Elizabeth – On Site Opera’s latest operatic adventure is a hit! Not only does this version of “The Barber of Seville” take place at a gorgeous location—the Fabbri Mansion (the House of the Redeemer) on the tony Upper East Side—but this Barber is a lesser known one, by Giovanni Paisiello, making it all the more appealing than the tried and true Rossini version. The story is the same, but the music is not which made for a fresher experience.
Opening night was absolutely perfect weather-wise as the audience sat in the courtyard as Count Almaviva alternated between scheming with his friend Figaro and serenading the beautiful young Rosina, who would lean out a second floor window when her guardian Dr Bartolo was away. David Blalock’s Almaviva was alluring; I loved his voice. Monica Yunus is a gorgeous voiced, spunky soprano. There was such light and life in her eyes; it was absurd to imagine her as Dr Bartolo’s bride.
As the action unfolded in the courtyard I couldn’t help but notice passersby stopping to watch, and neighbors across the street coming to sit on their stoops. “Offstage” was literally east 95th street just outside the gate of the Fabbri Mansion and it was nice to see the intermix of public and private and the general public’s delight to happen upon an opera in a courtyard on the Upper East Side.
In the corner of the courtyard Geoffrey McDonald deftly conducted the eight-piece orchestra which included use of a guitar, played by Figaro himself, the very strong and multitalented Andrew Wilkoske, at points. I particularly liked the clever use of guitar for the recitatives as opposed to harpsichord. And I’m a super harpsichord person so that says a lot. The opera was sung in its original Italian while English subtitles were projected onto a screen in the corner. As the action moved upstairs to the library, so did the audience. Being in the actual scene itself lent an intensity and urgency that you don’t experience sitting in an audience in front of a stage. When Almaviva sneaks into Rosina’s room and you know Bartolo is coming, I was so close I found it hard not to jump into the action and help him. Rod Nelman brought a touch of comedy to the jealous Bartolo and his strong bass-baritone filled the library of the Mansion Fabbri.
Director Eric Einhorn’s tight clever blocking made use of every facet of the unique spaces. Both the courtyard outside and the library, where Almaviva and Figaro actually made an entrance through the fire escape at one point.
The rich voiced baritone Andrew Wilkoske was a humorous Figaro. And the bass-baritone Isaiah Musik-Ayala was great as the groveling Don Basilio. Rounding out the cast were Bartolo’s two servants, sung with verve by baritone Benjamin Bloomfield and soprano Jessica Rose Futran.
Next up for On Site is the continuation of their Figaro Project with Marcos Portugal’s “The Marriage of Figaro” in 2016. Get your tickets now as this year’s Barber run ends tonight and has been sold out for weeks.
Shawn – I had never seen Giovanni Paisiello’s Barber of Seville which predates Rossini’s by almost 35 years. In reading up on it before the show this week I learned a great deal. For example Mozart was influenced by the huge success of Paisiello’s Barber, in 1782, which led him to write the The Marriage of Figaro, the first of his three collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, four years after Paisiello’s Barber and two years after French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro which was the sequel to his Barber of Seville of nine years previous upon which the Paisiello Barber is based.
This all sounds totally confusing and it was to me at first so I will break it down.
Beaumarchais’ play The Barber of Seville opened in France in 1775. Paisiello’s opera version of Barber opened in 1782.
Beaumarchais’ sequel to Barber, The Marriage of Figaro, opened in 1784 after many revisions and battles with Royal censors over its satiric take on the aristocracy. Mozart and Da Ponte’s uber famous operatic version of Marriage of Figaro opened in 1786.
Beaumarchais final installment in his “Figaro Trilogy”, The Guilty Mother, opened in 1792 but failed to find the huge success of the earlier two installments.
In 1799 Portuguese composer Marcus Portugal premiered his own operatic version of The Marriage of Figaro.
In 1816 Rossini premiered his now famous operatic version of The Barber of Seville which, for the record, was widely derided by supporters of Paisiello, but of course became a huge hit.
FINALLY in 1966, French composer Darius Milhad premieres his opera version The Guilty Mother, the final installment of Beaumarchais “Figaro Trilogy”, in Geneva.
There may be a couple other Beaumarchais opera treatments out there that I missed but this is the basic breakdown spanning nearly 200 years.
Just for the record, Beaumarchais is listed in Wikipedia as a “playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary(both French and American)” so I obviously need to study his life more.
On Site Opera’s production of Paisiello’s Barber is the first installment of their Figaro Projectwhich will offer lesser known operatic adaptations of the Beaumarchais trilogy of Figaro plays. Paisiello’s Barber will be followed up with Marcus Portugual’s version of The Marriage of Figaro in June 2016. And finally they will produce Darius Milhaud’s The Guilty Mother in summer 2017 “in celebration of Milhaud’s 125th Birthday.”
All, like this week’s Barber, will be performed at unique sites across New York City, with next summer’s Barber taking place at 632onHudson “a beautifully eclectic triplex space in Chelsea that will become Count Almaviva’s summer palace.”
I have little to add to my companion’s take on the show above. It is indeed a hit and I enjoyed it immensely. Director and On Site Opera Founder, Eric Einhorn continues to display a genius for transforming sites into living, breathing immersive theatrical environments. And lighting designer Shawn Kaufman’s simple yet highly effective lighting schemes in the library of the Fabbri Mansion shows just how much can be done with so little.
The small crowds gathering at the gate of the Fabbri mansion to listen in to the opera spoke volumes. Children, joggers, dog walkers and people of all kinds stopped to listen. I even saw one person hang up on a call and put away their phone to stop and listen. And there can be no greater compliment than that in this day and age.
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