Certain things, it seems, will always be with us: social inequality, the DFS sale and Giles Havergal’s production of The Barber of Seville, which has been steadily rotating through Opera North’s repertoire since 1986. Time for a reboot, surely?
This sumptuous, rococo production was fairly old-school when it started, though Havergal still manages to invest each revival with an eye for comic detail. There’s a great cliche-buster in the ubiquitous Largo as the stressed factotum reads the name on a fistful of envelopes: “Figaro. Figaro. Figarofigarofigaro…”
The production has functioned as a launchpad for a number of careers, and here displays a balanced blend of young talent and familiar old favourites. Nicholas Watts is sufficiently fresh-faced to make Count Almaviva’s disguise as a student seem entirely plausible; and though he doesn’t gain absolute purchase on the more florid passages he is otherwise the ideal Rossini tenor, bright, breezy and pleasingly unforced.
Gavan Ring’s Figaro sports the world’s flounciest bolero jacket and a dodgy moustache, making him quite the last person you would entrust with a haircut. But he displays a natural, nicely sardonic baritone and has all the patter off pat.
Yet it is the bright young mezzo Katie Bray who really impresses here, showing both the emotion and colour of voice to support Rosina’s challenging range. The finest Rosinas must alternately resemble both a flute and a clarinet: Bray’s voice has scope to develop further, but she’s not far off that scale.
Stuart Stratford conducts felicitously and as the pair of old buffers, Basilio and Bartolo, Alastair Miles and Eric Roberts put in the kind of dyspeptic, jowl-waggling performances you’d expect, which is both a virtue and a reminder that a production dating back to the era of power dressing and Top Gun is not quite as diverting as it used to be.
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