Written in less then a month in 1815, when Gioacchino Rossini was living in Rome, the Barber of Seville showed what a remarkable talent for the comic opera he had. He used the play by Caron de Beaumarchais and got Cesare Sterbini to write the libretto in order that he could create his magic. How glad the York audience must have been that Ellen Kent had brought the Ukrainian National Opera of Odessa to Britain in order that the provinces could experience good opera. The opera performed in Italian with English surtitles makes a fine evening out.
The fine voices of Oleg Lykhach, tenor, as Count Almaviva and Stanislav Trifanau as Figaro, his one time servant now successful barber, take the audience into the intrigues of the count wanting to catch the attentions of Rosina, sung by the splendid voice of Tatyana Spasskaya, mezzo soprano, the ward of Dr Bartolo, sung by Dmitry Pavlyuk, bass. To get some of the words out required the musical skill of a vocal contortionist, and is down to each singer’s years of dedicated practice. It is surprising what you can do with a love letter as the basis of a plot. The opera’s director Sergei Zuenko leads the fine voiced chorus about their sombre policing duties. Yarema Skybinski takes a well rehearsed orchestra through the memorable music of Rossini to delight the audience. The set was adequate, but the costumes were superb, both were designed by Natala Bevzenko-Zynkna.
It would be nice to have had a programme that was targeted at this particular performance rather the an out of date, catch all piece of writing lacking all the singer’s biographies. The only other hitch to the evening’s splendid entertainment was the sight of stage hands sitting about amid props and singers waiting to enter the stage through ill fitting side drapes — better stage management would have put this right — a pity.
How nice it was to visit a theatre and view an opera that was a memorable evening’s entertainment by its fine singing and music. The audience showed their appreciation at the end as the cast took many curtain calls and went home happily chattering about what they had just witnessed. © BA
“The Barber of Seville” is in York on the 16th June, 2002 and then continues an extensive tour of Britain.
