By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Nov. 19, 2015 – Even the Bugs Bunny The Barber of Seville (which gets a subtle nod in Florida Grand Opera’s new outing) never featured the tenor and baritone-bass dueling with a plumber’s plunger and a toilet bowl brush.
But this delightfully profligate production of Rossini’s wildly popular 200-year-old comic opera distances itself from any mustiness by emphasizing a madcap sensibility.
Restaging a production from the Vancouver Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, Canadian stage director Dennis Garnhum has drenched this edition with unrestrained whimsy and enough farce to echo a different night at the opera, as in the Marx Brothers.
Musically, the production under house conductor Ramon Tebar is relatively solid, from the lovely voices nimbly trilling the bel canto runs, to the lively orchestra, which recedes into silence to allow an uncredited harpsichord player to remind the audience that this is, indeed, a 19th Century work.
