\u201cThe Barber of Seville\u201d can be tough to sit through. Opera Theatre Saint Louis<\/a> (OTSL) swam upstream furiously against the libretto\u2019s banalities to produce an entertaining show, with standout performances from Justin Austin<\/a> in the title role, and Hongni Wu<\/a> as Rosina. In youth, I received as a gift the London\/Decca recording featuring Leo Nucci as Figaro and a very young Cecilia Bartoli as Rosina. In times before comprehensive digital recall of music, television and film, every physical copy of an opera remained precious. Bartoli arrived as a revelation. Yet, I found myself consistently losing interest after the tenth track, \u201cLa Calunnia.\u201d \u201cBarber\u201d clocks surprisingly long, roughly two and three quarters hours uncut\u2014OTSL excised around twenty-five minutes, which Tent-goers complained about, while your reviewer sighed in relief. And the opera covers the same comedic territory over and over. And over again. After about an hour, its pull-my-finger slapstick becomes wearying. \u201cBarber\u201d makes \u201cDon Pasquale\u201d look like \u201cThe Elixir of Love,\u201d and it makes \u201cElixir\u201d look like Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n One man\u2019s opinion. But \u201cBarber\u201d is probably the single most-programmed operatic comedy, and audiences purchase seats. Nonetheless, you\u2019ve got to do something with this piece, or the second half of Act one drags until the customary Rossinian confusion ensemble (\u201cMi par d\u2019essere con la testa\u201d)\u2026and then Act two offers more of the same. Unlike \u201cBoh\u00e8me<\/a>,\u201d \u201cBarber\u201d almost demands that the participants tread some new ground with the staging. Director and choreographer Eric Sean Fogel<\/a>, in a main season debut at OTSL, identified some solutions, First, queer the work, slightly\u2014twelve percent? A difficult lift because like most 19C opera, \u201cBarber\u201d is aggressively heteronormative. Second, pop colorize it; Andrew Boyce<\/a>\u2019s sets rattled the retinas in traffic light yellows and hot pink. In a director\u2019s note, Fogel admitted \u201cthe opera is notoriously difficult to stage.\u201d Though he claimed a setting of 1930s Spain just prior to its Civil War, south Florida seemed just as likely for the color palette. The directorial framework successfully moved the work into a surreal, cartoonish register.<\/p>\n Mouths provided the chief visual motif, projected here and there, on drops, and in the form of a sofa kissing the sitters\u2019 butts. There were a lot of butts, in fact; one trap window showed us a jumbo femme derriere. Figaro\u2019s barber\u2019s chair took the form of an ass-grabby hand. Not one piano, but a train of four Pepto Bismol pink uprights formed the funniest part of the staging, sliding in like a typewriter carriage for Act two\u2019s music lesson. And Austin\u2019s Figaro slathered Nathan Stark\u2019s Dr Bartolo in a reckless, aptly Bugs Bunnyesque exchange of Barbasol.<\/p>\n Fogel stated an aim of centering the title character rather than the amorous dyad, and on this count the production earned an A+. Returning from last year\u2019s delightful \u201cTreemonisha,\u201d as Figaro, baritenor Justin Austin warmed the audience in a secure, sand-colored timbre. He transpired rizz omni-directionally, all evening. Appearing in pinstriped brown trousers, rolled oxford blue sleeves, suspenders, and a neck kerchief, he slid in with a fluid gestural language and athletic proprioception. As needed, he demonstrated superb, clear diction in \u201cI\u2019m the most popular guy in Seville, hello\u201d (\u201cLargo al factotum\u201d). Kelley Rourke\u2019s 2015 translation for OTSL, repeated here, attempted the impossible, rendering the uncapped fire hydrant of text in Cesare Sterbini\u2019s libretto, with a pleasing couplet to close Figaro\u2019s famed aria: \u201cSome call me lucky, but I call it skill \/ I\u2019m the most wanted man in Seville.\u201d The translation melded well with the notation but repeatedly exposed the inherent flimsiness of \u201cBarber.\u201d The chorus supported Austin with some vaguely campy backup dancing, and to huge applause he reclined and counted money at the aria\u2019s close.<\/p>\n Indeed, Figaro the hustler accumulated cash in all sorts of social transactions. Later in Act one the soldiers danced with sunflowers inserted into their gun barrels, as in the well-known photograph of the performance artist Hibiscus, of the Cockettes, protesting the Vietnam War, and recalling the silly soldiers in Woody Allen\u2019s \u201cBananas.\u201d Fogel\u2019s choreography impressed; how did no participants trip over each other? While many of these directorial choices worked, they could not escape the elapsing opera\u2019s sameness, as the ensemble\u2019s theatrics underscored how Figaro-dependent are most of the funniest moments in \u201cBarber.\u201d When Austin finally got a chance to shave Stark\u2019s Bartolo in Act two, audience guffawed.