HGO's 'Barber of Seville' plays up comedy over music

Rossini's most famous opera, "The Barber of Seville," is performed so often that keeping it fresh is an evergreen concern.

Opening last Friday, with performances through Feb. 10, Houston Grand Opera's production - a revival of its 2011 staging - at the Resilience Theater in the George R. Brown Convention Center is marked by an approach that might best be described as "Cirque de Rossini," refreshing the show while occasionally overshadowing the musical element.

In the role of Figaro, the titular character in this romantic farce, American baritone Lucas Meachem gives the audience evidence of why this has become his signature role. Bursting with confidence and charisma and champing at the bit to concoct one hair-brained scheme after another, Meachem's Figaro is the original Harold Hill, loaded with charm and one step ahead of everyone else on stage.

Meachem is inspired by the production's embrace of "Barber's" screwball comedy essence and enhances it with a stylishly cartoony production that often feels like a Cirque du Soleil performance. Doctor Bartolo (baritone Peixin Chen) is a clown figure with bald pate, chalky white makeup and green-tinged Bozo hair. He has a crew of clown servants constantly onstage carrying out comic stage business, allowing the principals to concentrate on their showy, difficult coloratura vocals. The chorus' movements are choreographed by Xevi Dorca, mincing onstage from their first scene in perfect timing with the mincing figure in the score.

It all comes to a head in "Barber's" brilliant Act 1 finale, beginning with the ensemble "Fredda ed immobile, come una statua" ("Frozen and immobile like a statue"), in which the principals all react to their collective predicament like proverbial deer in the headlights. Font stages this as though his principals are mechanical figures in an elaborate Swiss clock, their absurd hilarity bringing Ernie Kovacs' pantomime classic "Nairobi Trio" to mind. Pandemonium ensues, with all six principals huddled atop Bartolo's salmon-pink grand piano as a ludicrously pink-plumed police force marches as if they were prancercising and Bartolo's servants try to rescue one of their own as he clings to a chandelier for dear life.

"The Barber of Seville" is, however, a bel canto opera, which means the music is of primary importance. The cast dispatches the challenging demands of Rossini's score solidly and capably but are upstaged from time to time by the antics going on behind them. The exception is Meachem. His Figaro is loaded with charm and is casually dazzling - whether tossing off triplets with David Portillo's nimble-voiced Count Almaviva, or deploying his buttery-smooth lyric baritone in his famous aria "Largo al factotum." He caps the aria by literally sweeping the audience with his final sustained high note, stage left to stage right, giving everyone in the audience a taste, as if to say, "go ahead, take it all in!"

Houston Grand Opera Studio alumna Emily Senturia led a necessarily careful musical performance from the podium; she and the orchestra were positioned behind the stage area while prompter Richard Bado did double-duty as shadow conductor for the benefit of the singers. Nonetheless she kept things lively and held the ensembles together admirably - especially given the make-shift circumstances of the Resilience Theater - in this intricate score.