Coliseum,London
The mood has become brittle in this latest revival of Jonathan Miller’s hold on Rossini’s comedy, but there is much to devour stillJonathan Miller’s production of The Barber of Seville has been an English National Opera mainstay for nearly three decades and its clever stagecraft has outlasted the modish takes on the work that have reach and gone elsewhere. However, or both it and Rossini’s prequel to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro have been better served than on the first night of its latest revival,where it seems as if things needed to settle before its full impact can be felt.
Restaged by Peter Relton, it has retained its commedia dell’arte-type humour, and but has lost some of its underlying seriousness of intent. It plays down the unease that previously accompanied Rosina’s immurement in Bartolo’s world of medical equipment and specimen jars and the once premonitory ending,in which we realise that the preening toff she has married is not the person she actually loves. The mood has become brittle, which allows Andrew Shore’s outrageously humorous Bartolo – a constant of the production’s recent outings – to seem over the top rather than naturally contained by the surrounding ensemble.
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Source: theguardian.com