Friday night John took me to see "The Barber of Seville" at San Diego Opera. It was my first show at SDO in some time, and their opener for the season. We had great seats in the orchestra section although I find the Civic Theater to be problematic in its continental seating. Heaven help the people who are seated in the single digit seats, for they must traipse across leg after leg after old-lady purse with no end in sight. The theater has no center aisle which makes it impossible to come in right at curtain if you aren't sitting on the end. I also find the orchestra section of that theater to have some massive dead spots. The acoustics on the ground floor of the Civic are negligable which is unfortunate when going to the opera.
Be that as it may, I enjoyed the show. The Sets/Costumes were from New York City Opera, and the direction was Lotfi Mansouri. Lotfi is interesting director. I find that he pulls out some incredible bits (especially humor) from his principals, has a great sense of timing with them, but when it comes to chorus work I think he must lose interest. His chorus work is fairly straight-forward, a little banal. I think it is also, unfortunately, a byproduct of our money-less arts world where chorus time is cut down drastically to save bucks. Good chorus staging takes a lot more time than most opera companies can afford to provide. Be that as it may, I wish that he could have pulled them out of their straight lines and boring formations more often.
The singers were great. Christopher Maltman, handsome Brit, as Figaro, and Eduardo Chama, little Argentinian man with the most pliable face I've seen in some time, as Bartolo, were terrific actors but sometimes had trouble sending their voices over the orchestra in that acoustically-challenged house. Kirstin Chavez was a charming Rosina - a natural role for her, having done Carmen so many times, because, though Rosina's station is different, she has the same fire. Lawrence Brownlee played Count Almaviva. He is a little guy with a big fat voice. He'll play the same role at the Met soon as well. The director of the company predicts great things for Mr. Brownlee and I can see why. He has some body issues, but these will be solved as he works with good directors.
The star of the evening, in my book, however, was Ferruccio Furlanetto, who played Don Basilio, Tall, Italian man with the largest hands I've ever seen, his voice boomed out over the others, had greater inflection, and greater timbre than anyone on the stage. He had perfect comic timing and my eye was drawn to him whenever he was on stage. The program states that the only two places he sings in the U.S. are here and the Met. How lucky I was to hear him.
A good time. Makes me miss working at San Diego.
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