I miss having wavy dark hair and all the little delights that came with it: The smell of fruited shampoos, handfuls of goop, the heated metal of a hairdryer, the vanity of pulling a comb out of my pocket to admire my reflection in a window, the ritual of going to the hair cuttery for a scalp massage and wash, the feminine chatter and the patter of “snip” “snip” “snip.” I miss the energetic hairdressers on fire. But what I miss most, is the confidence that came with (in my imagination) a hairdo like Elvis.
I guess this is what people mean when they talk about privilege. Being born with something that feels so natural that one cannot even imagine life without it or the myriad of pleasures it brings.
It was a sad road from feeling like Elvis to feeling like Mr. Clean; but, better to have combed and lost I suppose than never to have combed at all. Tonight will be the first barber I’ve seen in decades! He goes by the name Figaro and is the star of The Barber of Seville.
My friend Tom reminds me very much of this barber from Seville. He has a full head of hair, but that’s beside the point. Tom is always out and about fixing something. Whether wiring a washer, shingling a roof, or valiantly waking out of a dead sleep to fix a stranded flat tire, he’s always there to help. Like Figaro, he also plays guitar and can be quick to listen and offer advice. He is a mechanic with puns and rhymes too. This factotum of Delaware County concedes to just one failing “I can fix anything but a broken heart,” he says. I think his failing is still having never gone to see an opera, and cutting his hair short.
People come to Tom the same way Count Almaviva will come to the barber Figaro – with unapologetic desperation!
The count dreams of wooing young dynamo Rosina who is held under house arrest by an older guardian. For a little coin Figaro is more than happy to help concoct a plan of disguise and subterfuge to help the Count and Rosina be free of Bartolo.
Figaro is a bit less modest than my friend and declares himself a magnificent benefactor to humanity in his famous braggadocio aria “Largo al factotum (Figaro, Figaro, Fig-a-r-ooooo).” Here Andrew Garland gives the audience a wallop of fun and it is here my love of opera is reaffirmed. To witness the audience turn toward one another with big grins of recognition and admiration for this famous aria was a really sweet moment.
While Figaro is admittedly great, for me the greater heroine of the opera is Rosina. Tonight sung by Kelly Guerra.
Rosina has a fiery independence. While The Barber of Seville might not quite pass the Bechdal test, Rosina is a very strong figure in a fight for her own agency. Her unyielding spirit is expressed in the aria “Una voce poco fa”, and the podcast Aria Code has a great episode that features this particular aria from Act I that puts her circumstance and actions into a fuller context. Rosina is a triumph for Rossini’s opera.
Gioachino Rossini is the puckish hero of Bel Canto opera. His overarching goal is to write thrilling beauty into the human voice and bring pleasure for singers and audiences alike. Even beyond his own joyful writing he smartly leaves breathing room for the sopranos to add their own embellishments of fluting free styling colorutora. Here Kelly gets to revel in sound.
Rossini with the expectancy of a pony galloping out of the gate is just twenty four when he writes The Barber of Seville. Whoa Nelly 😉 A little less expected however is the wisdom he brings. For example, in the slander aria, he puts a brilliant interpretation to the libretto about the poisonous nature of gossip. The slander song is my favorite from this opera and is sung by Steven Condy, as Bartolo. The aria starts with a whisper and builds in momentum and pitch into sweeping stumbling syllabic patter that eventually erupts into a frothy hoofing stormy crescendo.
What a romp!
Tonight’s show from James Marvel incorporates a lot of commedia del’arte farce. The audience really enjoys the contemporary dances and I have to stifle a laugh when the character Basilio pretends to be sick and the other characters wear masks to reference the recent covid protocols.
A favorite joke for me happens during applauses when a secondary character will unknowingly stumble in, notice the applause, and take the bow meant for the singer. They did this more than once and if they did it a hundred more I would laugh every time.
Cheers to a happy ending and a final shout out to Caitlyn Costello Fain who played Berta with great physicality and fine voice, she was hard to look away from. The chorus and cast played, tumbled, and rolled. With gaiety and delightfully quick patters they gave me all smiles.
Now about this production! It has the art teacher in me rubbing my hands together like a super villain. Allow me to put on my art teacher’s hat and expound:
First, expect to see a lot of Picasso references this year as it is the 50th anniversary of his death. Tonights scenic design from Blair Mielnik references a style of art invented by Picasso called cubism. I read the stage as moving forward in time from the back to the front.
The distant background of the set shows a city. While not Picasso, it reminds me of a painting from the artist Duccio from the late gothic era in Italy when artists hadn’t quite mastered linear perspective. The naïveté has a similar disjointed geometry similar to early cubism of Picasso.
The middle ground of the stage references the very first cubist painting by Picasso “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” where he begins to distort the everyday by juxtaposing multiple perspectives. Here you can see trademarks like placing a frontal eye on a profile portrait and championing flattened planes (like Cezanne) giving his pictures an inconsistent perspective. In this early effort you can still make out the difference say between a person and a guitar. The middle ground of the stage is in this style.
Picasso continues to develop his new style with his friend Georges Braque to a degree where the subject is swallowed by its form. All the elements of traditional art are here, but the arrangement de-emphasizes the subject. It is here that the secondary performers on stage have their faces drawn to resemble the planes and gradations of this mature style.
Cubism eventually branches into two categories. Analytic cubism like above, and then synthetic cubism which incorporates collage elements into the painting. Like famously cutting out the back of a chair and gluing it down for texture. This is a radical departure from traditional painting that will be a paradigm shift going forward blurring the definitions of painting and sculpture – the real and the faux.
Cubism brings into question our subjective and limited view of reality, it recognizes that while traditional art mimics a singular perspective on it’s subject, cubism will show that actual reality is not so one sided. That the limitations of our senses and our narrow view of time and space obfuscate a greater reality.
It’s for good reason the Barber of Seville is referenced so much in popular culture. It is an amazing tribute to sound, love, and joy. A favorite reference of mine has always been A Rabbit in Seville and I made this comic in tribute to cubism and the barber.
For all the barbers. Thanks for the coifs, ducktails, mullets, Mohawks, perms, and fond remembrances of locks past.
So What’s The Barber of Seville all about? It is the first of three stories written by Caron de Beaumarchis. The second story in the collection is Mozart’s the Marriage of Figaro. The third doesn’t have an opera as famous as the first two, but the story is like the plot of from the movie “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.”
In this first story the independent Rosina is locked up by the old Bartolo who wants her for himself. Count Almaviva is a young noble who loves her and seeks the help of Figaro to help him meet and marry her. After many disguises and hijinks we can expect a happy ending from this opera buffa (comedy).
Notes on the Production:
Composer………………………………………….. Gioachino Rossini
Conductor………………………………………….. Rosen Milanov
Libretto……………………………………………… Cesare Sterbini
Count Almaviva……………..……………….….Nicholas Nestorak
Bartolo……………………………………………… Steven Condy
Rosina………………………………………………. Kelly Guerra
Figaro………………………………………………. Andrew Garland
Basilio…………………………………….………… Eric Delagrange
Berta………………………………………………… Kaitlyn Costello Fain
Fiorello / Ambrogio / Police sergeant…… Cody Müller
Princeton Festival Opera Chorus
Princeton Symphony Orchestra
Princeton Opera Festival
6/19/23