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Michieletto’s neorealismo Barber of Naples Paris
Opéra Bastille
06/10/2025 - & June 13, 16, 19*, 22, 25, 28, July 2, 5, 8, 11, 13, 2025
Gioachino Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione
Levy Sekgapane (Il Conte Almaviva), Mattia Olivieri (Figaro), Isabel Leonard*/Aigul Akhmetshina (Rosina), Carlo Lepore (Don Bartolo), Luca Pisaroni (Basilio), Anaïs Constans/Margarita Polonskaya* (Berta), Andres Cascante (Fiorello)
Chœurs de l’Opéra national de Paris, Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master), Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris, Diego Matheuz (conductor)
Damiano Michieletto (stage director), Andreas Zimmermann (revival stage director), Paolo Fantin (sets), Silvia Aymonino (costumes), Manu Halligan (make‑up), Fabio Barettin (lighting), Tomek Jeziorski (videography), José Enrique Macián (dramaturgy)
(© Agathe Poupeney/Opéra national de Paris)
Damiano Michieletto, one of the most talented opera directors of our time, was for me the draw to attend this 2014 revival, the Italian director’s first for the Paris Opera. In stark contrast to most settings, where Don Bartolo is wealthy and living in splendour, here it’s set in working class contemporary Seville. In the libretto, Count Almaviva tells Figaro he noticed a lovely girl in the Spanish capital and is there to pursue her (“Al Prado vidi un fior di bellezza, una fanciulla figlia d’un certo medico barbogio”). To be invited to Court, Rosina would have to be from an affluent background, lower nobility or more likely grande bourgeoisie.
Unlike most enfant terrible stage directors, Michieletto is not an iconoclast in order to shock; his ultimate aim is to discover the essence of the story without preconceived ideas acquired through years of tradition. In his deconstruction of the opera, Michieletto, a man of immense culture, connects hereto unfathomed historical and literary links. Most importantly, he ignores trendy nonsense (lesbian Turandot, impotent Don Giovanni, sadistic Carmen, La bohème in outer space, etc) in which others revel. His productions of Don Giovanni and Les Contes d’Hoffmann for Venice, Don Quichotte for the Paris Opera, Salome and Médée for La Scala and Rossini’s Otello for Frankfurt are the best I’ve ever seen.
Il barbiere di Siviglia is possibly the most-performed comedic opera, often suffering from mauvais gout. This is usually achieved using slapstick, shaking posteriors and overall buffoonery. Michieletto had none of that; he instead recounts the tale as a contemporary love story in a Mediterranean city where servants, neighbours and shopkeepers intertwine.
Don Bartolo and his ward Rosina live in a bigger dwelling than that of their modest neighbours. The picturesque neighborhood is evocative of Triana, Seville’s working class district. Café Barracuda, next to Don Bartolo’s, is the heart of the neighborhood where people meet, gossip and flirt. Though a close enough depiction of an Andalusian city, Michieletto’s setting evokes Naples or Catania more than Seville. The fluidity of action and the foibles of the characters are reminiscent of 1960s Italian films of the commedia all’italiana genre, such as those by Mario Monicelli (I soliti ignoti, 1958) and Pietro Germi (Divorzio all’italiana, 1961). This neorealismo treatment made for a delectable light comedy, where humour came naturally, without extravagance or forced gags. A true delight!
The cast was near impeccable. Every role, save for Rosina, was well‑cast and strongly interpreted. American mezzo Isabel Leonard, a veteran in this role, having starred in seventeen other productions of the opera, has a more than adequate voice. Hers is a light mezzo, in the tradition of Frederica von Stade (though without the latter’s distinctly ravishing timbre). Such a light voice almost always fails to convey the character’s coyness, an essential attribute of the opera’s heroine. However, being a veteran in the role, Leonard was completely at ease and mercifully eschewed overdone charm. Another problem is this Rosina’s relative lack of charisma, with the potential to seriously unbalance the equilibrium of the pivotal trio of Almaviva, Rosina and Figaro. Here, Rosina’s signature aria “Una voce poco fa” was competently sung, but Leonard did not reveal much of Rosina’s personality, whether her coyness, cunning or naïveté. Another issue was Leonard’s high notes, which, unlike her warm lower notes, often turn shrill. Despite these shortcomings, the American mezzo seems to have a following in Paris, the only explanation for such unmerited effusive applause.
Fortunately, the rest of the cast was superlative. The absolute star of the show was South African Rossini specialist Levy Sekgapane, as Almaviva. Sekgapane has come a long way since the first time I heard him in Il viaggio a Reims in Barcelona in 2017. He was admired more recently in the demanding coloratura tenor role of Rodrigo in Rossini’s Otello in Frankfurt, another Michieletto production.
In Michieletto’s setting, Almaviva is a rich kid who pursues Rosina despite her guardian Bartolo’s strict surveillance. At the opening of the opera, his fancy car is parked in front of Don Bartolo’s abode. The musicians hired to serenade Rosina assemble at the neighbourhood bar, Barracuda. The neighbours watch from their balconies. At the end of the opera, Almaviva and Rosina take off on his Vespa, a clin d’œil to 1960s Italian neorealismo.
