The Barber of Seville

Accompanied by his servant and hired musicians, Count Almaviva serenades Dr. Bartolo’s young ward, Rosina. Disappointed at the lack of response, he sends his troupe away.

Figaro, barber and factotum, arrives on the scene, and with a promise of money Almaviva enlists his help in approaching the object of his desire.

Figaro advises the Count to try another song, and when Rosina appears on her balcony, Almaviva ardently declares his love, presenting himself as “Lindoro”. But how is he to gain access to the house? Figaro suggests introducing him as a drunken soldier seeking a billet.

Inside Bartolo’s house, Rosina waits at the window to glimpse “Lindoro”, to whom she has written a letter she wants Figaro to deliver.

Bartolo suspiciously demands the whereabouts of a missing sheet of writing-paper; Rosina has a ready answer, but he is hard to reassure, since the scheming music master Don Basilio has told him that Almaviva is in town looking for adventure. The best way to get rid of him would be to spread a scandalous rumour.

Almaviva pushes his way in, disguised as a drunken regimental doctor and noisily demanding a billet. He makes himself known to Rosina, and they exchange tender words. When the soldier becomes rowdy, Bartolo calls in the guard to arrest him, but they retreat when Almaviva secretly reveals his identity to them. Confusion reigns in Bartolo’s house.

Bartolo is uneasy: could this “colleague”, who is unknown in the regiment, be working for Almaviva? Yet another reason for Bartolo to marry Rosina as soon as possible! It is time for her music lesson, and Almaviva, in the guise of a young music master, Don Alonso, comes to deputise for Don Basilio who, he says, has been taken ill. “Don Alonso” begins the lesson, under Bartolo’s watchful eye. Figaro comes to shave him – and to distract his attention. Suddenly a perfectly healthy Basilio appears; Almaviva and Figaro persuade him with a fat medicinal purse that he is seriously ill and ought to be in bed. As Figaro soaps Bartolo’s face, the lovers plan to elope that night; Bartolo overhears them, and furiously ejects Figaro and the false music master. The faithful housekeeper Berta deplores these continuous uproars.

Bartolo sees only one way to obtain Rosina’s immediate consent to marriage: he tells her that her secret admirer is merely feigning love in order to deliver her to Count Almaviva. To thwart this disgraceful plan once and for all, he sends Don Basilio to fetch the notary and himself goes off to summon the town guard.

A sudden storm blows up over the town.

To carry out the elopement plan, Figaro scales the balcony and admits the Count. Rosina rejects the supposed matchmaker; only when “Lindoro” reveals his identity does she consent joyfully to flee with him.

Basilio, arriving with the notary, removes the ladder from the balcony.

Figaro, rising to the occasion, causes the baffled notary to declare Almaviva and Rosina man and wife. Bartolo’s exaggerated caution has failed notably. He arrives to find Rosina the newly-wed Countess Almaviva.

by Gottfried Kraus (1988)

Seeking to broaden the repertoire with operas suitable both for showing the marionettes' full expressive resources and for their appeal to international audiences, it was inevitable that the Salzburg marionettes would sooner or later come across Rossini's Barber of Seville. All the more so, since this work offered the opportunity of trying out an opera buffa in the Italian original, including recitatives. In addition, the Barber, which was rehearsed for the ceremonial opening of the new theatre in 1971, was also planned as a precursor to Mozart's Figaro. The plot, based on the first part of a trilogy by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, also precedes Figaro – though of course the text has nothing like the political impact of Figaro. Rossini's work shows a typical commedia situation, with far more strongly typified characters: the old Doctor Bartolo, who keeps his pretty ward Rosina under lock and key, intending to marry her for her fortune; the young Count who uses all manner of ruses to abduct Rosina; and the astute barber Figaro, who takes advantage of his trade to make himself indispensable in all situations, devising a solution to any problem. The music teacher Basilio and even Bartolo's elderly maidservant Bertha are figures in the traditional commedia.

And yet, Beaumarchais' comedy presages the development into character comedy which is then perfected in Le mariage de Figaro. Rossini's librettist Cesare Sterbini took over much of this – as when the young Count and Figaro philosophise over the power of money, when Basilio extols the fine art of slander, or Rosina resolutely takes her fate into her own hands. Rossini's tuneful music – composed thirty years after Mozart's Figaro, also long after Giovanni Paisiello's setting of the Barbiere – follows the easy appeal of the typical situations and figures rather than the possibilities for deeper characterisation. At some moments, however, it is extremely effective – as for instance in Basilio's "slander" aria – and is always full of vitality. Above all, it emphasises the comedic aspect, and seems ideal for the marionettes, which are far more suited than people to this kind of liveliness.

The marionettes' rendering of the Barber of Seville is full of lightness and charm. Even the décor appears contrived from the weightlessness of the music. Dr. Bartolo's house, with its charming little balcony, the interiors – stylised, but realistic down to the last detail, with transparent dividing walls that show the individual rooms of the house as required – all this possesses not only wit and style, but also a Mediterranean appeal. Likewise the figures, for which Josef Magnus created masterly physiognomies, at once types and individual characters, in fascinating differentiation.

Wolf-Dieter Ludwig's production successfully combines the characteristics of the marionettes with the specific dramatic features of opera buffa. What in Mozart's work may be interpreted as a kind of heightening into pure play-acting, is achieved in the Barber through pointed realism. The Count sings his serenade at the beginning to the accompaniment of a real little orchestra, their individual movements a sheer delight; Figaro shaves Doctor Bartolo in an exquisite choreography using every trick in the book, while Almaviva and Rosina plight their troth in the adjacent room as charming silhouettes; and during the storm, Figaro vaults with nimble elegance over the balcony railing as if he were an acrobat rather than a barber.

Nevertheless, all the realism is naturally exaggerated. In those very places where the ambiguity of the buffa becomes clear in music and action, the marionette has additional expressive resources of which stage directors of opera can only dream – as for instance, when the gaunt, demonic Basilio, in his "slander" aria, scares the stupendously comic yet tragic Doctor Bartolo out of his wits. Here the staging pulls out all the stops: to thunder and lightning, Bartolo's ashen terror fills the entire room. Or when Figaro, Rosina and Almaviva try to persuade the baffled Basilio that he has a high fever, and under the influence of the music and their persuasive powers he actually begins to shiver.

Hundreds of details demonstrate how the Salzburg marionettes achieve a dramatic and artistic interpretation far beyond the usual limits of puppet theatre, penetrating in their own peculiar way much deeper into the essence of buffa than I have ever experienced on the opera stage. Precisely because here they abstain from all modernisation and pretentious gags, because the stylisation of the marionettes makes every other mannered stylisation superfluous, the spectator finds here a kind of perfection that the opera stage is hardly able to achieve.