Seattle Opera’s “Barber of Seville” & the Love of Comedy

Sarah Coburn as Rosina in Seattle Opera’s Barber of Seville (Photo: Rozarii Lynch)

First, yes, this is the one with the “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro” part. 

There’s a lot more to like about Seattle Opera’s Barber of Seville  (through January 29 at McCaw Hall), and even more to laugh at, thanks to the comedic inventiveness of stage director Peter Kazaras. It’s a generous, warm-hearted show that fills McCaw Hall with equal parts laughter and the vocal acrobatics of composer Rossini’s score. (On Sunday, January 23, there’s a Family Day matinée, where with the purchase of a full-price ticket, you can add up to four $15 student tickets.)

Wednesday night’s audience even loved the rotating tri-cornered set (from John Stoddart), which gives you cutaway views of Dr. Bartolo’s ivy-covered villa, bathed in Duane Schuler’s light, from dawn’s citrusy glow to sunset’s deepening oranges.

You might be surprised to learn that this is only the third time that Seattle Opera has presented such a popular show during General Director Speight Jenkins’s tenure, but Jenkins has always put cast first, and a good Barber requires everything from coloratura to patter specialists. In 1992, he brought Vladimir Chernov to town for Figaro, recalling fondly that Chernov “had everything: lightness of touch, humor, perfect articulation of the Italian, and easy high notes.” The 2000 production starred Earle Patriarco, and John Del Carlo and John Relyea.

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Lawrence Brownlee as Count Almaviva and José Carbó as Figaro in Seattle Opera’s Barber of Seville (Photo: Rozarii Lynch)

As if to outdo himself in that department, last night’s revelations included bel canto star Lawrence Brownlee (Count Almaviva), Sarah Coburn (Rosina), and José Carbó (Figaro)–and the maid Berta. Sally Wolf turned ”Il vecchiotto cerca moglie” into a show-stopping, post-menopausal lament on the foolishness of love, and the sting being old and still wanting the thrill of it.

(Jenkins has double-cast the leads, so you have a choice between lovely soprano Sarah Coburn or lovely mezzo Kate Lindsey, tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Nicholas Phan, and baritones José Carbo and David Adam Moore.)

Comedy, you remember, is “Tragedy plus time,” or “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” That’s the story here as well, in that the fun of the scheming masks the fact that this is one the first major choices of adulthood that Rosina wil make–but she doesn’t truly get to make it. Coburn makes the most, instead, of Rosina’s refusal to go quietly, rolling her Rs and threatening to become a viper.

Dr. Bartolo (Patrick Carfizzi, sort of a pint-sized Jeffrey Tambor, a blustery foghorn who’s more stolidly middle-aged than aged) is young Rosina’s guardian and wants to marry her for her money before she’s of age. Count Almaviva (in Brownlee’s telling, a deeply infatuated, bossy youth) is smitten with Rosina, but doesn’t want to let her know he’s of noble estate in case she’s a social climber. And jack-of-all-trades Figaro (Carbó, puffing his chest out and strutting, adding some bombast to his tone) is hoping for a way to make some money out of the Count. 

Within the opera, everything is light and charming, but the tragedy of this false “choice” that Rosina has before her haunts still. Brides-to-be still get cold feet. And then, too, cynical realists Mozart and da Ponte, in The Marriage of Figaro, carried out the reality of Rosina marrying a man she hardly knows on the basis of his instant infatuation with–and subsequent stalking of–her. You don’t have to look at Rossini’s opera this way, it’s just part of the enjoyment of opera over time, that you get these layers. 

Even Barber ends with Almaviva demanding that this moment of joy endure (in the famously difficult “Cessa di più resistere,” which Brownlee not only sings but acts his way through), as if he has some intimation that it won’t. I want to argue a little for this reading because it adds more context to those high notes–they’re not just representative of the extremity of love but of the extremity of what love wants, for things to always be this way. Vocal elaboration is a way of stopping time; an aria puts pause on a moment to begin with, the hopping from note to note is an intensifier. 

If you’re a first-time opera-goer, or a 20-year-subscriber, this may hit you differently, but it will hit you. Director Kazaras has Carbó, as Figaro, burst from a seat in the hall–he becomes an expression of our desire to work things out on stage. It’s one of many touches that Kazaras adds (a little bit with David S. Hogan as Ambrogio, going downstairs with an umbrella, is classic Monsieur Hulot, and of a piece with the music to boot), so many little character- and life-revealing bits that give you the sense there’s not one second (or character) unaccounted for. Kazaras is supported in the pit by Dean Williamson, who keeps the fun in Rossini’s music while not letting it run away with the show, finding nuance and subtlety that was new to me.