The overture kicks in and you get a little scared. The first chord is not one, but a stumble, as beautiful as the bass foundation is, the whole thing is porous and threatens to fall apart. But conductor Michael Brandstätter quickly gets himself and the orchestra under control, and then this “barber of Seville” becomes his musical triumph, the reduced orchestra reveals some interesting details. And the finale of the first act is the perfect implementation of Rossini’s crazy sewing machine music.
If you bring Rossini’s “barber” to the stage, as Josef E. Köpplinger does at the Gärtnerplatztheater, then the only decisive criterion is: is it going? And it works. The performance is fast-paced, never sags – only where Rossini himself sags in the second act – and everyone on the stage has a tremendous amount of fun in what they do. Köpplinger relocates the plot in Rossini’s Fantasy Seville to the Franco era thus subliminally a foil of prudish dictatorship and the interaction of power, nobility and church, which one does not have to overemphasize, but which gives contours to the events in the exuberantly colorful stage design by Johannes Leiacker.
The star of the night of the premiere of the A-cast is Rosina, Jennifer O’Loughlin. She is flirtatious, lively, charming, immensely present. She strings one feather-light coloratura after the other, in extreme perfection, and dedicates herself to the great feeling, a fine touch of irony blows through it. Matija Meić is Figaro, a great guy who cheats in the coloratura, but that fits the figure. Levente Páll has an amazing parlando as Bartolo, Gyula Rab is a light, lyrical Almaviva. Even parts that are often rather clumsy or insignificant take on a striking contour: Timor Sirlantzis as Basilio, Daniel Gutmann as Fiorillo – he also plays the guitar well.