For most of the twentieth century, the virtuosity of the vocal writing of “Una voce poco fa” and the coquettishness of the character has given Rosina preeminence. With the Rossini revival that started in the 1980s and the emergence of such virtuoso tenors as Rockwell Blake, the technically demanding “Cessa di più resistere” has been restored as the opera’s final aria, resulting in Almaviva stealing the show. Given the low octane Rosina of Isabel Leonard, this was definitely the case in this performance. Sekgapane’s rendition of the aria’s cabaletta “Ah il più lieto, il più felice,” was the evening’s most exciting moment, eliciting thunderous applause.
Mattia Olivieri is one of today’s leading baritones. In addition to a beautiful timbre and vocal mastery, this versatile singer can easily incarnate any character, tragic or comic, with equal skill. Few can be as dashing as his Don Giovanni recently admired in Berlin, as menacing as his Il trovatore’s Conte di Luna heard in Venice, as scheming as his Malatesta in Don Pasquale in Milan, or as affecting as his Marcello in La bohème in Munich. One of this amazing singer’s greatest virtues is his humility. As much at ease being the leading star or playing a supporting role, Olivieri never tries to steal the limelight. Thanks to his immense stage presence, he knows very well that he will stand out without any great effort. And here lies the magic in his Figaro.
It happens that some baritones mistakenly think that as it’s the title role, Figaro is the most important character, yet nothing could be further from the truth. When Figaro takes too much space, the comedic verve feels forced, and the dramatic tension inevitably fails. The dramatic success of Rossini’s masterpiece is dependent on the equilibrium of the triangle of Almaviva-Rosina-Figaro. Rosina and Count Almaviva are the lovers, and hence the heroes of the story. Figaro is the astute facilitator. Happily, both director Michieletto and Olivieri understood this crucial fact. His signature aria, “Largo al factotum”, was flawlessly sung, technically brilliant and lighthearted, with no attempt to make a circus of it.
As is often the case, Don Bartolo, Rosina’s guardian who schemes to marry her for her dowry, was the most amusing character onstage. Seen a few months ago in the same role in Pesaro, Carlo Lepore elicited laughter through much of his performance, without ever resorting to predictable buffoonery. Wit and frivolity come naturally to this talented singer-actor. This Bartolo is a truly petty and pedantic vieux garcon.
Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, a great baroque and Mozart specialist, is increasingly expanding into Rossini. Admired last season in Giulio Cesare in Paris, this intelligent singer knows how to interiorize a role. Though Don Basilio ideally requires a lower voice, he nonetheless portrayed an amusing master intriguer. Usually, Don Basilio is a stuffy ecclesiastical, oozing with hypocrisy. Instead, here Pisaroni’s Basilio seems to be a goofy old bachelor, morally corrupt, but not so competent as an intriguer, rendering the role more amusing, almost endearing. As usual with this exceptional singer, he was completely immersed in the role, and his acting was utterly convincing. His beautiful voice was adjusted to convey the character’s shortcomings. Thanks to Pisaroni’s vocal mastery, excellent diction and acting, Basilio’s famous aria “La calunnia” was brilliantly interpreted, despite a lack of cavernous low notes more typical of a basso profondo. Michieletto had pages of a newspaper fall from the balconies of the neighbourhood during the aria. As the aria’s tempo hurtled toward its climax, the rainfall of pages accelerated to insinuate the speed with which gossip spreads.
Given the neorealismo take on the plot, we learn of the foibles of many characters, including some not in the libretto, such as two young neighbours of Rosina’s who insistently flirt with Figaro; the Barracuda’s bar owner who is the neighbourhood’s mamma; and an alcoholic neighbour. As for the servants, Fiorello is a lazy alcoholic and Berta is a woman in heat. She hits on Almaviva as soon as he bounds into the house disguised as a drunk soldier at the end of Act II. Rejected by him, she ends up in a fling with an unappealing elderly man from the neighbourhood. Given Paolo Fantin’s ingenious sets that consisted of a revolving three‑storey “doll’s house” enabling the public to see the goings‑on in the structure’s many rooms, we see a voracious Berta fornicating with the elderly man while Act’s II intrigue unfolds.
The secondary role of Berta was interpreted by the talented Russian soprano Margarita Polonskaya, who sang a most amusing Act II aria “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie”. In addition to excellent singing, Polonskaya was an utterly convincing actress: chain‑smoking, frustrated and irritable, she almost eclipsed the lacklustre Rosina!
Diego Matheuz was a competent conductor with an affinity for Rossini’s music. Mercifully, he eschewed fast tempi. Though some conductors feel that speed augments the frenzy of Rossini’s comedies, it is the variation in tempi rather than constant velocity that enhances the action. Thankfully, Matheuz grasped this concept.
Given its popularity, I invariably see many productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia, and am often disappointed, despite overall excellent singing. Comedy is much harder to achieve than tragedy. Michieletto’s choice to tone down the hilarity and to instead concentrate on the interaction between the credible characters paid off. This was a truly pleasurable production.
Ossama el Naggar
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