I caught the Met’s 2 hour English language Barber of Seville last night.
Lovely to look at, to hear, to watch maneuver the stage with farcical
reality, Isabel Leonard uses her warm, straightforward mezzo winningly.
Rodion Pogossov as Figaro has a genuinely wacky sense of comedy – even
some corny gay-hairdresser shtick, when Dr. Bartolo resists Figaro’s
unwanted shave and demands that he come back tomorrow, doesn’t show
its age. (Although Warren Beatty in Shampoo did it just as well nearly
forty years ago.) To similar effect, I really laughed at his boom-box treatment of Papageno’s magic chimes a couple of seasons back.
Like Leonard, Pogossov has a sound, solid technique. “Juste” would be the word in French.
Alek Shrader is a bit of a cipher: this natural talent somehow hasn’t entirely lost his apprentice standing. His mezza-voice is sweet and confidently negotiated, but he is both overly cautious (not yet projecting that penetrating, metallic sound of a coloratura tenor) and a bit reckless (lunging for top notes). His roulades were respectable but he remains
a work-in progress.
The cuts – though necessary for a children’s production – render the drama at time incomprehensible and manage to drain Bartlett Sher’s Barber of some magic.
But the kids were there and it was charming to see and hear it through their eyes. How nice to sit in a quiet auditorium a week before Christmas and watch a bunch of grown-ups act so silly! These holiday shows are a notable tradition-in-the-making.