The Barber of Seville
Press reviews
the cheeky, the ingenious and the bizarre
Opera, 15th July 2005
Bampton Classical Opera’s stagings of comic opera are endless fun; invariably, you die of laughter. Yet Jeremy Gray’s and Gilly French’s sparkling ensemble has proved it has a nobler mission. In its captivating Oxfordshire Deanery garden setting its snappy productions juxtapose the cheeky, the ingenious and the bizarre with a genuine serious concern to make the music tell, engaging gifted young singers, capable orchestral players, and invariably charming the swallows overhead to join in.
They staged Paisiello’s Nina a few seasons ago; next season
they have Martin y Soler in their sights. This summer’s romp
was Paisiello’s Barber of Seville. The inevitable question was
whether it would remotely hold its own when weighed against Rossini’s
masterpiece, which eclipsed it three decades after it was first staged
in St.Petersburg in 1782 and Vienna in 1783 - three years before Mozart’s
Figaro.
Not really. Yet with a cast as zippy as this, pacy recitative and
a clutch of deft and daft ensembles, it was easy to see why Paisiello
had his champions. The real star of the evening was Gilly French’s
cleverly inventive rhymed translation – witty, lucid, always
audible and a boon to all the singers. Adrian Dwyer’s lightish
but characterful tenor and perky personality made a charming job
of Almaviva, from the early serenade to the lovely ‘Cara sei’ which
sets in train the bustling extended finale. Rebecca Bottone (Rosina)
is a scrumptious talent in the making: her upper register is clear
as a bell, her tone appealing right across the range, and amid the
poutings and yearnings she has the look of a versatile actress.
The Figaro, Nick Merryweather, has virtually grown up with the company. He’s not just an endlessly slick performer, blissfully adept at making Bampton’s zany kind of comedy work, but produces an admirably resonant baritone that impresses on every hearing. Other companies should catch him while they can.
The comedy, abetted by Paul Carey Jones’s delightfully awful, jealous Bartolo, was a hoot. This was Seville modestly rejigged (by Nigel Hook) as a holiday camp, with ubiquitous red- (or pink-)coats (two of whom have a glorious snoring and sneezing duet), rattling window boxes and television aerials (for a hilarious storm sequence) and unlikely oranges festooning the Bampton box hedges.
There was one slow set change, and just occasionally the stage business erred on the silly side; more often Gray displays a wonderful eye for paradox, sending things up much as Paisiello’s score does, which both typifies and impishly parodies the Italian style. Paul Hoskins directed an orchestra whose strings produced near-period precision. Not quite Rossini, inevitably, but far from a mere pallid predecessor.
Roderic Dunnett
back to previous page
back to top 
fast-moving, zestful and
colourful
Opera News, 15th July 2005
Bampton Classical Opera is a vivacious and talented young British ensemble which presents opera in a charming, picturesque Oxfordshire garden. It has a special gift for breathing fresh life into rare and neglected repertoire. Recently it successfully staged Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni and Salieri’s Falstaff. This summer it boldly set its sights on Paisiello’s The Barber of Seville.
Paisiello’s Barber, first staged in St.Petersburg in 1782 and seen in Vienna a year later, enjoyed huge popularity among Italian operas until Rossini’s upstaged it in 1816. Mozart learned from it; and it’s easy to see why. What it lacks in sophistication of plot and orchestration it makes up for by sheer energy and verve.
Much of the fun of Gilly French’s skilled, fluent rhyming translation focused, naturally, on the flimsy, humorous deceptions engineered by Figaro (Nicholas Merryweather) and Rosina (Rebecca Bottone) to outwit her jealous guardian, Bartolo (a delightfully gruff and crotchety performance from Paul Carey Jones), latterly invoking the connivance of Don Basilio (Marc Labonnette).
Jeremy Gray’s fast-moving, zestful and colourful production transferred the action from Seville to a British 1950s holiday camp, where Rosina is virtually imprisoned in Bartolo’s caravan. It was launched with a memorable patter aria from the characterful Figaro: Nick Merryweather is an impressive young baritone, with fine breath control, a lovely rounded tone, snappy delivery and a clever sense of timing. Although Figaro has a less prominent role lattterly than in Rossini, with much of the comedy falling on the amorous antics of the disguised Count, he instantly stamped his personality upon the role.
With a welter of rickety ladders, mislaid letters and improbable entries and exits, the action all looked deliciously unlikely, and fuelled many comic mishaps. Bampton’s orchestral strings excelled themselves under a sensitive and incisive new conductor, Paul Hoskins, the woodwind was stylish, and the harpsichordist, Kelvin Lim, brought marked flair to the well-paced recitatives.
Adrian Dwyer (as the disguised Almaviva) is a charming and appealing lyric tenor with good upper range who – not least in the Count’s early serenade – prised the maximum fun from the furtive wooing scenes. But it was Rebecca Bottone’s delivery of Rosina’s arias, especially Act 3’s ‘Gia riede primavera’, into which Paisiello inserts a meltingly lovely Siciliana, which finally stole the day. With a fluent delivery, beautiful tone across the range and an acting gift to match, Miss Bottone, daughter of the distinguished tenor Bonaventura Bottone, is clearly a soprano with a promising future.
