Love may drive the plot of The Barber of Seville, but as an early line in Gioachino Rossini’s comic opera notes, “Money works wonders.”
So it is for the characters and their actions, where almost everything about the affairs of the heart is transactional in one way or another. Disguises, a flurry of misguided and purloined love letters, a weaselly would-be snitch bought off with a flashy ring, and assorted bragging and backstabbing pile up through the libretto based on a play by the French writer Beaumarchais. The shenanigans in this 210-year-old bel canto repertory staple don’t feel all that distant from our own age of duplicity and self-dealing.
Director Emilio Sagi’s production of Barber, first seen at the War Memorial Opera House in 2013, returned on Thurs., May 28, in a lively but uneven revival from San Francisco Opera. Two different casts play in rotation through June 21.
In an opera full of vain, foolish, and calculating men, it’s somehow fitting that one of only two women onstage should give the richest and most textured performance. Making her U.S. debut on opening night, Russian mezzo-soprano Maria Kataeva made Rosina a delectable chameleon — a swoony lover one moment, an antic clown the next and then a knowing mock-innocent. Her sensuous voice, with its purring warmth in the lower register and a steely top, was form-fitted to the buffeted but determined heroine.
It helped, too, that Kataeva moved so liquidly, even in a layered, multicolored gown (designed by Pepa Ojanguren) that swallowed up most of her body. The singer leaned into the swirling, sultry flamenco dances choreographed by Nuria Castejón that cropped up fitfully now and then.
As Rosina’s blustering guardian bent on marrying his pretty young ward, baritone Renato Girolami as Doctor Bartolo gave the other standout performance on opening night. Bolting around the stage in a perpetual, sputtering fury, he looked on the verge of exploding at any minute.
But when he launched into one of Rossini’s tongue-torturing patter songs or floated into a falsetto, Girolami was as nimble as a hummingbird. He even made a small comic triumph of falling out of a chair. It all added up to a gratifying blend of acting and vocal dexterity.
Otherwise, conductor Benjamin Manis led a routine performance in the pit, marred by occasional balance problems with the other principals, whose results were mixed.
South African tenor Levy Sekgapane, in another U.S. debut, got off to a rocky start as Count Almaviva, Rosina’s suitor. Early on, the bel canto ornaments came off as superficially applied, and his voice never fully bloomed.
Joshua Hopkins, as the matchmaking barber Figaro, brought some choice rolled r’s to his singing, but he moved stiffly and lacked charisma. Riccardo Fassi sang the finicky music teacher Don Basilio a bit too cautiously. As the cigarette-smoking maid, Berta, Mary Hoskins filled in capably for Catherine Cook.
But what this “Barber” lacked in musical terms, the direction and handsome physical production delivered.
A diagonally raked set by Llorenç Corbella left a dark, open wedge beneath the playing surface on the stage right side. Performers slithered in and out of it, as if coming and going from some subterranean, subconscious well — a weirdly amusing effect.
That same stage-right area was covered in a busily undulating sheet at one point, in a witty illustration of rumor’s enveloping power. All was white and bright in the Spanish sunlight, right down to the crisp soldiers’ uniforms worn by the men of the San Francisco Opera Chorus. Their disciplined singing had an eager shine.
Sagi kept the show moving and the visual surprises coming. At 3 hours and 15 minutes this Barber rarely lagged, and the men never stopped spinning on the wheel of love.
