Emily D’Angelo as Rosina and Vito Priante as Figaro in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Barber of Seville, 2020, photo: Michael Cooper (Edited for Blue Riband)
(Program)
The Canadian Opera Company presented Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville on Sunday January 19th, 2020 at The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Cast Highlights:
Figaro - Vito Priante
Rosina - Emily D’Angelo
Almaviva - Santiago Ballerini
Bartolo - Renato Girolami
Crew Highlights:
Conductor - Speranza Scappucci
Original Director - Joan Font
Set & Costume Designer - Joan Guillén
The COC’s Barber of Seville runs from January 19 to February 7, 2020.
Though it would eventually be dignified by Giuseppe Verdi as ‘the most beautiful opera buffa in existence’, the very first 1816 performance of Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville was bumbled enough to rival its intentional comedic content. Singers tripped over trapdoors, singing their arias through nosebleeds; a cat ran on stage and became frantically entangled in a soprano’s skirt; like a 19th century Twitter mob, superfans of Paisellio’s previous version bought blocks of seats just to boo. Over the centuries, Barber found many iterations that captured the satire and beauty of this first in Rossini’s trilogy centring around the eponymous Figaro; fortunately, there were no disasters to mar the return of Joan Font’s delightful and cartoonish production to the Canadian Opera Company for the first time since 2015.
Santiago Ballerini as Count Almaviva and Emily D’Angelo as Rosina in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Barber of Seville, 2020, photo: Michael Cooper (Edited for Blue Riband)
An afternoon of many debuts signalled that the COC’s production team is weathering the imminent departure of Mr. Neef by actively bringing in fresh, fawn-worthy talent. first up was rising Italian conductor Speranza Scappucci, only the second woman I’ve seen with a conductor’s baton in the Four Seasons Centre since… ever. Trained at Julliard, a working musical director, and hailed as one of the most exciting newcomers to the industry, Scappucci worked like a sculptor to pull a crisp, clean, commanding overture from her orchestra which received thunderous applause and even some cheering—a rarity these days for an overture. ‘Speranza’ is Italian for ‘hope’, and she soundly demonstrated what a bright hope for the industry she is within just five minutes of the lights going down.
Her vibrant energy and plunging gestures continued as the curtain rose on Argentinian tenor Santiago Ballerini as Count Almaviva in his own COC debut, commissioning mercenary townsfolk to accompany his serenade outside the beautiful Rosina’s window. Embracing the story’s silliness, set and costume designer Joan Guillén leans into the absurd elements that made the opera’s score so alluring to Looney Tunes producers. The first piece of many that will amplify the story’s larger-than-life proportions is the colourfully oversized guitar that Almaviva mounts gracefully in heeled leather shoes, managing to resemble construction-paper origami. Ballerini set the bar high as the lighting grid with a voice made for vinyl, handling the opening aria ‘Ecco, ridente in cielo’ with such natural romance that it seemed a disgrace it wasn’t being recorded and pressed for posterity that very afternoon. Savouring each syllable and silence in the serenade that begins the story, Ballerini struck me as possessing the graceful gallantry of a classical ballerino even before I flipped through the program to find his name.
After failing to get Rosina’s window to open, though not to charm her where she listens secretly within, Count Almaviva has to make it rain a hailstorm of colourful bills to get rid of his clingy accompanists. It’s in this desolate state that he’s approached by acclaimed Italian baritone Vito Priante entering as Figaro, the third COC debut of the show. Xevi Dorca’s stylized choreography made its appearance alongside the famous ‘largo al factotum’ aria, showing a number of Figaro-doubles completing varied duties around town, foremost of which are ensuring that divided lovers make the match that eludes them. This ariaa truly reads as the kind of job interview we should all aspire to deliver: Figaro knows he’s the man for the job and sells himself with highly persuasive boasting. And as the narrative (and ingenious set pieces) unfold, it becomes clear why Almaviva will need a resourceful tradesman with a keen understanding of human foibles to gain access to Rosina’s residence.
The demure exterior of this house is spun to reveal a transparency that disrupts the separation between the public and the private, for our eyes only. For those locked inside, it’s unmercifully opaque and seemingly inescapable. Enter Emily D’Angelo as Rosina. Though the characters are based on stock commedia del arte roles, she instantly transcended the limited ‘lover’ caricature with hysterical expressions and physicality, as funny and mischievous as any Arlecchino. Her dextrous, accomplished vocal articulation was almost overshadowed by her impactful comic timing, and with cheekbones made to catch the stage-lights I didn’t mind that I frequently forgot to glance at the surtitles while she was performing. But D’Angelo had such an emotionally intelligent grasp of her motivation in each phrase that captioning was almost rendered redundant.
