Il Barbiere di Siviglia review – an uncommonly satisfying team

Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s production of Rossini’s Barber of Seville has been a vehicle for some very starry stars since its 2005 debut. The cast for its third revival is less familiar, but makes an uncommonly satisfying team. That’s partly down to Thomas Guthrie’s taut revival direction, which brings out the heart in this stylised production even if some of its trappings – the false noses and buttocks for the servants – are now looking a bit tired. It’s also down to Mark Elder’s spacious, elegantly phrased conducting. Now and then the orchestra sounds slightly edgy – at this, the second performance, the tuning wasn’t always spot-on – but thanks to Elder even the most familiar numbers never sound routine.

The two lovers are both new faces here, and on this evidence we’ll be seeing a lot more of them. Michele Angelini sings lovestruck Count Almaviva in an easy, honeyed tenor that goes right to the top; it’s a gentle voice, not huge but substantial, and it bounces off the candy-striped walls of Christian Fenouillat’s set to fill the auditorium. He throws in some audacious embellishments, and brings off every one. Serena Malfi may not have quite the comic gift of Joyce DiDonato, the original Rosina of this production, but she gets some laughs, and sings with an agile, creamy yet glinting mezzo-soprano with low notes as bright as the top ones.

Lucas Meachem is a bear-like Figaro with a big, resonant baritone, and makes a sharp double act with Angelini. For once, the first scene doesn’t drag. Alessandro Corbelli is back, putting a career-worth of Italian-opera stagecraft to use as outwitted old Bartolo; at one point he upstages the lovers even in his sleep. It’s luxury casting to have a bass as cavernous and fruity-sounding as Maurizio Muraro as the scheming Basilio – and even more of a treat to have a soprano of the calibre of Janis Kelly in the tiny role of Berta, the maid, swaying those prosthetic buttocks with pride.