Vocal yin and yang
Barber still the funniest opera

Friday, February 18, 2005
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey State Opera. Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). Alfredo Silipigni (conductor), Sean Fallen (tenor, Almaviva), Sean Anderson (baritone, Figaro), Mario Bertolino (baritone, Dr. Bartolo), Anna Tonna (mezzo-soprano, Rosina), Ryan Allen (bass, Don Basilio), Mariana Karpatova (mezzo-soprano, Berta), Sung Bae Ju (bass, Fiorello). Victoria Theater, NJPAC, Newark.

"The Victoria Theater at the NJPAC is just right for a opera like Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia." This was the premise of pre-performance lecturer James Sadewhite, who carefully led us to expect less than full-voice high notes and less pushed voices with a payoff of greater musicality and refinement. It was a fine ideal to state, one with much deal of historical research to back it up. His assertion that no tenor went for a full-voiced high C until many years after Barber certainly bolstered this writer's contention, for instance, that in Fidelio Florestan's opening note should be soft and floated, not the full-voiced roar most current Florestans like to crank out. But we digress.

What we got on this occasion was something quite at odds with Mr. Sadewhite's set up. The problem lay in the simple fact that the cast was divided into those who took it easy, as he had suggested would be the norm, and those who still wanted to let fly at a modern level. There was no external reason to cause the big-voiced contingent to feel obligated to let loose; certainly the orchestra was in fine balance in the deep pit, and the hall is anything but huge.

But some voices are big and some aren't, and mixing them can be problematic even on a smaller stage. The chamber voices were Sean Fallen as Count Almaviva and Mario Bertolino as Dr. Bartolo. In both cases when they faced up stage their voices disappeared. But most of the time the relaxed lyricism suggested by Sadewhite came through. Even with the somewhat larger bass of
Sung Bae Ju as Fiorello, Fallen had his appeal as the eager serenader in the first scene.

The trouble was that Sean Anderson's Figaro was in the big-voice camp. This is not to say that he has a Met-sized voice < he may or may not - but that in this setting he was noticeably larger than Fallen. So he vocally dominated their scenes together.

Mario Bertolino's Dr. Bartolo was bemused in a laid-back manner, often noting the increasing confusion surrounding him with a droll, ironic facial expression. There was no nonmusical barking or roaring to accompany his turns as victim. Vocally and histrionically he fit the size of the hall. It was, therefore a humane version of the plot, for we knew that, while Bartolo would get the comeuppance he deserved, he would land on his feet quite well, thank you.

Of course his "opponent" is Rosina, in this case the mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna. She was correctly played as a delightfully spunky character, in this case with a voice which was full of vitality and technique. Her "Una voce poco fa" (what an aria to have to sing so soon after one's first entrance!) was as solid as they come and thus left the audience relaxed about how the virtuoso role would be handled for the remainder of the evening. The only disappointment was that Ms. Tonna seemed to feel inadequate to pick off the high Cs in the finale to Act I, scene ii (here presented as Act II to facilitate the scene change). So there was a cut which, considering how well the mezzo was already picking off her soprano-range high notes, seemed unnecessary. But a mezzo and her high C have a tenuous relationship at best.

The effect, however, of having a strong-voiced Rosina was to overpower Dr. Bartolo.

Don Basilio was played by the large-voiced basso, Ryan Allen. Allen's most famous "La calunnia" aria was a comic masterpiece of singing and acting. His shtick was derived from the "old school" cooties gags, which were favorites of the late Jerome Hines, though the also tall and thin Allen entered at his full height, whereas Hines would trade on his well-known height to poke his head around the door at floor level for his first entrance. Allen was very funny in a manner which was light on the fine nuance and heavy on the broad stroke.

All those big voices were grand, but they had the effect of burying the subtleties of Bertolino's Dr. Bartolo in the midst of Tonna, Allen, and Anderson. This oddly left Fallen as Almaviva, the doctor's antagonist in the story, as his only musical ally.

This was not lost on the cast, since in the magnificently sung ensembles all the big voices dropped back a level to blend with the others.

One of the highlights of the performance, unexpected to all who had never before heard her, was the firm and energetic Berta of Mariana Karpatova. Too often a throw-away role with only the one aria, Mæstro Silipigni wisely cast a very strong singer to deliver the moral of the opera - that everyone wants love, but we'd best not have old men going after young girls.

The male chorus was fine, not only singing well but "looking" at Sung's clear conductorial beat in the serenade scene (Fiorello must have gone to music school) while actually following Silipigni's in the pit. Some of the singers actually showed signs of knowing something about the instruments they were supposedly playing. In the police scene there was far less for them to do other than sing, and that they did with energy and security.

All concerned, soloists and chorus alike, did the mandatory slow sway from side to side during the aforementioned finale, and it all went well as each came out of the collective stupor with a clearly defined move breaking the "spell."

Silipigni used a modern *Urtext version of the score with some differences which show up first in the overture where some harmonies are different from what most of us grew up hearing. And in the finale to I, ii, instead of the triangle, which would seem to be part of the clockwork bells the singers tell us are going off inside their heads, there was a far less effective tambourine, presumably to emphasize the Spanish locale.

Perhaps this is where the Rosina's two high Cs went missing - down an Urtext rabbit hole. I hope not. I would have loved to hear Ms. Tonna nail them for the most thrilling ensemble moment in the opera; I'm sure she could have.

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