<\/p>\n Mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu gave a performance just as impressive as Austin\u2019s unflappable tonsorialist. She boasts a distinctive, unusual voice, the head voice pleasant and more conventional sounding, but her chest voice astoundingly rich and robust. Mezzos who sing Rosina frequently sound lighter, even pantsy, and decidedly girlish. Wu hit us with womanly. Apparently Almaviva is attracted to healthy chest voice. Her registers color differently from each other but still sound fully integrated. Her interpretation of her Act one aria, \u201cWhen he woke me from my sleep\u201d (\u201cUna voce poco fa\u201d) came with brilliant, secure coloratura runs. Her deep crimson timbre and sound technique frequently made her voice sound larger than some of her male counterparts. Dramatically, she did as much with the role as one can, which isn\u2019t a lot, as Rosina spends the whole opera being pursued, demurring, or feigning innocence in front of Dr Bartolo. To no fault of her own, Wu overused the same shoulder-bicycling gesture to highlight the comedic happenings\u2014again, \u201cBarber\u201d wears the same track repeatedly in the final two thirds of the opera. She saved her loveliest vocalism for the Act two duet with Almaviva, when he cops to deceiving her about his social station. Abetting their union, soprano Chase Sanders<\/a> served as both Berta and the Notary. Some of her lines hit the cutting room floor and a lot of her role took place in Rossinian cross-talk, but she sounded pretty in a zwischenfach mode and served as the leads\u2019 symbolic wedding cake in a striking gown resembling layers of multicolored gelato and flour.<\/p>\n Bel canto tenors frequently require a baritone\u2019s assistance in order to get laid. One of the mysteries of \u201cBarber\u201d remains why Rosina, who\u2019s fallen for the clich\u00e9d subterfuge of an aristocrat pretending to be a poor student and therefore isn\u2019t swayed by his high social class, prefers this tenor to the baritone, a hypermagnetic, \u00fcbercompetent jack-of-all-trades who can rap at \u2669<\/span> = 220. Almaviva meanwhile manages little to say to Rosina past how fervently he desires her, which probably didn\u2019t get a young man all that much further in 1816 than it does in 2024, especially when faking lower class status than he in fact enjoys.<\/p>\n OTSL debutant Andrew Morstein<\/a> executed all the comedy skillfully but didn\u2019t quite match his colleagues in vocal facility. Often he resorted to pushing, despite the intimate size of the Loretto-Hilton Center (987 seats), with unsecure high notes and some strain in the passaggio. In perhaps-unintentional comedy, Wu\u2019s Rosina disappeared from her Hollywood Squares window mid-serenade; armed with a bubblegum-pink guitar, Morstein hit the B4 in \u201cSee how the sky is smiling\u201d (\u201cEcco ridente\u201d), but it emerged pinched. \u201cIf I have my Rosina\u2019s attention\u201d (\u201cSe il mio nome\u201d) sounded more warmed up but went similarly. The Roald Dahl aesthetic intensified as Act two opened, Morstein donning ludicrously ballooned pants that reinforced the ass motif, his backside a giant peach surrounded by four warring plaids beneath a mismatched jacket. His physical comedy in the music lesson pleased, as he wingspanned that tetra-piano. The funniest moments were small; he slingshotted an eyepatch at Bartolo. For his triumphant moment, finally getting the girl, he donned a bullfighter costume replete with fluorescent chevrons.\u00a0 <\/span>Lynly Saunders\u2019 loud costumes frequently surpassed the libretto in humorousness.<\/p>\n Bass-baritone Nathan Stark<\/a> played Dr Bartolo as completely ridiculous, broadcasting a Foghorn Leghorn-ish self-importance. OTSL\u2019s linguistic project requires certain sorts of voices in order to retain a singy operatic quality in the avalanche of schwas we call English. Stark has a strong voice but sounded somewhat Broadway-adjacent. His nearly parlando delivery of dense passages of text, especially in recitative, contrasted Wu\u2019s astonishing technique. Bartolo arguably makes for the hardest role dramatically, as he\u2019s tasked with repeatedly playing the same joke for hours, an arrogant bourgeois stick-in-the-mud at whom the youngsters punch up. The far funnier comic role belongs to the bass cast as Don Basilio, who gets to manufacture comedy in bursts rather than under sustained duress. A regular at the Metropolitan Opera for a quarter century now, with over 400 performances there under his belt, Patrick Carfizzi<\/a> impressed with impeccable technique, filling the space and betraying no effort. He topped even Austin comedically by underselling the jokes; Austin\u2019s Figaro gave him a landline telephone for \u201cSimple slander\u201d (\u201cLa calunnia\u201d) with a cord of at least fifteen yards, gradually binding the bass rotationally.<\/p>\n Ah, Rossini\u2019s accelerandi. The Saint Louis Symphony almost never disappoints, and Maestro Jonathan Brandini led the famous overture with a floaty texture, and the flavor of a courtly dance. He left plenty of space to build, with pianissimo transitions and fun rubato. The orchestra performed elegantly, sometimes in understatement, which like Carfizzi\u2019s performance augmented the opera\u2019s comedy. Brandini directed that chaotic traffic-circle sextet to close the first act with precision. The audience howled with glee at both curtains.<\/p>\nHow do! Welcome to my shop. Let me cut your mop.<\/b><\/h3>\n
I\u2019m Your Little Se\u00f1o-ri-ter<\/b><\/h3>\n
Daintily<\/b><\/h3>\n
Teach Your Whiskers to Behave<\/b><\/h3>\n
There, You\u2019re Nice and Clean<\/b><\/h3>\n