PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gioachino Rossini — IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA (D. Pershall, C. Hall, A. Owens, T. Simpson, D. Hartmann, S. Foley Davis, R. Hill, J. Kato, C. Blackburn; Greensboro Opera, 12 January 2018)

GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868): Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione—David Pershall (Figaro), Cecelia Hall (Rosina), Andrew Owens (Il conte d’Almaviva), Tyler Simpson (Don Basilio), Donald Hartmann (Dottor Bartolo), Stephanie Foley Davis (Berta), Ryan Hill (Fiorello), Jacob Kato (Un sergente), Christian Blackburn (Un notaro); Greensboro Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Joel Revzen, conductor [David Holley, Producer and Stage Director; James Bumgardner, Chorus Master; Jeff Neubauer, Lighting Designer; Greensboro Opera, UNCG Auditorium, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 12 January 2018]

George Bernard Shaw may never have actually said that youth is wasted on the young, at least not with those exact words, but the sentiment is very true to Shaw’s guardedly cynical world view. Could even the thorny Dubliner have thought that the marvels of youth were wasted on the young Gioachino Rossini? Fate dealt the prodigy of Pesaro a most ingenious paradox from the start, decreeing that he would be born on 29 February 1792, and, while his crib may not have been padded with music paper as Mozart’s must have been, the lad squandered no time in steadying his artistic gait. Rossini already had no fewer than sixteen operas, not all of them successful, under his belt when his iconic melodramma giocoso Il barbiere di Siviglia was first performed in Rome on 20 February 1816, nine days before his twenty-fourth birthday. Utilizing Cesare Sterbini’s enchantingly witty adaptation of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville ou la Précaution inutile, the young Rossini’s opera fell victim to the Roman audience’s lingering affection for Giovanni Paisiello’s 1782 setting of Il barbiere di Siviglia, a now-neglected score that in 1816 was still performed frequently throughout Italy. Vindication of Rossini’s musical cunning was not long in coming, however, establishing within a decade that Beethoven was right when he predicted that the popularity of Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia would persist as long as Italian opera continued to be performed.

The universal resonance of Beaumarchais’s story, the timeless cleverness of Sterbini’s words, and the perennial charm of Rossini’s score make staging Il barbiere di Siviglia an easy decision for opera companies large and small, but few companies present the work with the boundless imagination, musicality, and sheer fun that were the hallmarks of Greensboro Opera’s production. Since taking the helm as the company’s Artistic Director in June 2013, David Holley has steered Greensboro Opera towards markedly heightened artistic integrity and hard-won financial security. Both by bringing the 2015 convention of the National Opera Association to Greensboro and by casting Greensboro Opera’s productions with singers with wide-ranging credentials, Holley has increased Greensboro’s stature as a noteworthy operatic destination. This production of Il barbiere di Siviglia, produced and directed by Holley, embodied the rejuvenated company’s mission of making opera on a world-class level accessible to all residents of central North Carolina.

Using eye-pleasing scenery by Peter Dean Beck and costumes by Susan Memmott Allred, on loan from Utah Opera, Holley’s production created on the stage of UNCG Auditorium a Barbiere di Siviglia that was at once gratifyingly familiar and rousingly novel. Barbiere di Siviglia is a piece that many directors immerse in deluges of stock gestures and purposeless foolishness. A singer himself, Holley is sensitive to the physical demands of singing and supervised a staging of Rossini’s fast-paced musical gambol in which every movement was inspired by music and text. Too often, productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia and the singers who populate them seem awkward because they attempt to make the opera funny. The comedy exists in the score and libretto: a production’s success depends upon finding, not inventing it. Aided by the expert guidance of stage manager Shelby Robertson and assistant stage managers Caroline Stamm and Abigail Hart, the singers assembled by Holley exhibited natural comedic timing, the thoughtful illumination of their antics by Jeff Neubauer’s lighting designs ensuring that the audience’s attention was always focused on the nucleus of the action. With all participants in the production collaborating to realize Holley’s vision with complete conviction, the true focus was on Rossini—precisely where it should be in any performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia.

Factotum della città: baritones David Pershall as Figaro (left) and Ryan Hill as Fiorello (right) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

That what is now universally recognized as Il barbiere di Siviglia’s overture is one of the most familiar pieces of Classical Music would not surprise Rossini, who was fond enough of it—and was sufficiently idle—to have previously used it to open both Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra, a pair of his serious operas. The eventual popularity of its third companion, with the comedic tone of which it fits handily despite sharing no thematic material with the balance of the score, ensured that Barbiere was its final destination. Energized by conductor Joel Revzen’s nimble negotiations of the music’s abrupt changes of pace and mood, the Greensboro Opera Orchestra’s playing of the spry Sinfonia set the tone for an evening of well-rehearsed and high-spirited musical merrymaking.

