The city of Pesaro is the 2024 Capitale Italiana della Cultura, adding luster to its 2017 Unesco designation as a Città Creativa. All this calls for celebration, and that was the addition of a fourth production to the festival’s usual three — and no opera is more celebratory than Il barbiere!
It was the reprise of Pier Luigi Pizzi’s splendid 2018 production, a mise en scène that celebrated Rossini’s most famous opera with great elegance and sophistication. His singers dwelt on Rossini’s finely wrought vocal lines, gracefully accomplishing their musical elaboration. The comic situations were subtly conceived and carefully executed. It was an exquisite production.
Pier Luigi Pizzi, now age 94, originally studied architecture. He began his theatrical life as a set and costume designer, working with the storied Italian theater directors Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi, the first directors to impose a strong, purely theatrical perspective onto their stagings of both theater and opera. Both directors worked in a highly distilled style, the theatrical structure of the drama emerging in absolute clarity, first and foremost.
Pizzi was imbued with this esthetic. Later, at age 47, he took on the staging of operas as well designing. In such esthetic was this 2018 production. Here is a detailed review:
No longer a tightly controlled, directorial statement, this 2024 reprise became a romp for the singers, and a vanity piece for conductor Lorenzo Passerini who stood cockily before the Orchestra Sinfonica Gioachino Rossini, applauding the singers’ showpieces (lightly tapping his baton onto his opened hand), when not dancing grandly in front of the orchestra, urging it to ever greater fortes.
The singers gave their all, and then more. Fiorello, sung by Italian baritone William Corrò, sang so softly in his “Piano, pianissimo” entrance with Lindoro’s accompanists that he was inaudible, though later we learn he has a big, booming voice. Figaro, sung by Polish baritone Andrzfej Filonczyk (lead photo, right), strutted his beefcake catwalk tour so cockily that one almost overlooked that he was bellowing. Lindoro, sung by American tenor Jack Swanson (lead photo, left), knew he had big competition for being the fastest and loudest, thus his fioratura in the Figaro/Lindoro “All’idea di qual metal” was compromised, though he accomplished his final “Cessa di piu resistere” with requisite virtuosity.
Rossina, sung by Russian mezzo-soprano Maria Kataeva, was a very presentational creature, making one think of Carmen. A fine moment in the Pizzi mise en scène is the storm scene, imagined by Pizzi to be Rosina imagining that Lindoro has betrayed her trust. Such vulnerability proved well beyond Mlle. Kataeva’s emotional range.
Bartolo was sung by Italian buffo Carlo Lepore, veteran of many Pesaro productions, here up against the greatly overblown Basilio of Italian buffo Michele Pertusi.
All the artists of the production have established careers on major stages. I am bewildered by these performances, evidently sanctioned by Pizzi who oversaw the production with his longtime associate Massimo Gasparon.
Here is yet another Pesaro Barbiere, this one from 2014. Though far from finding the theatrical perfection of Pizzi’s 2018 Barber, it was of great interest, and wonderful fun, famed Figaro Florian Sempey in his role debut!
Michael Milenski
Vitrifrigo Arena, Pesaro, Italy. August 18, 2024. All photos copyright Amati Bacciardi, courtesy of the Rossini Opera Festival