Theatre: Review: The Barber of Seville
When I first arrived in Denver, I was surprised to find that the so-called “theatre district” was not a cluster of aging performance halls that had spread like a cancer over the decades, but rather a series of venues all arranged in the same building. The term seems to be referring, most or less, to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, an enormous complex with a distinctly Coloradan open-air quality.
Set in my East Coast ways, I had initially laughed at the term “theatre district” having been invoked. But it turns out that a performing arts hub that isn’t ancient has its benefits.
Earlier this week I went to see Opera Colorado’s The Barber of Seville, Rossini’s nineteenth-century opera about a Spanish count and the young woman he is desperately courting. The Ellie Caulkins Opera House, in which it was performed, is a gorgeous space with fine acoustics and an orchestra pit that looks more like a palace. Complete with all the “modern luxuries,” the hall has screens on the back of each chair on which subtitles can be viewed.
I have been to several operas before in DC, New York, and Connecticut, all of them in the classic (read: old) halls I described above. I realized, as the performance began, that I have never viewed an opera with running subtitles. Normally I had found it enough to read the synopsis and “read” the singers’ tones and body language.
It was nice to actually know what was being said during the opera, especially as the storyline for Barber is an amusing one. The woman the count desires has been locked up in her house by her “guardian,” an older man who has been a father figure for years but now wants to marry her to claim her inheritance (which I believe is a nineteenth-century way of saying, the man wants to get some booty). The count is forced to enlist the help of the local barber and engage in a series of schemes and disguises so as to trick the woman’s guardian and win her affections.
Knowing what the characters were saying certainly contributed to the mood of the audience, which was light and engaged, even after three hours. The opera, for many people, connotes dryness and boredom; and yet, like a Shakespearean comedy, those who really listen and understand know how much fun it can be. The actors did an excellent job at playing their comedic parts, especially the aging guardian Bartolo, played by Thomas Hammons, who somehow made the Woody Allenesque adoptive father-turned-creepy suitor role seem clumsily relatable.
At the same time, I did find the subtitles difficult to get used to as the performance began. When the curtain first opened, the characters assembled onstage began to sing, louder and louder, that the morning was silent; they then began to insist to one another that they all not make a sound, lest they wake the neighbors.
I couldn’t help but laugh in noting there was a full chorus singing about being silent, the mere existence of their message shattering its accuracy. It was the kind of silly thing that happens often in musicals, as well, in which the situation cannot be taken too literally if it is to make any sense. Reading the subtitles had in fact made the opening scene less easy for me to understand as it forced me to take the actions on the stage as literal as the words on the screen before me.
As the opera progressed the story delved further and further into absurdity. The cast did a spectacular job at pulling off physical comedy – a difficult thing in any live performance, much less an opera – especially during a hilarious slow-motion scene of fists rolling, guns pointing, and lovers embracing. The clever young heroine fell deeply in love with the count after gazing upon him but once, and knowing not yet of his wealth. She preferred, it would seem, any mysterious romance over the old man who tried to claim her and whom she already knew too well.
I couldn’t help but cynically suppose that the count and the woman were already at the height of their love; that knowing nothing about each other, having never kissed each other’s lips, having no real experience to form their understanding, they had in that moment only their own fantasies and their imaginations to create in the other whatever lover they desired. As they grew to really know each other, would they have anywhere to go but down? Was disappointment and failure to meet expectations not inevitable? Was there anything other than fantasy and hallucination to hold their affections together?
Recognizing this appeal for mystery, chaos, and the great unknown, I began to look less at the subtitles before me and instead to embrace the ironic clarity that comes with acknowledging the world doesn’t make sense. Perhaps the opera, like love, is better when we stop trying so hard to understand and instead enjoy it while it lasts.
The Barber of Seville runs on February 12th and 14th at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in downtown Denver. For tickets and information, please visit OperaColorado.org or call Ticketmaster at 1-800-982-2787.
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