Throughout the performance, Revzen adopted tempi that kept the show moving without bullying the singers. Perhaps the greatest challenge of Barbiere for conductors and directors is the disproportionate duration of Act One, but Revzen and Holley ensured that members of the Greensboro audience were not glancing at their watches and wondering how many more bars would whizz past before the interval. Accompanied by Revzen, the secco recitatives churned with the excitement of feisty Spaniards consumed by amorous intrigue. The Temporale in Act Two, enacted by Holley with a welcome avoidance of nonsensical stage business, had the effect of a discharge of the dramatic electricity that crackled through the preceding scene. Occasionally, Revzen’s conducting lost momentum, most noticeably in solo numbers, and there were sporadic mishaps in the orchestra, none of which upset the overall musical equilibrium of the performance. Under the direction of chorus master James Bumgardner, the twelve gentlemen of the Barbiere chorus—Christian Blackburn, Ian DeSmit, John Huff, Lucas Johnston, Jacob Kato, Brian Kilpatrick, Mark Loy, Wesley McLeary-Small, Wendell Putney, Ben Ramsey, D’Andre Wright, and John Warrick—both sang and acted their parts to perfection, portraying Conte Almaviva’s band of hired musicians and the too-eager recruits of Seville’s constabulary with gusto that matched the orchestra’s playing. Like their colleagues behind the scenes, orchestra, chorus, and conductor gave of their best in service to Rossini.

Il conte e la sua Rosina: tenor Andrew Owens as Conte Almaviva (left) and mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina (right) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

With music like Rossini’s to sing, even small rôles in Barbiere di Siviglia need large personalities with vocal talents to match, and in Greensboro Opera’s performance they had them. Supplementing their choral duties, Kato and Blackburn were valuable assets to the performance as the police sergeant dispatched to investigate the cause of the tumult chez Bartolo in the Act One finale and the notary summoned to formalize Bartolo’s union with Rosina in Act Two. Baritone Ryan Hill was an unusually sonorous Fiorello, launching the opera’s opening scene with a handsomely-voiced ‘Piano, pianissimo, senza parlar.’

In too many performances of Barbiere, the ladies who portray Bartolo’s housekeeper Berta look and sound as though they may have studied the rôle under the tutelage of Rossini himself. A particular joy of Greensboro Opera’s Barbiere was the casting of mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as a Berta who sang powerfully in every scene in which she appeared without prompting fears that she would need to be defibrillated at the end of every phrase like a broken-down bel canto incarnation of Offenbach’s Olympia. A dramatic whirlwind in the Act One finale, Foley Davis delivered a wonderful account of Berta’s Act Two arietta ‘Il vecchiotto cerca moglie,’ rising to top A with ease. Ideally, a Berta should sound as though she might be a capable Rosina: Foley Davis would undoubtedly be considerably more than capable and was a magnificent Berta.

La calunnia è un venticello: bass-baritones Donald Hartmann as Bartolo (left) and Tyler Simpson as Basilio (right) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

Following the trend started by Berta, it is apparent in many productions of Barbiere that Don Basilio has devoted many years to his parochial pursuits, with the vocal attrition to prove it. Rossini’s music for the rôle indicates that he expected Basilio to at least temporarily wield virility potent enough to make his conspiratorial machinations believably threatening. Basilio need not be genuinely menacing to make his mark, but there was a hint of sadism at the core of bass-baritone Tyler Simpson’s interpretation of the part that lent the not-so-holy man’s treachery atypical forcefulness. In this performance, Basilio’s encounter with Bartolo in Act One eerily foreshadowed Filippo’s fateful sparring with the Grand Inquisitor in Verdi‘s Don Carlo: laughter still reigned here, but the effect of casting a young, clarion-toned singer as Basilio was palpable. Expectedly, Simpson sang Basilio’s Act One aria ‘La calunnia è un venticello’ with galvanizing persuasiveness and vocal assurance, firing the repetitions of ‘colpo di cannone’ into the auditorium with Scarpia-like glee. Arriving for Rosina’s singing lesson in Act Two to the unexpected news of his replacement and dire illness, Simpson imparted Basilio’s bewilderment with a credibility that only an intelligent singer can achieve. Astutely-honed stagecraft shone in Simpson’s every note, word, and motion, especially in ensembles, and his vocalism was unfailingly secure and stimulating.

