In Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, as in the Beaumarchais play on which it is based, there are certainly elements of farce. But to emphasise those at the expense of wit is to turn a virtuosic comedy into a circus rough and tumble. It is true that the cast consists of the stock characters of the old Italian comedy of Renaissance times, but text and music should have changed them from stereotypes into individuals. The wily Figaro whose contrivances keep the plot in motion is of a subtler quality that we were allowed to see in Sam McElroy's performance in the new Opera Ireland production by Paul Suter at the Gaiety.
The transplantation of the scene from 17th-century Spain to what appeared to be Castro's Cuba negated the old social codes which established the ambiguous relationship between Figaro the barber and his employer Count Almaviva; Stefanie Pasterkamp's two-level set, which combined interior and exterior in a slightly puzzling fashion, was of a realistic seediness which seemed at odds with the brilliance of the music; so there was a pressure on the performers to coarsen their parts, all the more so as they had to compete with a lavish provision of stage business. There was hardly a moment when one's attention was not distracted from the singing by some lesser activity.
In the circumstances Patricia Fernandez as Rosina did well in her presentation of a headstrong young woman, more than a match for the amiable but ineffectual Almaviva, sung with considerable charm by Evan Bowers. As Rosina's guardian Bartolo, Eric Garrett throws himself wholeheartedly into the buffoonery, but the magnificent voice of the other bass, Pavel Daniluk, in the lesser part of Basilio, Rosina's singing teacher, tended to upstage the others, briefly unbalancing the dramatic logic.
It was only when the fast and furious fun died down that the music was allowed to speak. When Rosina thinks that her lover is false and utters the bitter cry, "Quanto e crudel la sorte mia", the production dispenses with gratuitous minutiae, and the subsequent duet of reconciliation with Almaviva, interrupted at intervals by the practical-minded Figaro, succeeds in being moving and amusing at the same time. The RTE Concert Orchestra, conducted by David T Heusel, played with greater sensitivity and one wished that there had been more music at this level throughout.
The boisterous finale where everybody joined in, including the Opera Ireland Chorus, returned to the earlier mood; and the device of accelerating the ceiling fan in Bartolo's room, clever though it was, served to epitomise a production whose values were somewhat off-centre.