(l-r) Vito Priante as Figaro and Renato Girolami as Bartolo in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Barber of Seville, 2020, photo: Michael Cooper
Clever and cunningly determined in her pursuit of a happier future outside the house’s restrictive walls, Rosina throws herself around her limited space and ‘made delirious’ by the serenade she heard through the window. Her snowy dress is fitted with a hoop that gives her an animated A-line silhouette, delightfully era-inconsistent as many of Joan Guillén’s costumes are: knee-length skirts contrast with Count Almaviva’s dashing breeches-and-cape set (more appropriate to a time centuries before this opera premiered) and even featuring a Victorian mourning ensemble worn by a tacet character. The patchwork of anachronistic fashion references suited the puppet-theatre set design, placing us outside time in a multidimensional space where a transparent facade can be the supreme obstacle that love must surmount.
The house’s transparency is one of the many ways that the pompous power of its owner is subverted; reprising his excellent 2015 turn as Dr. Bartolo, Renato Girolami plays Rosina’s controlling, possessive guardian who barely allows his niece to fling a love note from her own balcony. This strict lock & key policy necessitates a number of tricks from Figaro and Count Almaviva simply to slip a reply to Rosina, the first coming as a surprise to my ears. Right as I had Ballerini pegged as an ideal romantic tenor, he enters in disguise with a high nasal voice affected for the role of a drunken soldier billeted to Bartolo’s home. In this stand-out scene where he deliberately says Bartolo’s name wrong until the homeowner himself mispronounces it, Ballerini stumbles wildly emitting pitchy guffaws that in themselves drew laughter from the audience.
The surprises didn’t stop there. Rosina’s obsequious music teacher Basilio, played by Brandon Cedel, may have one of the loudest bass-baritones I’ve ever heard with an astonishing depth and power to his voice. But when Count Almaviva’s first disguise to gain slim access to his lady-love is foiled in Act I, he re-enters as a replacement music teacher and an inversion of the conniving Basilio… parodying the deep baritone by pushing his nasal falsetto even further towards countertenor territory. This variation suited Almaviva-as-substitute-teacher perfectly as he flirts with Rosina behind Bartolo’s back, becoming a transparent set piece himself that only we and his paramour can see through. When the two open the piano lid to settle inside for their ‘music lesson’, I’d almost forgotten one of this production’s funniest and simplest inspirations: the oar that Alamvida pulls from the piano to mimic rowing, turning the instrument into a gondola with Rosina crooning at the prow. It’s romantic, youthful, silly, and effective—a silent joke summing up everything that works about this production. And though a piece like Barber is designed to show off a range of comedic side-characters, it’s a credit to both director Joan Font and Santiago Ballerini that its own romantic lead ended up stealing many of the scenes.
Another effectively cartoonish element I have to applaud is the tree outside the house’s window, the only bit of the natural world Rosina is permitted to see—and yet even that is being painted an unnatural white by the servants. This reminded me of the made-up opera, “Useless Precaution”, that Rosina invents to allay suspicion about her love notes. While Bartolo is obsessed with exerting control over her, all his precautions end up being fairly useless in the face of delirious infatuation, nevertheless compelling many coded, comedic communiqués throughout the opera. The lighting of the tree often expressed something about the scene, such as when Bartolo tries to catch Rosina in a lie, insisting she be watched and kept under even stricter seclusion. Dressed strikingly in a garish orange waistcoat with a ring of green hair around his pate, the tree is lit a sickly green and backlit with glaring orange, reminding us that while all his precautions will be ultimately useless Bartolo still represents a pervasive obstacle to overcome. But the light shifts and Almaviva slips the battlements repeatedly despite Bartolo’s declaration that “not even air will get through that door”. He might preside over this domestic prison but still can’t inhibit natural forces like the sun rising and love blooming.
Santiago Ballerini as Count Almaviva (right) in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Barber of Seville, 2020, photo: Michael Cooper (Edited for Blue Riband)
From sexy dumbshows with the mute servants reflecting the dynamics of their singing counterparts to the excellent ensemble chemistry between the leads in ticklish sections like ‘Buona sera, mio signore’, Font’s production gives its singers plenty of room to have as much fun with their characters as they like. Vito Priante especially kept the audience in a continual rumble of laughter as he mimicked and mocked the romantic leads in exasperation, trying to hurry his blissful employer out the window to elope. With room to play and improvise, the cast as a whole treated their arias, dialogue, characterization and blocking like intriguing sips of wine to explore and enjoy. The sense of fun emanating from each member of the cast—and from their animated conductor herself—made the joyful conclusion of young love triumphing over miserly possessiveness all the more satisfying.
Emily Trace is a Toronto-based writer of plays, articles, fiction, personal essays and reviews of the performing arts, currently developing a screenplay that will explore queer resiliency and trauma recovery through classic horror tropes. An alumnus of the National Ballet of Canada’s Emerging Arts Critics Programme, Emily works in media with Inside Out LGBT Film Festival and Against the Grain Theatre. She is also an actress and creative associate with White Mills Theatre Company, presently in rehearsals for an immersive production of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' to be staged this holiday season at Spadina House.