Roderic Dunnett
back to previous page
back to top
Comic romp takes a holiday by the sea
The Times, 21 July 2005
There's one good reason to be grateful to Giovanni Paisiello for his 1782 setting of Beaumarchais’s comedy: Mozart saw it in Vienna and liked it so much that he decided to do the sequel. Paisiello’s Barber is a kind of shorthand version of the story, composed in telegraph style for the St Petersburg court because of Catherine’s short attention span.
It whips through the familiar tale with marginally shifted emphasis: Figaro fades away a bit after the first scene, the love story between Rosina and “Lindoro” comes to the foreground, following the sensibilities of the time, and Paisiello milks some human warmth out of the story where Rossini turns out a brittle commedia romp in his more famous version.
Jeremy Gray’s productions at Bampton Classical Opera, the cheapest and most cheerful of open-air summer venues, have always indulged his weakness for the surreal, and Seville here was replaced by an English seaside holiday camp of timeless ghastliness.
Bartolo, sung by Paul Carey Jones with the pressure-cooker madness of a Basil Fawlty, keeps Rosina locked in a caravan. Figaro’s peripatetic life has brought him here as an orange coat whose mower is handily equipped with barber’s pole, and he carries out his shaving assignments with a pair of garden shears.
So far so restrained, indeed. What follows is a madcap comedy done with the usual ensemble pizzazz that this little company musters: Nicholas Merryweather’s bluff and adept Figaro, Marc Labonnette the creepily prissy Basilio, Adrian Dwyer an attractive and hard-working Almaviva, and Rebecca Bottone as little Rosina, a pert tease singing with gorgeous clarity and focus.
The music is worth it, too: a vivid score brightly conducted by Paul Hoskins with a particular delight in violin scallopings and a compelling way with relentlessly accelerating finales.
There’s plenty of Leporello in Figaro’s music, a prototype Voi che sapete -type serenade and a final septet of restorative benediction, plus a cavatina for Rosina that makes you realise that she’s the same girl as Mozart’s: burbling woodwind, muted strings and the voice arching upwards with a soul and passion that lift this little comedy into some other place entirely.
Robert Thicknesse
back to
previous page
back to top
Seville party in the charm of Bampton
The Oxford Times 22 July 2005
Giovanni Paisiello's version of Beaumarchais' famous comedy was eclipsed in 1816 by Rossini's more celebrated adaptation. But here at Bampton, in the cosy intimacy of the Deanery garden, it sparkled brightly and convincingly against the occasional clatter of picnicker's knives and forks.
The new English translation by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray hit the mark too, delivered with droll appreciation by an energetic and enthusiastic cast, who somehow managed to convey the impression that this was, in fact, just a big family party. Therein, of course, lies Bampton's charm – and the reason so many come back for more, year after year.
As always, the production benefited from economical staging and visual fun. A cluster of promising young singers coped well with the demands of singing out of doors, although it did occasionally seem as if they were doing battle with the orchestra.
Adrian Dwyer, as Count Almaviva, fared the least well in this respect. Gorgeously honey-toned though his voice is, it could have done with a bit more oomph. Nicholas Merryweather's spirited Figaro demonstrated how it should be done; with verve, panache and vocal clout.
Rebecca Bottone was charming as Rosina, singing with clarity and dexterity, particularly in her pensive soliloquy at the end of act one as she ponders her predicament. Paul Carey Jones and Marc Labonnette turned in some fine comic performances as Bartolo and basilio respectively, while David Murphy and Jonathan Sells nearly outshone them in the small but hilarious roles of the two inaptly named servants, Mr Sprightly and Mr Lively.
Paisiello doesn't stretch his singers as much as Rossini, and his music doesn't have quite the same fizz. But it is elegant and charming, with plenty of melodic interest. The ensembles were particularly enticing, sung with great eloquence and joy.
Paul Hoskins conducted discreetly and conscientiously, ensuring that Paisiello's variations in mood and texture were fully realized. We just needed a better balance between orchestra and singers.
Nicola Lisle
back to
previous page
back to top
combines fun and sentiment to perfection
Manchester
Evening News 20 July 2005
Rossini’s Barber was booed off stage on its first night because of the established success of this opera – written in 1782 by Giovanni Paisiello.
The later version took over eventually, but you can see why the old one, which inspired Mozart to write his sequel, had its fans. Buxton Festival brought Bampton Classical Opera to perform it, in English and cleverly staged, last night.
Bampton is a lively company, using young singers and not short on entertainment. Director Jeremy Gray – with the supreme advantage of an audience that knows the story before he begins – has brought it into the 1950s and a Hi-de-hi style holiday camp.
It works: there are even a few gags (Gray and Gilly French’s own translation) linking up with the Figaro we know. But many of the attractive features are there because Paisiello did them first.
Best of all, the Rosina is the brilliant young soprano Rebecca Bottone. She has a lovely voice, a superb technique and acting ability which – especially in the act two scene with Adrian Dwyer's Almaviva – combines fun and sentiment to perfection.
Nicholas Merryweather is excellent as Figaro (the role can never be as good as Rossini made him, but you’d hardly know), and Paul Carey Jones enjoys being a Basil Fawlty-style Bartolo.
Paul Hoskins conducts with taste and affection for a score which, as it goes on, with its storm and its inventive ensembles, is surprisingly good.
Robert Beale
