the more flowing style of Italian. All in all, a joy to watch a period piece performed in its own period with complete confidence in its power to entertain.
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