STAGE REVIEW: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE By: Faiz No comments

Rosina (Elisabeth DeShong) in The Barber of Seville. Photo Credit: Craig T. Mathew.

 

 

Sum it up to style

By Ed Rampell

Daily existence is full of a cornucopia of soul-sapping vexations marring our felicity. They run the gamut, dammit -- from eternal, infernal traffic jams to pesky bill collectors to life threatening plagues to wars to global warming, ad nauseam. But LA Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is one of those things that can make you feel glad to be alive, rendering those ceaseless slings and arrows of our outrageous misfortunes bearable and even making living a worthwhile undertaking.

Debuting in Rome in 1816, The Barber of Seville has become one of the most performed (it last graced the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s stage in 2009), best loved opera’s ever. There are several reasons why, but Rossini’s music certainly has pride of place. The score is bubbly, buoyant, vibrant, frothy.

In addition, James Conlon is so animated. His baton seems like more of a magic wand, conjuring Rossini’s intoxicating, enchanting score out of the strings, woodwinds, fortepiano, brass and percussion instruments like a symphonic sorcerer.

Another reason for The Barber of Seville's perennial popularity is its plot - this comedy is, after all, an ebullient romance. As the maid Berta (mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer) sings: “What on earth is all this love which makes everyone go mad?” (Or, as Freddie Mercury put it 163 years later: that “Crazy little thing called love”.) Of course, there is Count Almaviva’s (tenor Rene Barbera) light-hearted, lusty pursuit of Rosina (mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong), which provides the comical backbone for this opera that adapts the first of the trilogy of 18^th century plays by French playwright Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais about the title character.

However, in this libretto by Cesare Sterbini, there is no greater love than the one the eponymous haircutter, Figaro (Moscow-born baritone Rodion Pogossov), has for himself. This supremely self-confident beautician apparently has a higher quotient of self-esteem than The Donald does. In his rapidly sung “Largo al factotum” aria, basking in the beauty of (who else?) himself, the highly self-regarding, self-ballyhooing barber sings the name of his true love - “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” - don’tchaknow? Pogossov is a hoot (and a holler) in the title role: Not even Kryptonite could stop this Muscovite.

Another outstanding thing about this LA Opera and Emilio Sagi production is that it slyly uses a cinematic technique rarely seen onscreen in movies such as 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Spanish scenic designer Llorenc Corbella, Argentine costume designer Renata Schussheim, Spanish lighting designer Eduardo Bravo and American director Trevore Ross have quite cleverly collaborated to visualize the emergence of love onstage.

There are other shrewd stage effects -- as in LA Op’s 2009 production there is a likewise sharp-witted visualization of the “slander” concocted by Rosina’s thwarted, would-be lover, Doctor Bartolo (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli, who alternates in the role on March 22 with bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, who performed the role at the Dorothy Chandler in 2009) and Don Basilio, portrayed with great comic panache by the crowd pleasing Icelandic bass, Kristinn Sigmundsson. His hulking presence and humorous depiction added to the show’s general merriment, even as Basilio and his partner in crime, Bartolo, conspired to make Almaviva sing a la Simon and Garfunkel: “I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard in the bible” as he tries to keep Rosina satisfied.

Kudos to the entire cast and crew, including chorus director Grant Gershon and Spanish choreographer Nuria Castejon.

The Barber of Seville runs through March 22 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. For more info: 213-972-8001; Barber.

 

 

THEATER REVIEW: CINDERELLA By: Faiz No comments



Cinderella (Kate Lindsay) in Cinderella.

 Fairytale Marx a spot

By Ed Rampell

This L.A. Opera production of Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) is nothing short of a sheer delight. It ranks amongst the most enchanting of all of the operas I’ve ever seen. The music, conducted by James Conlon, is frothy, as lighthearted as the Wagnerian Flying Dutchman’s score and story are full of sturm und drang. Joan Guillen’s sets are inventive, while his costuming, along with the stellar cast -- including a charming quintet of mice -- are exceedingly magical. Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey fits the bill perfectly in the title role (Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze plays Cinderella during the April performances) and Italian bass-baritone Vito Priante as Dandini steals scenes with a kleptomaniac’s gay abandon.

