The full version of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is on NZ Opera’s programme platter this year so it’s fitting to reduce this comic opera for audiences of children in Capital E’s Arts festival to experience too.

Director Jacqueline Coats and Musical Director Mark W Dorrell have styled a more than two hour cut-and-colour into a 45 minute short-back-and-sides (yes hair dressing puns a-plenty) with great success.

The premise of the story is: rich Boy (Count Almaviva played by Manase Latu) sees girl and instantly falls in love; he decides to disguise himself as Lindoro so she will fall in love with him, and not because she knows he is rich. Girl (Pasquale Orchard as Rosina) sees Lindoro (the disguised Almaviva) and falls in love BUT there is the dastardly villain (Stepmother Dr Bartola – Deborah Rogers) who has other ideas of who Rosina will marry and thwarts this love-match’s trajectory to the altar. Fortunately there is an amiable barber (Will King’s Figaro) and a leeching Lawyer (Angus Simmons) to help with the love-struck pair’s plan to be together.

In this cleverly revised version, there are all the trimmings of a great piece of children’s theatre: slapstick humour and physical theatre with a fairytale like story (I like what could be a nod to Rapunzel in the opening scene with Rosina looking out of her upper story window, locked into the house by her Step-mother); a colourful pop-up storybook style set with bold bright pantomime costuming by NZ opera costume designer Elizabeth Whiting. Add to this the essential modern references – in this case dabs, the floss, Fortnite dance and Beyonce melismatic riffs to name a few – to hook the audience in and you have a winner. 

This performance is sung in English to make the piece more accessible to this young audience, of whom ninety percent will probably be hearing opera for the first time, but this makes it particularly difficult for the singers to sing such fast patter and coloratura phrases compared to singing in the original round vowel soaked Italian language. However this excellent cast do a fantastic job in Circa One to ‘cut’ through the lacking acoustic resonance they would usually find in an Opera house or concert hall – although the higher female voices have more clarity to their diction overall. 

Mark Dorrell provides the dexterous ten fingered orchestra brilliantly on the piano and even acquires some charming hair accessories courtesy of the resident barber.

All the voices are lush and highly trained, their characters are conveyed with vim and vigour and the audience totally engages (albeit quietly at the performance I am at) with the experience and especially loves it when one of their teachers ends up on stage as a character too (he incidentally models ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ for his students beautifully).

We are fortunate in New Zealand to have wonderful institutions like NZ Opera and their fabulous creatives to continue to educate and illuminate this exciting operatic world for these younger ages. Who knows, there may well be some future stars sitting amongst the audiences who will be inspired to explore this musical genre in the future. 

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