As the action of the Komische Oper’s new Il Barbiere di Siviglia played out, one felt compelled to wonder if this was the most brilliant satire of the selfie generation ever staged, or merely the latest in a series of attempts to make opera buffa relevant to ‘the kids’, that elusive demographic so awkwardly and unsuccessfully courted by the classical music establishment. In fact, the production – directed with considerable élan by Kirill Serebrennikov and conducted with no lack of brio by Antonello Manacorda – may have been both: its casual ease with the iconography of social media – the updates, the selfies, and the baffling text conversations made up entirely of smiley faces and hearts – was built on a sturdy foundation of old-fashioned operatic values such as solid musicianship and a consistent vision of the story and its characters.…
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