Il barbiere di Siviglia, Glyndebourne Festival Opera review: This production has lost its way

This was always a busy show, and now that busy-ness has taken over everything like a rampant growth

Annabel Arden’s version of the Rossini opera misses the mark (Glyndebourne Productions Ltd/ Robert Workman)

Rossini’s Barber is a pretty well indestructible comedy when the instructions in the score are faithfully followed. That score’s melodic elegance is married to a wicked theatrical wit which dictates at times how everyone on stage must move: all the soldiers must freeze in horror, for example, as the tramp they are beating up turns out to be their leader in disguise.

And when music-master Don Basilio floors the gullible Dr Bartolo with his spiralling aria about the self-generating power of slander, he himself must seem to spiral upwards with it.

Unfortunately, however, Annabel Arden’s production, now revived with Sinead O’Neill in the driving seat, has lost its way. It has that brilliant farceur Alessandro Corbelli as Bartolo, and some very promising new singers in the other main roles. The Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky makes a feisty Figaro, Adam Palka a resonant Basilio, and as Almaviva the South African tenor Levy Sekgapane tosses off his stratospherically high notes with relaxed charm.

Meanwhile in the Korean soprano Hera Hyesang Park’s Rosina we get a singer who may not be as mischievous or bewitching as the role’s previous occupant – Danielle de Niese – but whose voice and demeanour cause the audience to take her to their hearts.

But... this was always a busy show, and now that busy-ness has taken over everything like a rampant growth. Each aria is a signal for some mimed business on the other side of the stage which is neither dramatic nor funny, but which effectively upstages the action.

Janis Kelly’s small part as the secretary Berta has been absurdly over-inflated in a way which must surely be causing her grief, given that in her youthful heyday she was the Coliseum’s brightest farceuse. Time and again one wishes the actor-supernumeraries would just clear off and let the singers get on with it. But they don’t.

Until 14 July