A un dottor della mia sorte: bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Bartolo in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

Every conservatory should offer mandatory courses designed to foster comprehension amongst prospective singers that comedy and stupidity are vastly different concepts. Rossini and Sterbini obviously intended Barbiere to be funny, but not even at its zaniest is the opera ever stupid. In this performance, that course was taught by bass-baritone Donald Hartmann, whose characterization of the vain, blustering Dottor Bartolo was hilarious because there were glimmers of vulnerability beneath the gaudy veneer of self-congratulatory smugness and implacability—and the wig that was surely borrowed from the estate of Georg Friedrich Händel. As a potential consort for Rosina, Hartmann’s Bartolo was amusingly ridiculous, but as a man of a certain age whose romantic possibilities are decidedly limited his desperation was deeper than mere farce. In the Act One scene with Basilio, Hartmann was transformed from a bumbling grouch into a man with victory in sight as Basilio shared his plan to disgrace Conte Almaviva. The aria ‘A un dottor della mia sorte’ was sung with total mastery of its tricky phrasing and patter, and Hartmann’s Bartolo was the epitome of exasperated indignation in the madcap Act One finale. Catapulting into Act Two with a dejectedly ironic but never idiotic ‘Ma vedi il mio destino,’ this Bartolo exuded ennui during Rosina’s singing lesson but dearly relished showing off his own musical pedigree—in the course of which, as Shakespeare put it, a few strays clearly got over the wall—in the mock-archaic arietta ‘Quando mi sei vicina, amabile Rosina.’ Touchingly, he wistfully gazed after the heartbroken Rosina as the Temporale began, then believing her swain Lindoro’s intentions to be impure, suddenly sensitive to the sting of his dishonesty. Underestimating Rosina’s resilience and thwarted at every turn by her scheming with Figaro and the disguised Conte, Hartmann’s Bartolo accepted defeat with self-preserving affability. As ever, Hartmann deployed the sort of imposingly percussive singing that is precisely right for the music. He can probably sing Bartolo in his sleep, but this performance was so engaging that he might have been performing the rôle for the first time, Rossini’s music and Sterbini’s words sounding newly-minted.

Un nobile soldato e la sua signora: tenor Andrew Owens as Conte Almaviva (left) and mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina (right) in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

Returning to Greensboro to portray the lovesick Conte Almaviva, tenor Andrew Owens repeated the triumph of his portrayal of Don Ramiro in Greensboro Opera’s 2015 production of La Cenerentola, again confirming the validity of his Rossinian credentials with singing of seemingly effortless virtuosity. From his first entrance, Owens’s Conte radiated the confidence of an aristocrat tempered by the anxiety of a young man still finding his footing as a lover. Owens’s tastefully-ornamented account of the cavatina ‘Ecco ridete in cielo spunta la bella aurora’ seemed marginally cautious, but his ascents to the top As and B in bravura flourishes were flawless. It was a humorous if anachronistic invention to have this Conte begin Nemorino’s ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore instead of Lindoro’s serenade, but Owens went on to declare ‘Io son Lindoro che fido v’adoro’ with dulcet tones and a spectacular trill, supported by the fine playing of guitarist Kevin Dollar. Invigorated by Rosina’s requital of his interest, this Almaviva rocketed through the duet with Figaro on wings of love, voicing ‘Su vediamo, su vediam di quel metallo’ with uncontainable joy. Owens launched the Act One finale with panache, bringing the lovable inebriation of Mayberry’s Otis to the operatic stage, and he returned at the start of Act Two with a bevy of perfectly-timed repetitions of ‘Pace e gioia’ as an hysterically arthritic Don Alonso. In the sequence of quintetto, terzetto, and finale ultima, the tenor’s voice soared through the difficult tessitura and fiorature, his timbre beautiful from the bottom of the stave to his gleaming top C, and his acting was boundlessly charismatic. Time constraints deprived Owens of the opportunity to sing the Conte’s seldom-performed aria ‘Cessa di più resistere,’ but his depiction of the character lacked nothing else.

