Herbert Fritsch’s production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Sivigla filmed at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2021 is strangely ambiguous.  At first blush it looks like the sort of hyper traditional production the WSO might have had in repertory for fifty years.  There are big wigs, knee breeches and so on but it soon becomes apparent that something more (or less) is going on.  Tje costumes are exaggerated.  The fabrics are elaborate and shiny and very not early 19th century at all.  The wigs are odd colours.  Rosina’s dress shows rather a lot of leg.  There’s virtually no scenery and the only props I recall in the whole piece are a ladder and Lindoro’s sword at the end of Act 1.

What we actually get is the full width and depth of the very large stage with giant panels for backdrop.  The effect is like a sort of primary coloured, ever changing, Rothko.  Props are replaced by mime or, in some cases, other characters.  There’s also a diminutive, and very good, dancer who seems to be commenting on the action; often doubling whichever character is most prominent in the moment.  The cast is also very much playing to the audience.  They gesture to the hall.  They take bows at the end of numbers, blow kisses to the audience and so on.  It almost, but not quite, feels like a parody or maybe somewhere ambiguously between a parody and a homage to any number of bygone Barbers in Vienna.

The lack of clutter certainly puts the emphasis on the singers and, it being the WSO, it’s a pretty impressive cast.  I guess the headliner is Juan Diego Flórez as a rather mature Almaviva.  He has still got all the notes but he definitely looks and sounds quite mature these days.  The Figaro is Etienne Dupuis.  One gets the impression he’s sung the role a lot.  He has a lot of swagger and, if anything, outoveracts JDF.

Paolo Bordogna, as Bartolo, gives a classic Rossini buffo bass performance.  He’s stylish and funny and does the patter thing well..  Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov is a proper bass all right though his Don Basilio is perhaps even more cartoonish than some of the others.  The Rosina is Vasiisa Berzhanskaya.  She’s a very interesting singer.  Her vocal range is apparently very wide.  She’s sung both The Queen of the Night and Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri.  I guess that’s the Rossini tradition.  Here she’s billed as a mezzo and her tone colour is really quite dark for a Rosina though she’s clearly got the high notes and coloratura chops too.  She’s less of a “Spitfire” Rosina than, say, Danielle de Niese and comes over more as a victim than most.  It’s an interesting interpretation and, as she’s stiull quite young, I think we are going to see a lot more of this lady.

Michele Mariotti conducts and generally takes things pretty fast, especially the ensembles, which seems to be the current way and suits me as long as the singers and orchestra are up to it and here they clearly are.  The house chorus makes the most of its brief appearances.

Leopold Knötzl is the video director.  He has some tough decisions to make.  There’s this ever changing background, which is part of the point of the production, but showing that leaves the singers stuck in the middle of a big empty space.  Mostly he goes for closer shots which is understandable and does capture just how much “mugging” is going on.  I think, basically, the production just isn’t very well adapted for film.

Audio and video on Blu-ray are the expected standard choices and look and sound fine. The only extras on the disk are some trailers and the essay in the booklet isn’t particularly informative.  there is a synopsis and track listing.  Subtitle options are English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.

Oddly enough there aren’t that many Barbers available on Blu-ray and only two have casts any thing like as starry as this one.  They are the 2017 Paris recording and the 2016 Glyndebourne version.  Both of them are very good and rather more conventional than this new recording.

Catalogue information: C Major Blu-ray 765404