Opera Philadelphia gives 'Barber of Seville' a new look

"Everything is brighter and better in Seville" - at least onstage at the Academy of Music, where Opera Philadelphia's set designer, Shoko Kambara, author of the above comment, is patrolling the riotous variations-on-orange scenery being installed for the classic opera The Barber of Seville.

Scenery arrives decorated with eye-crossing patterns. The cotton candy is as bright as Christmas lights. The towering orange tree will be bushier by opening night on Friday. The bicycle has a handlebar basket full of barber equipment - plus a flask for swigging. The Spanish edition of Vogue carries a photo of the production's handsome tenor, Taylor Stayton.

"I've never been in a production that was so Spanish," said baritone Jonathan Beyer, who has played the barber Figaro around the world. "I think we fall into a trap: On this bar, we do this with a razor because that's what we do. They're customs for no reason."

At least during this run (through Oct. 5), the opera is reincarnated as a Pedro Almodóvar movie, since any number of Rossini's characters live on the verge of nervous breakdowns. And if you've ever noticed how Rossini and Almodóvar operate at a similarly manic tempo, you're not alone.

"There's nothing wrong with a traditional production," said stage director Michael Shell, "but every one that I've seen was a paint-by-numbers way of doing it. The piece itself is successful. You can get a rental set. People who have done the roles before arrive with all their gags, and it's a guaranteed hit. I understand that. But -."

This new production, co-commissioned by the theatrically savvy Opera Theatre of St. Louis, was a chance to get at the opera another way. Too much modernization could mean introducing cellphones - which would demolish the plot about a young woman, locked away by her guardian, who surreptitiously passes notes to an amorous nobleman in disguise.

Yet any possible Almodóvar connection was irresistible: His 1988 international hit, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, captured burgeoning post-Franco Spain with its dramatic sea change in women's rights and sexual revolution with the legalization of contraception. Almodóvar also operates at a level of absurdity that made Rossini's unlikely plots seem almost sensible.

"It was so perfect for Barber of Seville. It needs the vivid colors that Almodóvar uses," Shell said.

"Weird things happen to people in these movies," Kambara said, "but it's never a crisis. It's like, 'Oh, my husband just had a sex change, but whatever.' "

Just by chance, Kambara was attending a wedding in Tangiers, necessitating a stopover in Spain. Several days in Seville yielded videos of street scenes that were the basis of the Opera Philadelphia sets. Distinctive fabrics bought there gave extra authenticity to the costumes. The orange emphasis is no accident. From street vendors to opera houses, fresh orange juice is ever-present in certain parts of Spain. Hence the well-positioned orange tree on the Academy of Music stage.

The characters also needed fresh reality checks. Though Beyer usually wants his Figaros to be likable, "in this version . . . he's grimy, a street guy. He makes things happen but often at the cost of somebody else."

Count Almaviva is a celebrity bachelor (as suggested by the magazine cover). "When we first see him," Kambara said, "he's sick of seeing himself, and that explains the goofy disguises."

Rosina (the woman he loves) and her guardian, Dr. Bartolo, required something more interventionist. Never is it explained what, exactly, they do with their time, or how the elderly Bartolo could be so blind as to think the lively young Rosina would be happy with him. So in this production, he's an eye doctor - and she is his trained assistant. "His practice hinges on keeping her," Kambara said, "and that keeps him from being a sketchy old man."

Why did such rethinking come to be necessary? Producers and directors often find themselves slotted into Barber of Seville traditions without knowing where they come from or why they exist. Director Shell toed that line once and decided never again.

For singers, pressure sometimes comes from their colleagues. "Certain Bartolos I've worked with have said, 'I want you to do this here and that there,' " Beyer said. "But they're primarily American traditions. You go to Italy and directors will say, 'Uh-uh-uh . . . this is not the United States.' In Europe, they play it a little more real."

Then again, what do you do when the authoritative conductor Lorin Maazel (recently deceased) had tempos so slow the stage time had to be filled somehow? "It was the most meticulous shave I've ever given," Beyer said. That won't be the case with Opera Philadelphia music director Corrado Rovaris, whose Rossini has a quick pulse.

What irony that a filmmaker, separated from the composer by 200 years, stands as the inspiration to retrieve a classic opera from a tradition that has threatened to bury it. Of course, ophthalmologists in the audience might be offended to see their profession in such a silly context. "But getting back to the world of the story," Beyer said, "is so refreshing."

The Barber of Seville

Friday and Sunday and Oct. 1, 3, and 5 at the Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad. St.

Tickets: $19-$239.

Information: 215-893-1999 or www.operaphila.org EndText

A free public broadcast of Opera Philadelphia's "The Barber of Seville" takes place at 7 p.m. Saturday at Independence Mall, Fifth and Market Streets. Admission is free; reservations required. Information: 215-732-8400 or www.operaphila.org.