LYRICAL, FARCICAL, PERFECT
Figaro, rascally wigmaker and foam-flinging wet-shaver, is basically the first rapper, isnt he? Staccato eloquence at speed, braggart confidence in breeches, making earnings out of lovelorn yearnings . Earning, yearning – see how fast the pleasurable infection of the Holdens’ translation infects you? Its sharp easy wit, sung in English but with surtitles) is one of the glories of this beloved 1987 Jonathan Miller production (Peter Relton is revival director).
Its a fitting moment for it, just as the world of music has been rightly set afire with indignation at the government and ACE’s shrugging treatment of the English National Opera. How better to remind us of
ENO’S nimble brilliance, outreach and welcome to all, than by bringing back one of its jolliest productions?
Roderick Cox from America is conductor on his ENO debut; Charles Rice has it down pat as the eponymous barber, and as for Innocent Masuku from Cape Town Opera as Count Almaviva, not only does he sing like a bird – that goes without saying, its ENO – but as an actor he takes the besotted Count with aplomb from mooning naivete to gleeful conspiracy , and hence to magnificent physical humour in his disguises as a drunken fake soldier and a mincing musicmaster. His fine knee-work, ‘making a leg’, is immediately parodied by the equally funny Simon Bailey as Bartolo, who achieves not only three full-on pratfalls but, in the second half, a falsetto Handel parody as he mourns the old days of opera “when men were sopranos”. .From Ireland, Anna Devin gives us a Rosina equally sharply drawn: defiant, melodically gorgeous and slyly funny.
It”s a treat of a show. Lyrical and mischievous, farcical and glamorous, with all the self-aware absurdity it needs as Rossini sends up the sombre tragedians of the genre (the final prolonged love duet, punctuated by Figaro’s stamping warbling panic to get them down the ladder, had the whole house giggling until you could feel it: Rice is masterly.
Theatrecat does not generally review opera , having only the most sub-amateur level of classical musicality as a humble awed amphi-rat. But when shows are as crazily and openly cheerful as any musical comedy, it’s worth reminding musical-theatre fans that sometimes it’s good to venture into the grander gilded houses, the land of the miraculously un-miked voices.
Who, after all, doesn’t want to see Lesley Garrett in a housekeeperly flurry of underwear, or enjoy a household in perfectly timed uproar, insult and deception, being raided by glitterimg soldiery with rifles poised and everyone closing the act with a crazedly entanglled mass chorus about headaches and catastrophe?
Oh, and there’s Don Basilio’s hat to marvel at. And the Don Alonso shoes. Treat after treat. And the music….
Box office Eno.org to 29 feb
Best availability 27th, tickets down to 25 quid, and none of them reaching the worst west-end lunacy.
Rating 5
theatreCat 