More on the stellar cast below, but what of the story? Rossini’s cheery concoction, with its libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, is of course a retelling of the vintage fairy tale first published in 1697 and subsequently re-published by the Grimm Brothers circa 1812. Fans beware: Rossini’s version is different from others with some dissimilar elements, which this plot-spoiler adverse reviewer won’t disclose. But the essential storyline remains the same.

In essence, poor little Cinderella is mercilessly exploited by her stepsisters Clorinda (soprano Stacey Tappan) and Tisbe (played, in a bit of unconventional if welcome casting -- despite a libretto line referring to her ivory white skin -- by the Black mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), and step-father, the wittily named Don Magnifico (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli). These three rascals dream of grandeur, but apparently live in a home that has seen better days, hence the cutest mice this side of the Mickey Mouse Club and the Mouseketeers in the household that is slavishly looked after by the downtrodden Cinderella. She is reduced in status and role to a mere scullery maid, a servant -- if not an outright slave -- by her step-siblings and stepfather, who are genuinely cruel to this impoverished but pretty young lady who sweeps the cinders and cooks their meals.

In the guise of a fairy tale Rossini and his librettist are clearly making reference to the exploitation of labor. Other scenes and characters reinforce a social critique composed a year before the birth of Karl Marx. In an expression of class solidarity as well as in a simple humane act of compassion, Cinderella surreptitiously gives a character she believes to be a beggar -- whom her haughty stepsisters with their pretensions towards superiority scorn -- food.

But this aspect of class conflict is further expressed by another character, and ladies and gentlemen, please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to the great Dandini. In Cinderella there’s a lot of mistaken and/or hidden identity -- an operatic convention -- and Dandini is actually the (not-so-)humble servant of dashing Don Ramiro (tenor Rene Barbera), although through a series of plot contrivances they trade places and switch roles. Dandini relishes playing the powerful prince and assumes this part, full of social status and stature, with gusto. He enjoys dressing for the part and is quite a dandy -- hence his rather hilariously apropos nomenclature. Priante plays the character with great panache, full of sparkling wit, in portraying the subservient flunky who yearns to be the top banana, but for the unfair societal pecking order he is, unfortunately, born into.

Rossini’s titular character in The Barber of Seville similarly chafes under these unfair class distinctions imposed upon Figaro, who is also the lead character in Mozart’s 18^th century The Marriage of Figaro. Through these class conscious characters in class conflict with their “betters” Mozart expressed nascent Enlightenment ideals while Rossini evoked the French Revolution’s principles of “Liberte, eqalite, fraternite.” One can easily imagine both Figaro and Dandini singing Tevye’s lament in Fiddler on the Roof: “Lord… Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, If I were a wealthy man?”

Although Rossini explores themes of class struggle in Cinderella, the war between the classes is resolved magically -- with a dose of Christian morality -- through the genre conventions of the fairytale, wherein all the characters live happily ever after (with the possible exception of that rapscallion Dandini, who is, alas, once again reduced to servitude). However, the Italian composer was also capable of positing a political solution to social injustice. Rossini’s final opera, William Tell, is an explicitly political tale about revolution, which celebrates Swiss resistance to the tyrannical Hapsburg dynasty. Interestingly, like Cinderella, this 1829 opera is also suggested by legend (if not fairytales per se). In it, Rossini renders rousing music of a revolutionary nature, of justice triumphing over oppression. As all good Lone Ranger fans know its brassy musical fanfare and theme literally trumpeting the arrival of righteousness is derived from the incomparable, galloping William Tell Overture.

But in Cinderella we have a more playful Rossini, his bel canto opera full of great comic performances by droll, grandiose stepsisters and a stepfather who never miss the opportunity to overstep their boundaries; those whimsical, cavorting acrobatic rodents; and the one, the only great Dandini. Cinderella touchingly sings, “Virtue is my splendor, love my wealth” and later, when the wrongs are righted and the last has become first, she warbles: “My revenge is forgiveness.”

What a great fable full of utopian sentiment, of commoners and royals united in a moral certitude and rectitude.

This opera is ideal for children of all ages.


Cinderella runs through April 7 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.