La futura contessa: mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

The Rosina of mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall has matured appealingly since she performed the rôle with North Carolina Opera in 2016. The prevailing youthfulness of her characterization remains unchanged, but there is now greater seriousness in her negotiations of Rosina’s predicaments. In Greensboro, Rosina was pert and playful but also mindful of the consequences of her actions and the lifelong implications of perhaps finding herself married to Bartolo. Aside from trills that never fully materialized, she made her entrance in Act One with beguiling singing. Her traversal of the cavatina ‘Una voce poco fa qui nel cor mi risuonò’ was delightful despite a lack of crispness in her executions of fiorature. Here and in the duetto with Figaro, ‘Dunque io son tu non m’inganni,’ she avoided unnecessary aspiration in her coloratura singing, however, and she immersed herself in the capers of the Act One finale without forcing either the voice or the comedy. Smiling beneath her prim ginger wig, a creation of Trent Pcenicni, she sometimes looked uncannily like the very young Beverly Sills. In Rosina’s lesson scene in Act Two, Hall eschewed the practice of interpolating music from other scores and sang Rossini’s authentic ‘Contro un cor che accende amore’ brilliantly, encountering no difficulties with its top As. Her voice could not always be heard amidst the cacophony of the quintetto, but her declamation of ‘Ah! qual colpo inaspettato!’ in the terzetto rang out boldly. Gratifyingly, hers was a Rosina who did not posture and pout: her emotions were softer and more subtle but always discernible. In Hall’s performance, Rosina was determined but not truly minxish, her good nature never obscured by her willingness to resort to capriciousness—in other words, she gave Rosina her own unique character rather than portraying her as a coloratura Carmen. Vocally, she was stronger in her middle and upper registers than at the bottom of the range. Dramatically, her performance divulged no weaknesses.

I tre conspiratori allegri: (from left to right) tenor Andrew Owens as Conte Almaviva, mezzo-soprano Cecelia Hall as Rosina, and baritone David Pershall as Figaro in Greensboro Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, January 2018
[Photo by Star Path Images, © by Greensboro Opera]

Operatic Spain is a natural habitat for baritone David Pershall, who revisited the land of flamenco, previously the setting for his exhilarating Escamillo in Greensboro Opera’s 2017 staging of Bizet’s Carmen, with a captivating portrayal of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, the rôle in which he débuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 2015. There is no more familiar entrance aria in opera than Figaro’s Act One cavatina ‘Largo al factotum della città,’ and with his crowd-pleasing performance of the number Pershall introduced his Figaro, one by whom the top Gs were not feared. Pershall’s singing was a reminder of a bygone era in which ‘big sing’ baritones like Robert Merrill and Nicolae Herlea included Figaro in their repertoires. In the ebullient duet with the Conte, the baritone voiced ‘All’idea di quel metallo’ incisively, his Figaro’s ideas seeming to genuinely be extemporaneously engendered by the clinking of coins in his hand. Then, implementing his plan to facilitate her rendezvous with the Conte, he joined Rosina in a rollicking account of their duetto, singing ‘Di Lindoro il vago oggetto siete voi, bella Rosina’ with irrepressible conviviality. Like Merrill and Herlea, navigating Rossini’s labyrinths of fiorature does not come naturally to Pershall, but his technique is equal to even Figaro’s most intricate vocal filigree, as he elatedly demonstrated in the Act One finale. As Figaro’s stratagems teetered on the brink of disaster in Act Two, Pershall emphasized the barber’s resourcefulness, taking charge with the authority of a Hollywood director—authority that the lovers under his protection were often too distracted by their canoodling to heed. The seat-of-his-trousers bravado of his vocalism in the quintetto was diverting, and his Figaro’s euphoric extolling of the efficacy of his handiwork in the terzetto truly earned the audience’s laughter. With such a skilled Figaro at the center of the action, there was never any doubt that all would end well, but one of the most endearing aspects of Pershall’s performance was its spontaneity. Still, not even the most genial Figaro succeeds solely with his acting of the part, and it was Pershall’s vibrant, ruggedly masculine singing that made the strongest, most lasting impression.

Perhaps more so than any other musical genre, and more so in the Twenty-First Century than ever before, opera is a community effort that depends upon a carefully-managed coordination of artistic, financial, and logistical collaborations. Putting on good shows with good singers is not sufficient to ensure an opera company’s survival. An opera company must look beyond the stage upon which its productions come to life for the raw materials with which to build its future. Most vital amongst these raw materials is involvement in the host community. Under David Holley’s stewardship, Greensboro Opera’s rôle in its community has metamorphosed from the elitist indulgence typical of opera in the United States to an advantageous cultural symbiosis. With this fantastic, superbly-sung production of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Greensboro Opera’s standing in both its local and global communities is solidified: no longer just Greensboro’s hometown opera, Greensboro Opera is a home for opera performed as composers and librettists intended.