Virile: Lawrence Brownlee as Almaviva

There is a collective sigh of pleasure, then a giggle. Katharina Thalbach has given the Deutsche Oper audience just what it wanted.

Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia plays here in a picturesque Spanish village, complete with crescent moon and street café (sets: Momme Röhrbein), and, ooh, neon drinks advertisements. As the overture progresses, the delights increase: a drunken monk leads a live donkey onto the stage, and the entire public coos audibly: “Aaaaaaaaw!” Bicycles, a motor-scooter, then a vintage sports car and, finally, a tractor pulling a vast container which will later unfold into a stage-within-the-stage: each coup is greeted with rapture.

Star actor/director Thalbach’s all-singing, all-dancing Barbiere is just what the Deutsche Oper needs. The theatre will fill over Christmas, and everyone from children to grandparents will leave happy.

Almost everyone.

The ecstatic applause at the end of Sunday’s premiere was tempered by some vociferous booing. Thalbach has already staged half a dozen operas, but she still makes basic mistakes. Too often, the entire cast dances on the beat, like embarrassed teenagers pretending to have fun. And most of the time, there are at least five stories being enacted simultaneously in various corners of the stage. There are so many busy supernumeraries that the whole thing looks like “Where’s Wally?”, a children’s book version of “spot the opera plot!” Thalbach, like so many directors who come to opera from the world of theatre, is clearly worried that the audience would get bored if left alone with the music. Hence the donkey and the tractor.

It is light, colourful, diverting, and frenetic. Most of the audience loves it. And the singing is excellent. The two lead men alone command the stage with superlative skill. Lawrence Brownlee’s Almaviva is a virile, athletic, burnished performance, bel canto at its best; and Markus Brück makes a wonderfully comic, clever, musical and charismatic Figaro. Jana Kuruvová is a pretty Rosina with a flawless coloratura and a core of steel, and the smaller roles are well-cast. Under Enrique Mazzola’s direction, the ensembles are mostly together, the singers can always be heard, and the orchestra is sometimes able to approximate an Italian sound.

If the depth of vocal craftsmanship and subtlety were matched on all levels, this would be a perfect evening. As it is, this slick crowd-pleaser falls consistently short of the mark. ()

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