The Barber of Seville

Stage Director (Florida Grand Opera)

What’s Opera Doc? Well Bugs, it’s a lot of work, that’s what!

Directing this show was the proverbial step-up to the Major League. I already had plenty of experience working in miniature through opera scenes, and several smaller productions under my belt at Florida State and Indianapolis Opera. But when the General Director Susan Danis of Florida Grand Opera pitched the opportunity to direct Il barbiere di Siviglia as part of the 2022-23 main stage season, I didn’t know how much I would still have to learn to successfully put a good opera on the stage.

Work started in the summer of 2022, as conductor Anthony Barrese and I worked back and forth on cuts. I knew that we challenged ourselves as a company to present more concise operas as part of the season, so it was my priority to try to remove as much material as I could. Maestro Barrese gave me some healthy pushback, and in the end I’m glad that he didn’t let me tear the show completely to shreds like I initially planned. We figured out ways of including the often-cut aria for Berta and the final aria for Count Almaviva that almost always gets cut while keeping the opera under three hours. And even with all that content, I think we made sure that the show had lots of forward momentum and energy all the way to the final number.

However I also had my eye on one major change as part of the opera. I was not, admittedly, the biggest fan of Rosina’s Act II aria in the music lesson scene. When I was in the middle of re-reading through the opera for a second or third time, I noticed a footnote saying that different arias could be substituted in place of “Contro un cor che accende amore” and floated that idea by Maestro. He really liked the idea and put some scholarship in front of me of historical substitution arias we could insert. I came up with a list of three good options, and he encouraged me to go in the direction of picking two short numbers to create a mini-concert.

“Di tanti palpiti” from Rossini’s Tancredi did a great job of hitting the same dramatic beats as the original aria but in half the time. We then followed that up with “Yo que soy contrabandista,” by the original Count Almaviva, tenor Manuel García. This aria brought legitimate Spanish flavor to Rossini’s Italianate musical style, but also gave our large Spanish-speaking audience something to enjoy as part of the action. The García piece was fiendishly difficult, but we trusted Stephanie Doche to take on the aria and knock it out of the park, and that’s exactly what she did.

This was also the first show I had worked on where nearly everyone knew the material better and more deeply than I did. Only one performer was new to their role, and he still had decades of experience that informed his character very quickly. I often felt the pressure of matching their expertise with conviction and authority, and I think that it’s probably the biggest area of refinement that I have to work on before my next project. But I think I made up for those shortcomings with a strong vision on our lighting design, finding the funny moments wherever I could, and being as well-organized as possible when it came to the chorus scenes. The lighting design I put together with Barry Steele was probably some of my favorite work to date. I was particularly happy with our hallucinogenic light cue for the Act I finale, which had a mixture of color changing lights, spinning gobos, and spot lights going all over the stage for a maddening effect.

The audience response was very favorable, and the critical reception followed right in line. Critic Lawrence Budmen of South Florida Classial Review wrote that the show “delights and entertains,” and called my direction “endlessly eye catching and inventive without veering into exaggeration.” And Roberto San Juan of Pro Ópera said that this production “maintains the freshness from start to end.” While we missed out on some people leaving early for the summer, we were told pretty frequently in talk-backs after the opera that people really appreciated the quality we were able to deliver in our final two productions of the season at FGO. After following a wonderful production of Tosca in March and April, this was perhaps my greatest relief at the end of the day.

I look forward to getting the chance to direct this piece again. I think I just started scratching the surface of where to take some scenes and how to refine others, but it all started in a nice direction and has me ready to take on more challenges at this high level of opera production.