(Published at The Telegraph’s blogs website on April 6th, 2012)
As Sir Thomas Beecham once said, you should try everything once, except incest, Morris dancing and an evening in with Britain’s Got Talent. OK, perhaps he didn’t put it quite like that, but I like to think that, were he around today, he wouldn’t think twice about adding ITV’s weekly extravaganza of exploitation and mediocrity to his list of exclusions. As the premier showcase and facilitator for the nation’s indecent obsession with getting on the telly and becoming famous for failing to do anything remotely noteworthy, it has elevated tackiness to an art form.
new production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, which opened at the Hackney Empire on Thursday night, is, at first glance, a highly conventional affair. Set firmly in Beaumarchais’ late 1700s, with contemporary sets and costumes, and eschewing any extraneous business, it is a straightforward narrative of young love’s triumph over elderly Machiavellian scheming. If you think that sounds a little worthy and just a bit dull then think again, for this is a show that grabs the audience’s attention and holds onto it from start to finish, so accomplished is it in its wit and invention.
Opera’s new production of The Barber of Seville opens on 8th March at the Hackney Empire. It is directed by Thomas Guthrie, whose second production this is for the company following his well-received Fairy Queen last year. A former ROH Young Artist, he may be unique in that he enjoys successful parallel careers as both a singer and a director. Acknowledging that he was not originally enamoured with Rossini’s opera buffa, considering it to be a piece of froth often weighed down with extraneous business, his opinion changed when he had the opportunity to work on the Royal Opera House’s current staging. He worked alongside the production’s creators, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, during its original run, and subsequently assistant directed a revival.
ever wonders what has become of his much travelled egg, he could have located it last Saturday evening at the Royal Opera House, where it was masquerading as a performance that had much to commend it but was ultimately undone by some unbalanced casting.
remarkable at Cadogan Hall on Friday night: those Medieval transmutationists weren’t barking mad after all – alchemy is real. Take one South Korean soprano, one solo flautist, add a light dusting of French froth, and pure, gleaming gold will miraculously appear. The downside seems to be that if you don’t get the formula quite right, you’re stuck with something a bit nearer to lead for most of the evening.
