It is with the most famous of Rossini’s operas, The Barber of Sevillethat the Opéra de Montréal will begin its 2024-2025 season on Saturday. The show, presented four times, until Sunday, October 6, will be conducted by Spanish conductor Pedro Halffter, who made an excellent impression in Madame Butterfly in 2023, during his first visit to Montreal.
The Barber of Seville is not just a title for a work in the generic Rossini musical style. “The opera owes much to the tenor Manuel García, the creator of the role of Almaviva in Rome in 1816. He is the most important tenor of the 19th centurye century. The little arietta on guitar for Rosina is written by Manuel García. It is an import into Rossini’s opera,” says Pedro Halffter, who was for many years musical director of the Seville Symphony Orchestra.
Pedro Halffter also sees the Sevillian influence in “the presence of dances in the opera, the sevillana that punctuates the end of the second act, for example. I really think that Manuel García dictated it to Rossini. There is also fandango. The beginning of the opera is to the rhythm of the fandango! There are Spanish and Sevillian rhythms and I am convinced that this is information that García transmitted to Rossini.”
The conductor will be pleased to return to the Orchestre Métropolitain, which he managed to make sound so good in Madame Butterfly despite the ungrateful acoustics of the Wilfrid-Pelletier hall. “I conduct a lot of Puccini. I think it is very important that the flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons are close to the violins and that the placement of the trombones and double basses is as compact as possible: the basses then have a better balanced colour.” For Rossini, the challenges will be different: “You have to find a brilliant, fresh and very precise sound. I will discover the challenges in the hall, but look for that sound.”
Rolling singers
Who says Barber of Seville in Montreal said strange memory of this 2009 production that started with the idea that “Seville is oranges” and which, subsequently, played on the color orange and the comedy of repetition, with a concept pressed to the limit. We really would have thought we were somewhere other than the opera of a large North American metropolis.
The Wilfrid-Pelletier hall, which had Frédéric Antoun as Almaviva in 2009, displayed Étienne Dupuis as Figaro in 2014 in a much more successful show by Oriol Tomas, because remembering that The barber is a opera buffathat is to say a funny opera. The director therefore set himself the mission of making us laugh as often as possible.
In 2024, the show will be entrusted to director Joan Font, of the Catalan troupe Els Comediants. This production plans to combine opera, acrobatics, circus and pantomime to create “a fanciful and colorful visual universe, wonderfully translating the comic essence of Rossini,” the Opéra de Montréal tells us.
After Frédéric Antoun, Almaviva in 2009, and Étienne Dupuis, Figaro in 2014, the Quebec vocal stars of the show will this time be Hugo Laporte as Figaro and Pascale Spinney as Rosine. As for the director, Joan Font, he is no stranger here, since he had signed a Cenerentola memorable Rossini in 2017. We wrote at the time: “International-calibre opera in Montreal is possible. The proof is in this Cenerentola by Joan Font, seen in many places over the past 10 years and filmed in January 2008 in Barcelona.
If the experience of the Barber is also conclusive, it is good to note that Joan Font, director of the closing ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games, still has in his bag a Rossini production, that of the irresistible L’Italian in Algierswhile Quebec and Canada have no shortage of potential mezzo-sopranos candidates to magnify this role.
Let us also note that in a month, on October 26, the Opéra de Québec will also begin its season with Rossini, but taking more risks and bringing more to our musical curiosity, with a rare, original, hilarious and totally crazy work: Count Ory.